What this town needs is a good sixty cent cup of coffee

If I were handed a TrickyDick $300 FunBill, I would go out and try to drink 100 cups of coffee. I would fail. I would fail because, in this life, $3 coffee means the cheapest, grimiest coffee, doesn’t it? It means you spent three bucks at a gas station. It means you wasted three bucks on coffee that you won’t get around to choking down. If you have three hundred dollars and want to drink one hundred cups of coffee, your option is to make it yourself.
But not really. The fact is, there exists in Austin, a cup of coffee that runs you under a buck. I mean to find as many as I can. I mean to obtain them. I mean to try them.

Part 1: Cheating On a Halo, Also, on a Challenge

The Wells Branch Community Library

For my first trick, I shall need a volunteer from the Library. I shall need him (or her!) to go to the Wells Branch Community Library just off Wells Port Drive and obtain the first of my Cheap Coffee Cuest objects.

Library Coffee might not count. It costs exactly a dollar, though, which is what makes it my choice for first cup. They don’t actually make it there, per se. It comes from a machine. You put a little pouch bag into the device and it presses water through it, and piddles into the cup.

The library’s nice, though. I vote  that it’s the nicest library on or very near Wells Port Drive.

Take that, Pflugerville Library!

Next time: Coffee that comes from a food purveyor and costs less than a dollar. Excitement!

Moonshine

Porch and Pie

linq: Moonshine Grill

There is a heaviness to Moonshine Grill. I have dined here several times, and this revelation has only been driven home on this, my last visit.

I should elaborate. I have eaten at Moonshine grill several times in the last three years, since I first learned of their being nearby to my workplace. I have worked my way slowly around the menu, hitting the highest points as they occurred to me, and enjoying much of what I ate. The health and correctness of my diet, I should also add, was the furthest thing from my mind.

Lately, I am back on the program, watching my intake and working toward something resembling health. This has made me conscious of my intake in a way I had not previously been. I consider the foods I eat, and I consider more the foods I avoid.

There is a heaviness to the food at Moonshine. It is never unpleasant, and it does not ruin the focus of any particular dish, but it is present in every bite of every dish. I shall avoid duplicating Jack Hare’s main thrust by avoiding any specific mention, and instead take a jab toward the interior.

The Porch

The place is unremittingly nice.

The staff are pleasant and present, and the interior is well constructed to leave you in

anxiety.

Not really, but Hi, Dad.

The porch is a blessedly cool oasis in the heat of the pavement of downtown. The rustic indoors stands in stark contrast to the ultra-modern cubes that comprise the architecture of downtown Austin. The building suggests age without the fragility which so often accompanies it.

Going is always a good time. The food is tasty. The waitstaff is busy but courteous, which is often the sign of a good restaurant, much like high turnover in a fish monger. These are, I fear, the sum of my current impressions of the place, wrapped as I was in the warm haze of having eaten a little too much food that was an uninterrupted collection of a little too rich.

There exists pie at the place. I feel I have built up the requirement in myself to mention it. The peanut-butter pie is kind of cheating, as it is really a sort of mousse cheesecake. The server refused to bring an apple pie, as she informed us fearfully that it was not for a single diner, or even for a pair.

“It’s a whole pie,” she said. “It’s really, really too big.”

We made other selections.

“Good,” she said, “I wouldn’t bring that unless there were” she trailed off, indistinct, perhaps still calculating the size of heard she would require to make the titanic pie worthwhile.

When she brought the desserts, her arms bulging under the weight, I was left poleaxed. If these monstrosities are A-OK, the idea of what must actually be the Gargantuan Abomination which is the Apple Pie must dwarf even the very mountains.

The point is, I can’t really speak to the Apple pie. I haven’t tried it. It might be fine, though.

Six out of four, twice over, with whipped cream, a side of olives, or your choice of side

Red River Cafe

Stop a while and enjoy an egg

linq:Red River Cafe’s Facebook

I am not, by my nature, a morning person. I have recently acquired a “baby,” the 2009 model, which asserts that I am now to become one.  I certainly do not mind, but I do miss my status as a frequent patron of night spots. Solace, though, exists, in the form of several really excellent morning spots. I shall endeavor to speak on the subject of them.

My first experience with Red River Cafe was, as seems appropriate now, years and years ago. I was lost, the place isn’t on Red River Street, and the booths are a little small for my girthy taste. Whether my business that day was fell or not, I have attached dire overtones to it, although the details remain sketchy. I was young, and did not yet understand that this is almost the textbook definition of charm.

The corner table I chose today, for I remain a man of size, and the booths still run a little small.

I have, in my life, always had difficulty identifying charm, usually until the opportunity is so far gone as to make the point completely moot. I have been lucky to be allowed by the universe to take a moment and appreciate the really great place that is the Red River Cafe.

If it will be of any benefit to you, please, allow me to give you what pointers my massive ego and scant wisdom will allow.

Red River Cafe is not a place to go when you just want to grab a quick burger and run. Because the staff is composed of nice people and because the chef is willing, they will indulge you in this desire, but you will be missing the point. It is not a place to go get your breakfast burrito fix and dash to class, although they make a fine pair of burritos, and you do have class in, like, six minutes. This, too, is not the way to enjoy the place.

Budget your time. Allow a solid hour. Sit at a table and read your Chronicle or Statesman or Times or Post or Tribune or Journal or whichever other of the Old Form Papers still exist in this digital age, or if you must, your online datastreaming whatever thingummy, in the morning, and savor your eggs, in all their glorious splendor, or your burger or your pancakes or your taco. Order by placing a blind finger at random on the menu, and rest assured, you will receive food and you will be allowed to observe the cadence of the morning. Sit at your skinny booth and watch the light move across the counter. Drink your coffee and ask for refills. Do not be in a hurry.

Inside the café, taken with pure, uncut leisure

Hurrying your Red River Cafe experience is like telling your grandma you want that goddamn lace tatted right now, or it’s her ass.

Sure, you could, and you’d probably get what you asked for quickly, and because everybody around here is nice, nobody will give you the poke in the snout you deserve, but why do it? Take your time. You don’t often get an opportunity to really enjoy a thing as pedestrian and indulgent as breakfast, nor as simple and transcendent as a place that is well-loved by its clientele. Go ahead. I won’t tell your sharkskin classmates.

Five minutes to twelve

The Preferment as a Game Changer in Breadmaking

I don’t know if you are a breadmaker. I thought I was. I used to make bread, I suppose. It was fine.

I put in flour and water and eggs and oil and bloomed yeast and salt and spices, and kneaded and mixed and formed and proofed and baked, and the finished product was OK. It was bread.

That’s the problem with bread, really. It touches a place in our shared biological vocabulary. It speaks to comfort and wholesomeness, and it reminds us of home, even if we came from a generation of TV dinners and gin.

But that recipe up there, that isn’t bread. Bread has four ingredients, and they are really enough. Flour, salt, water and yeast. Which is kind of like saying, cars are just steel, rubber and a computer thing. Sure, it’s true, but the way you slap them together makes all the difference in the world.

Today, I shall address what little I have learned about the world of the preferment.

Under my older method, I did a thing called “blooming” my yeast, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary. I would put the yeast in the water, often with a little sugar or flour, and let it come to life, bubbling and roiling, usually until it burned out and died. I used far too much yeast, and the product I produced was uneven, although edible.

If you take that concept of the “bloom” and simplify it, then take it out to its extreme, you get a preferment. This will often produce a substance called Poolish or biga. I am sure that there is a difference, but I am still unschooled in its nature.

Part one:

Combine one quarter teaspoon of active dry yeast with one pound of water. “Disburse” the yeast into the water. Add one pound of flour. Now, the hard part is done. You should wind up with something which could be mistaken for dough, but is not dough. It is, in fact, a bland, yellowish mixture that, if baked, will produce something kind of gross. Cover this sticky slurry with plastic wrap, and place in a cool, out-of-the-way corner.

Now, wait 12 to 16 hours.

You heard me. Let that sit, unrefrigerated, for 12 to 16 hours. Won’t it get nasty? A little, yeah, but it’s covered, and you didn’t put any fat in it, so it should be safe. You’ll know it’s ready, because it will bubble crazily, and rise into a dome. Once the dome falls, the preferment is too far gone. It’s still usable, but it will produce an odd, beery product. This isn’t always bad, but it’s not the best, either.

What does this do, this sort of souring of the dough? There are two really great effects to be had. It will produce flavors you don’t get with quicker breads. It approaches, but does not equal, the cool weirdness available from actually taking a pet sourdough starter and using it to make breads.

The time spent fermenting produces gluten. I was formerly of the opinion that gluten was formed only when bread was whumped sharply by hand or mixer, that it was entirely the product of violent action. I feel that this misconception is relatively common among young breadmakers. It is not so. Time and yeast will produce, frankly, more gluten than you can use. At the end of the fermentation process, the flour-water slurry will have taken on the consistence of old clothes or spiderwebs. It will send tendrils up when you raise the plastic wrap from the bowl. It will be very much pre-bread. It will still taste like paste, because you haven’t added any salt yet.

That can be easily remedied.

Part two:

One more pound of flour, about a tablespoon and a half of yeast, half an ounce of salt and another 7 ounces of water later, and you’re ready to mix and add your poolish. I find that this is a good chance to pull the stuff apart and really play with it a little, but I am fascinated with that kind of thing. Either way, incorporate your previous stuff with your current stuff. This is a good moment to take note: If, when you remove your poolish from its bowl, you are greeted with the distinct smell of beer, you left it a little longer. If you are confronted with library paste, you either didn’t leave it long enough, or maybe let it get too cold and should have let it grow a little longer. It’s an art, more than a science, but you want to get the stuff to the point that it will be tasty and stringy, but not too tasty or stringy.

The nice thing about this, though, is that your final dough will cover a surprising amount of beery flavor, so don’t panic too hard. You’ll be cooking this. Unless it’s started to grow Things Not Like Bread, you’re probably OK. Remember: if it is green, it is not edible. I’m sorry that doesn’t rhyme, but it is a good thing to remember. Also, if it’s white and fuzzy, it’s gross. And scuzzy? Is that better? Either way, you’ll probably notice if your preferment has gone too long.

Now, you’ve got a slightly sticky mess. Cover this bowl with plastic again, and put it in a cool place for, yes, another six hours. Four to six, I suppose. Deflate it at about one and at about three hours.

Deflate? You mean punch down, right?

No. Punching down isn’t quite right. Fold the dough. Get out the biggest of the bubbles, but don’t punch. Remove the dough to a floured surface and fold gently. This will have two potential effects. It will remove the bubbles, and it will generate a little bit of layering to the dough. No, that layering might not last once you shape the dough, but it can’t hurt, at least in my piddly little experience.

At the end of this latest, or “bench” ferment, take the dough out of the bowl. It will be glutenous and kind of sticky, and, depending on the product you desire at project’s end, you can work it as much or as little as you like. If you beat the hell out of it, you will end up with some bready rocks. If you just split off three little or two loafish chunks, and form them, you’ll get a more delicate product that will stand up to less abuse after baking. If you’re making bread for peanut-butter, go ahead and work it a little. If you’re making bread for consumption out of hand, or to just lay a slice of cheese over, you don’t really have to work it much. Dig?

Either way, after working or not, take your dough apart into two or three equal parts. I don’t like to shape, precisely, but rather to pull the outside to the bottom, sort of like making a reverse clay bowl. Pull gently and fold the pulled dough under. You should get a smooth result , with a sort of rounded bump on the bottom. Smooth this out a little, and place on either an oiled pan or a non-stick mat (or one of them fancy Baker’s Couche things, if you have one). Allow the bread to relax and rise for about another hour.

Then, into a 375 degree oven it goes (again, unless you’ve got a Couche/board arrangement, in which case, do whatever fancy thing you gotta do, there). It has been my experience that it should take about half an hour to cook through and to develop a pretty substantial crust.

Now, to steam or not to steam.

OK, not now. Now the bread’s done. This is one to think about while the oven’s preheating. Steaming produces a very different crust than failing to do so. Both are good. If you want to try it, put a pan of water on the bottom shelf, and then, just before putting in the bread, toss some water on the bottom shelf. It will make a big, dangerous steam cloud, and probably warp the bottom of your oven, unless you’ve got special equipment. This alone is the reason I don’t steam my oven. This, and the possibility that it will put out my oven flame and fill my house with deadly gas. The decision’s yours. Is the possibility that you might die worth a really outstanding crust? I say no. I say, bread is good. It’s your call.

Is there a safe alternative? Sure. Put a jelly roll sheet pan on the bottom shelf, and let it preheat with your oven. Throw the water on that, and it will steam up just fine. I mean, if you want to go that route, that’s fine. It’s not really for me, but it’s fine.

The point is, now you have some bread. You will notice two immediate improvements over not making bread that takes a whole 24 hours. First, the texture is awesome. It is markedly improved, and much more pleasing than its younger cousin. Second, the flavor is different. Is it better? I say so, but I’m also a fan of the Substance Known as Sourdough. This is an easy way to suggest it without all that pesky work, and is the only way I personally know to produce Ciabatta, but not with this recipe. That’s another time, and another set of ratios.

Serrano’s Symphony Square on Red River

Yes, but what about the food?

linq: Serrano’s

Symphony Square is a sort of combination of two places, right on Waller Creek, off Red River and the sort of 11th or 12th street that plagues Austin. There is, there on Symphony Square, a building which seems affiliated with the Austin Symphony Orchestra and Perloo Union, at least based on its prominent signs stating same, and an installment of Local/Regional Chain Serrano’s.

I am not a fan, as a rule, of Waller Creek. It is not an ugly stretch of water, as a whole, but the part I see daily is where it intersects with our friend Sixth Street, and it is difficult to describe this quotidian view without using words like “cesspool” and “gross.” The Creek running, as it does, from North to South, the stretch immediately north of my daily rounds is pretty nice. Care has been and continues to be put into keeping the area pleasant, and the bit that flows near Symphony Square is certainly of this nicer character.

We were in Serrano’s for something fewer than five minutes. The view I had of the interior suggested that this was the correct amount of time to spend there. The patio outside, though, demanded lingering. The weather being wonderful, we sat at a little table and took in the Lunch Special while two doves, a grackle and a sparrow (we decided) went about bird business across the tiered stone steps that lead down to the creek on the Restaurant side. At the creek, they face a small but very compelling stage with a tiny balcony some ten feet above and to the right, and a picturesque stone bridge. A sign on the structure suggests that this area has been standing there, compelling viewers to wonder about the musical possibilities of a little Water Music since the late 1970s. It goes on to dedicate it to two driving founders of the ASOPU, and their dreams that made this little refinement of modern life possible.

I believe the consensus of the LNB staff present there that day was a general agreement.

We discussed a progression of logic and memetics as regards the evolution of ideas, and a suggestion of a theory of knowledge tangential to these, but still prenatal and gravid with the suggestion of future usefulness. We discussed a South American bird which makes a sound and vibration like a Cellular Telephone, and which has adapted to hiding in the purses of South American residents, and to a diet composed entirely of ossified gum and hairy mints. We spoke on the subject of the compulsions suggested by that little stage and the balcony above, and on the general pleasantness of the day and of the setting.

There was, as there so often is, food, I guess.

The food did not lodge in my mind in quite the way that the setting managed to. I think I had something with chicken. I think the day involved a burrito, but that it was not my burrito. I remember this, mainly, because I remember the look in the Grackle’s face as we considered advising the server to keep handy the remainder of the Donkey Smothered in Cheese, should hunger so dictate.

And we handled our obligations and still sat, soaking in the cool day, between rains, in the shade of the creek trees, as the dervish birds whiled away the afternoon at doubtless important tasks.

One Very Hot Chili out of a Seemingly Incongruous String of Them

The Frisco Nighthawk

A Facelift, New Digs, Still a Place You Should Go

linq: The Frisco

My first experience with the Frisco was several years ago. I was involved in a theater production at a little theater place next door, and between acts we would sneak over and buy sodas, and sneak them backstage. The Frisco’s building is now yet another pharmacy, of the type found by the dozens in almost every city across the country. When I saw that the place was closing, I was glad that I had started attending semi-irregularly, and had wrung as much joy out of it as I had. Naturally, there are those who have derived decades more than I had, but I did not feel cheated, just that I wished they would open up in a larger place, maybe a mile up the road.

Imagine my surprise, then, when they filled the hole that Curras left, right up the street.

The place is the same, relatively, although they had a little rough patch just after they opened. The fare is fine, and they will bring you chopped steak and boiled vegetables on a plate. I mean, that’s why you go there, right? You want chopped steak or a fine burger, or, if you’re awake early, something to break fast, you head on in and enjoy the comfort of the new place.

No, to be honest. That’s not why you go, and we both know it. Do I have to enumerate the wonders? Let me name just two. They are Strawberry and Icebox Chocolate. The whipped cream is an inch thick and the filling is creamy and wonderful. Words being worth, as they are, one one-thousandth of a picture, I will save you the trouble and let James (of whom I am the Dad, as per my nom de écran) explain.

The point, as it so often is, is pie.

One daily vegetable special that we’re out of, of eight daily vegetable specials.

El Sol Y La Luna

Cerrado del dia solo la Luna

linq: El Sol Y La Luna, Austin

The problem with playing competitive sports against oneself, really, is that it is easy to lob oneself a softball, particularly in Early Innings. This being, as it were, still prior to the halfway point of the game, or some equally tortured sports metaphor, we have lobbed fat ones across the plate with our early selections.

Maybe I should avoid baseball references. Perhaps they are impolitic, this being March.

El Sol Y La Luna on 6th is an establishment with which I am familiar, my having eaten there on more than one occasion. The difficulty, really, is approaching it with fresh eyes, even as I go there yet again, trying to think of something interesting to say about it. How about this: the food is good, and the place has a nice feel to it.

That’s easy. Maybe it’s too easy. Maybe you want more than that. I can respect that. I mean, you pay your dime, you take your turn, and at the end of the day, you hope you have an idea whether you want to eat at a place or not, right?

OK, well, El Sol Y La Luna is a place where you can get tasty food. The menu is not particularly challenging, containing as it does only tried and tasty items which are quite up front on their contents. The enchiladas are tasty. The tamales are fine and dandy. The soup is soup. I’ve been fond of the “Healthy Lunch” for some time, even before I decided I needed to watch my diet, which is my current, arguably unfortunate, state. The Lunch is a simple arrangement of avocado, chicken, beans and vegetables that will satisfy admirably while being as relatively healthy as one can order without having to be pretentious and asking for a Salad with No Fun Stuff On.

You don’t want salad. I respect that. I don’t like asking for salad anywhere but Kerbey, and there only because they will bring me a bowl of raw spinach without too much fuss. I love spinach, and I am unashamed of the fact, but it remains beside the point.

The point is, simply, that for a place which has proved thus far devoid of pie, El Sol Y La Luna nonetheless acquits itself toothsomely.

Four Chips Up, Two Left

Texas Embassy

I love what you’ve… done with your hair?

Linq:  Texas Embassy

You know that friend? The one who took that lifestyle choice that you couldn’t exactly get behind, but you really, really wanted to be supportive anyway? Maybe it was a political shift that put them at odds with your particular demographic. Maybe it was a new mode of dress and speech that makes you feel uneasy in public. Maybe it was a change in religion that makes it difficult to be a human nearby. Maybe they gave up animal products and have to harass every member of every staff of every store you go into, so as to make sure that none of the neckties worn by the lunching execs are silk because that’s cruel to worms.

That’s how it feels, going in to Texas Embassy.

In that location once lived our friend, Habana Calle 6. We got along fine, and we’d drop in from time to time because Habana Calle 6 was a bunch of fun. We could always get plantains, and Pulled Pork and taro, and then laugh about how funny it was that Habana Calle 6 served sauce called Mojo sauce (until it came and we were reminded of precisely why it was so called and sung it praises loud and long). We could listen to the music and imagine that we were in the far-away land of South Congress, surrounded by the exotic trees of the Great Outdoors nursery, and the drifting sounds of people shopping for twee crap up on the North End of the So Co, all while enjoying what I consider to be one of the finer patios in Austin Downtown Waller Creek faux-Riverwalk Dining.

And then, one day, began a remodel. Things changed. The tunnel leading over to the dance club was open only sporadically. Then, the sign changed. Habana Calle 6 started insisting on being called Texas Embassy, and stopped serving half the menu, for “reasons.” Then, the menu changed entirely. The food became distinctly different. Fried chicken and relative steak ruled the bill of fare. I’ll admit, their fried chicken wasn’t bad, but it smacked of the amateur and the nouveau gras. This chicken wasn’t quite right. No elderly relative, real or fictitious, had given this recipe to anyone, no secret herbs were included, no mystery surrounded any part of the chicken, bread or mustard-based dippin’ sause. This was food to be consumed nearly unconsciously while devouring The Game took up the prime spot in the brain. Nothing to complain about, mind you, but nothing to write home about either (hi, Mom!).

We entered their mysterious confines twice. The chairs were the same. The waitstaff, aside from some curiously callipygian costume changes, was the same. The music changed, to the point that each part of the restaurant played a different kind of generic boilerplate Sports Bar music, each insulated from the rest, giving it the Frankenstein quality of being four or five different sports bars that had a large, weird, bastard child who happened, quite by accident, to look kind of like our old friend.

We went back today with a duplicitous goal in mind. I suggested it because I wanted this to be fresh in my mind as I dissected the corpse of our bud, Habana Calle 6, or, as he seems now to insist he be called, The Texas Embassy.

We sat down, and I looked at the menu, and there, in bold, beautiful letters, set out in the carefully familiar font, was the ghost of that wonderful Habana menu. That old Cuban Spanish floated up and kissed my eyelids, and I shed a gleeful tear at the sight of the familiar favorites.

Someone heard my prayers, and the ghost of Habana Calle 6 seems to be haunting this new Texas Embassy. That, or, I suppose, they tired of being asked for the Ropa Vieja when they had stopped its production. And so, the menu lives on.

If you get a chance, and you happen to be there on a Habana night, try anything with the Mojo Sauce on it, particularly the fried taro with same. You cannot go wrong. Their house dressing has a little bit of that magic snuck into it, making even their salads (you can get lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and your choice of avocado or not) a thing of beauty. The old place seems to be living, in spite of the sign. I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to when or why the menu changes, but I don’t care. There were plantains. There was Mojo sauce. My afternoon was beautiful.

Hare Rama out of Wo0OOoohSpooky.

Brick Oven Restaurant on 12th Street and Red River

Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been A Franchise of the Communist Party?

Linq: Brick Oven

As an alumnus of Book People, an Austin Establishment which doubles as an Institution, I have been given strong opinions regarding the legitimacy of chain stores in re their being worth my time to have opinions regarding, which sounds like it avoids ending with a preposition, but does not. The general opinion of the Book People management and staff, at least the party line, is that Chain Stores, to coin a phrase, Suck. This opinion is usually reserved for use against a particular rival book store chain, but it is a broad thought pattern, and it is difficult for a thinking person to spend much time working for Book People and fail to acquire at least some of this attitude. Thus, the question arose as to whether we should review, for example, a chain restaurant, on this web page. Should this be reserved for thoughts about Local Establishments alone?

JackHare and I had a basic disagreement about this, one which was easily resolved. He told me I was wrong, and I knew that this was the case, and so agreed quickly. This is not a collection of thoughts about Austin Originals, really. I will certainly endeavor to include as many as I feel appropriate, and I will always have a leaning in my heart toward them, but there is no reason why any purveyor of food should be verboten from these pages or from being thought about in print by us.

That said, I am puzzled by this restaurant.

There seems to be some distinction between this particular instance (and its two sisters) of the Brick Oven, and the David’s Original Brick Oven, which is on 35th street, and, you may notice, not listed on the web page which does include the one at which we dined, the one on 12th Street and Red River. Then, to complicate matters, the Brick Oven Headquarters, to whom one would write if one were interested, for example, in opening a location, is in Washington.

This bewilderment aside, the food is what one would expect, in a general sense, of an unspecialized Italian-type Restaurant in Texas. The cheese is plentiful. The meats are present. The red sauce seems to find its way into most orifices of most dishes. The salads are perfunctory, almost as if the jealous A-List cheese jealously keep the meager greens looking cheap and unprofessional, just to keep them off the marquis. The soup isn’t bad, but isn’t really anything to write home about. I had the minestrone and salad. Jack had something resembling cheese in a dish, which, he informed me, contained chicken as well, and had the word formagio in the name.

For desert, there is Cake, pie’s sad and neigh-useless cousin from the lowlands, the one whom everyone seems to love in spite of pie’s having all the talent, and cake having only more… prurient endowments.

From not-bad soup to regular-old cake, the place provides what you’d expect, without exception, top to bottom. Gosh. That sounds more negative than I mean it to, but the fact is, you don’t go to a place like the Brick Oven Restaurant’s 12th Street and Red River Location, a special instance from any point of view, and expect their local chef to produce you a masterpiece unique to the moment. You would go there because, if my experience is any indicator, you want a ramekin with cheese and noodles and some combination of white and red sauces, gooey and necessitating care so as not to drip on your tie.

Cinque formaggi di milioni

Blue Star Cafeteria

Blue Stars Fell on Allandale

linq: Blue Star

It is difficult in life, being as I am a product of the American Public School System, not to be put off by eating houses who choose to self-identify as ‘cafeteria.’ It is a challenge to walk through the doors of such places, much less to sit and order, and to enjoy whatever fare is provided. Whether you are a fan or foe, apologist or apothecary, feelings and opinions on cafeterias run strong and deep.

The Blue Star Cafeteria on Burnet is reminiscent of the extinct kind of cafeteria, a pleasant place where dwells a druggist and a jerk, and where one would not be surprised to learn could be obtained a passable Grilled Cheese on White. The Blue Star’s grilled cheese is, unsurprisingly, passable, even to the point of being enjoyable, and warrants a mention in a paragraph below, one about warm Family memories. Their meatloaf sandwich is downright good. Their cornflake chicken is crunchy and fresh and served with the right kind of mustard with the right kind of heat behind it. You won’t get a weaselly mustard here, unless you ask for it by name, and demand that they cut your mustard with something blasé and watery. But here I digress.

And again.

In my house, “Growing Up,” there existed a sandwich which bore a name. In most houses, sandwiches, I am lead to believe, are known by their ingredients rather than their status. In my house, this sandwich was called The Usual. The Usual, properly constructed, is a toasted cheese sandwich with mayonnaise and tomato on flatbread which is grilled. This is to be said in a single breath without pause. Flatbread, in this case, does not mean some Fern pita-type bread, but bread which came from a store and is sliced, flat and even. Flatbread is meant to differentiate between this and Home Made bread. I know, and before you raise a great hew and cry, we have, most of us, learned our lesson, those who used to specify Flatbread, and almost to a man, have learned the gentle art of creating the Staff of Life. It is this sandwich which, admittedly with the odd refinement, Blue Star does well.

On the occasion of our visit to the Blue Star, I chose not to partake in any of the above mentioned choices, instead sampling from the Brunch Menu, it being Saturday between about 10 and 4. The Marbled Rye with bacon, spinach and egg, topped with a Goat Cheese which may well have been Chèvre, and served with aged Gouda Grits were easily enjoyed and, if this is the most important thing to you, ample. The Open Faced Egg Sandwich, as it is called, does not come close to replacing The Usual in our hearts and minds, but I enjoyed it thoroughly in any case.

But all this, of course, is dross. As I have said before and shall undoubtedly say again, the food is but a prelude to the actual, wonderful symphony which follows. And what follows is a Toccata and Fugue known by the one, true name of God.

Pie.

So I inflate the value of pie. For this, you pay nothing, and so you receive my digressions on the favorite of all deserts. Need I say more? Certainly I do.

Pie.

My original brush with the Blue Star was because of the direction of a culinarily-minded friend’s suggestion that pie might there be found, and indeed it was, and still is. Their selection is not staggering. Their choices of flavor are not bizarre. Their pie is simple and wonderful, and I don’t doubt that you could get ice cream or something on it, if you roll like that.

Remember. Blue Star: A Source of Fine Pie in a Town where Pie is Valuable.

Two pantsless History tests out of ten.