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.

Blue Dahlia Bistro

The Five Soups You Meet in Heaven

linq: Dahlia Bleu

If you were to compile a list of the five finest soups ever consumed by human-kind, those which improved lives and created strength where none existed, if you were to rank soups from best to worst, unmercifully and without regard for source, only content, Blue Dahlia Bistro on 11th would be a fine place to sit and eat while you did it.

The fare is fresh, and the atmosphere is pleasant inside. They sport an apron of relaxed tables in front and a small garden patio to the rear. Inside, the place practically bustles. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it does, indeed bustle. It bustles. Blue Dahlia bustles like a Victorian dress. Movement is apparent. Life is happening there.

And life walks past the front. The area of 11th street is pleasant, and has been recently repaved, at least mainly. There are a few old Austin landmarks still poking through the dentifrice of gentrification, and although I am one of the useless who decries their doom but has not sampled their wares, I strive often to branch out to them. I really do. Either way, it gladdens me to see them shining out of a new street’s growth, even as I commit the sin of hypocrisy by voting only with my mouth.

The food at Blue Dahlia hovers at the fresh side of human consumption. The vegetable matter is crisp and tasty, and the soups have been different at my every dining experience. There is a French quality to the food, without ever quite being daunting to order. If the word “Tartine” does not scare you, after you learn that it is a sandwich, you will find that you can order with either confidence or abandon, as the whim strikes you.

I have found that Blue Dahlia puts me strongly in the mood, hours after my visits, for a small and simple omelette with just a hint of salt and pepper, cooked slowly in a six-inch pan until fluffy and delicate, and topped with a single line of fine mustard. There is no logic for this urge, so far as I know, but that particular dish finds its way into the corners of my mind after Blue Dahlia enters my body. A puzzle, I suppose, but at least it is an itch easily scratched.

2 Cornichon and assorted Celery out of a Crudité platter

Blue Dahlia Bistro

Time to Play ‘Bistro or Supervillain?’

I can’t help it; at least I admit to my obsessions, and since the Blue Dahlia does not remind me of Disneyland, it must therefore bring to my mind an excellent name for a supervillain, or possibly for a glamourous international jewel thief — as well, of course, as evoking the infamous Black Dahlia murder of 1947, an association made all the less fortunate by the bistro’s proximity to the same funereal bleakscape that houses the previously reviewed Hoover’s.

To most Austinians, the phrase ‘downtown, just east of I-35’ does not precisely evoke ‘class’ or ‘upscale’ or even ‘fresh paint’, but don’t tell that to what the lightpost banners announce as the East End Ibiz District: a stretch about three blocks long by one block wide of aggressively modern and shiny architecture with the sort of garish, desperate Austin Is A Sound Investment Dammit gentrification that leads people to use terms like ‘Ibiz’ and ‘SoCo’ with a straight face.  Not that there’s anything wrong with this in and of itself, but a very short walk past any of the East End Ibiz District’s facades leads one to wonder, if the area’s up-marketing takes hold, whether all these dead people all over the neighborhood are going to continue to be able to afford the real estate, or whether we’re going to end up with your basic Poltergeist scenario here.

The Blue Dahlia Bistro sits amid a blue steel and plate glass shopping center entirely too classy to be called a strip mall despite being one, and trades on one of the forms of high-class dining experience that’s been popular with the smart set at least as far back as Puccini — to wit, the dedication of considerable culinary art to creating the impression that one is eating the lunch of a penniless rural French shepherd.

Don’t let all this cranky class consciousness give the impression that I don’t like the place, however; I just have an instinctive rankling to a place that makes me feel as though I were using the wrong fork, even when in fact they only give me one fork and the dish I ordered was finger food anyway.  Lunch at the Blue Dahlia was in fact a very pleasant experience and the food quite good, and less expensive than the number of French words in the menu might lead one to expect.

The Dahlia has a very nice back patio, not overly large, but not cramped with tight-packed tables in the manner of most coffee-shop patios either.  The weather on the day we visited was very nice, which the bistro can hardly take credit for, but the artful arrangement of overhead canopies and unobtrusive space-heaters around the patio seem well equipped to make it a pleasant dining space in nearly any weather.  After taking our seat, we were carefully inspected by a small calico cat who walked up, sat down a couple feet away, and watched us for about a minute with evident displeasure before walking away again.  Fortunately, they served us despite the disapproval of the cat, but it was a close thing.

I had the meat and cheese platter, one of the more enthusiastically rustic dishes, to the extent that in addition to being arrayed on a bed of mixed lettuce, it was served on a slab of grey stone rather than a plate.  The simple but filling assortment of meats and cheeses, along with olives and small spicy pickles, offered two standout surprises: the mustard, which looked like a creamy dijon but turned out to be much stronger than expected, pungent with horseradish or possibly Chinese mustard; and in the bread basket, a delightful cranberry-walnut bread that would have been suited as a dessert in itself.  James’ Dad also reports that the cranberry-walnut bread works well with a tiny dab of the mustard and some of the balsamic vinegar found alongside the olive oil on each table, but I only tried it with butter.   The bread assortment also included segments of French bread which were enhanced more than I would have expected by the addition of sesame seeds to the crust.  Rarely is a basket of assorted breads a memorable highlight of a restaurant’s offerings, but the Blue Dahlia makes a very impressive production of it.

J’s. D. had the soup special du jour, a duck and sausage stew, which impressed him enough to order a second cup to go before we departed; though I didn’t try it, it smelled magnificent and I’m sure he shall elucidate you further to its charms in his own review of the Dahlia.

Good food, excellent atmosphere and presentation, and service that passes my rather minimal standard of expectation (prompt drink refills and no active surliness) — so, despite a lingering resentment for the Austintatious flavor of the immediate neighborhood, I can see no reason not to give the Blue Dahlia Bistro a full cinque etoiles.

Pretzel Log, part I

“I’m a pretty good pretzeler.”
— from the last words of ‘Dutch’ Schultz

This quest for the secrets of soft pretzels began more or less by chance: I wanted to bake something to eat that same night, and soft pretzels happened to be the first thing that struck my eye as a bread product which I enjoy and which wouldn’t take any kind of overnight starter or sponge.  Little did I suspect that while making acceptable crispy pretzels is relatively simple, making soft pretzels appears to involve some more subtle art.  As James’ Dad points out, what I’m searching for is the making of pretzels that are more akin to a bagel in consistency; whether this turns out to be a matter of recipe, preparation, or both is the riddle which the Pretzel Log seeks to unravel.

For the first entry in this series, I’m going to  be using a recipe which I know doesn’t quite work — it produces crunchy pretzels which, although nice, can’t be described as soft.  I’ve made several batches of these already and they’ve worked out pretty well for what they are; today I’ll be making another batch and documenting my progress as I go, to create a record of what I’m doing already, for reference as I proceed to experiment with other recipes and methods.

This recipe I tried first simply because it was the first one I found after Googling ‘soft pretzel recipe’ that didn’t call for any ingredients I didn’t have.  It’s called ‘Ballpark Pretzels‘, submitted by ‘Flora’ of Columbus, OH, on the site CDKitchen.com.  Strictly speaking, though, I haven’t used exactly this recipe at all — while I was mixing the first batch, the dough was too dry, and instead of adding more liquid, I decided to add two teaspoons of softened butter instead, which worked so well that I’ve made this substitution in every batch since (I was amused to learn later that this inclusion of butter matches my variation up with Alton Brown’s soft pretzel recipe).

My version of the Ballpark Pretzel recipe will be posted under LNB’s Recipe section as soon as I get around to writing it up.  This post is going to be a running description of the pretzelry process as I make today’s batch.

So, first things first: 1&1/4 cups warm water, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 tablespoon active dry yeast combined in a mixing bowl and allowed to stand for fifteen minutes or so, until foamy.  One thing that does distinguish today’s effort from previous batches is that I now have in my possession a set of measuring spoons, which reveals right off the bat that I’ve been consistently underestimating the volume of a tablespoon and a teaspoon — not by very much, but I’ve definitely been underdoing ingredients measured by spoonfuls.  So we’ll see what difference that makes.

While that’s sitting and fermenting, I’ll be finishing up the dishes and cleaning off the counterspace for rolling pretzels later, and also putting the two tbsp. block of butter in a Pyrex measuring cup near, but not on, a lit oven burner to soften.  I’ll also be watching Naked Gun 33 1/3 on Hulu, but that probably doesn’t have any direct impact on the pretzels.

(Later – a bit more than fifteen minutes) The extra yeast has certainly made a difference in the behaviour of the ‘foamy soup’ stage — thicker and sludgier, whereas previously it had been a bit more like the head on a pint of Guiness.  The next step is to mix in 1&1/2 teaspoons of salt and half the flour (2 cups) to make a dough, then turn that out onto a floured surface and knead in the remaining 2 cups of flour and the softened butter.

All right, with the dough kneaded into a firm but slightly sticky ball, I’ve put it into an oiled bowl and turned the ball over to make sure the whole thing is oiled, then covered the bowl tightly with plastic wrap.  Now for another half hour or so of waiting, while the dough rises to about twice its current volume.

(Still later, about half an hour) Okay, now with the dough good and risen, here comes the effort-intensive part: splitting the dough into twelve balls, rolling them into pretzels, boiling them in a mixture of water and baking soda, and then baking them.

The boiling part is probably the part that makes the most difference in the end texture, I’m guessing.  The instructions in the Ballpark recipe helpfully say to boil each pretzel ‘until it floats’, which would be a more useful instruction if they didn’t float to start with.  Approximately 30 seconds of boiling seems to be the consensus among several recipes.

The Ballpark recipe also states that, after being boiled and salted, the pretzels should be allowed to rise for another five minutes before baking, a suggestion that varies from recipe to recipe (others recommend letting them rise before boiling, or omit any further rising entirely).  Since it takes far more than five minutes to roll and boil a full tray of pretzels, I’m not entirely sure how to manage this step, so I’m going to let them rise for just a couple of minutes before putting the tray in the oven and see whether there’s much difference, in the end, between the ones that were boiled first and the last to go on the tray.

Final update to come when the pretzels are baked, and their quality assessed.

(Approx. 1 1/2 hours later) Okay, review time.  The pretzels were baked on two cookie sheets, in batches of six; since the second six were allowed to stand while the first baked, they got more time to rise before baking.  This doesn’t seem to have affected their size any, but they did emerge generally softer and with a chewier crust.  On the first tray, there doesn’t seem to be any notable difference between the first pretzel boiled and the last, so overall, it seems that allowing them to rise after boiling is a good idea, but it needs around fifteen or twenty minutes rather than five.

With both trays, I took them from the oven when they had reached a much lighter brown than any previous batches, which certainly contributes to a softer interior; however, it’s still the case that the bottom side gets crispy long before the topside is even mildly browned.  On the whole, both trays have turned out a little softer and chewier than previous batches, which may be due to the increased proportion of yeast, the shorter baking time, or both.  However, they still don’t have a genuine soft-pretzel texture — the second, more risen tray, although softer, does not have a very distinct crust and may simply be slightly undercooked.

They are delicious, mind you, but they don’t quite have that distinctive pretzel-y flavor, and the texture, although nicely crisp on the bottom, is still not quite what I’m aiming for.  Today’s batch, however, was made simply as an ‘official’ start to this blog, to make a record of where I’m starting from; future editions of the Pretzel Log will feature more deliberate experiments with assorted variables, in pursuit of the elusive Perfect Soft Pretzel.  Stay twisted!

Genuine Joe’s Coffeehouse

Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ Endust, sippin’ on Genuine Joe’s.

Linq: Joe’s

My experience at Genuine Joe’s is ruined. It will never be the same. If I were one of those sappy types who sighs in text, I might very well insert one here. You’ll have to imagine it, though, because I’m not one of them.

The building is a converted house. It runs very long, and seats plenty, which is a pleasant change. Parking is ample. The patio is well-appointed and open. Even when the place is full of children, as today, the noise level is not overpowering. Their physical plant is absolutely acceptable.

The iced black tea is fresh, today, with a floral aroma that speaks to proper brewing. The flavor of the tea is allowed to exist, in spite of its handling by humans. It is a frankly delicate affair, and it holds up to slow sipping. I’m not an adorner of beverages, but my palate suggests that it might benefit from the judicious application of honey or sugar, and even stand up to their artificial cousins.

The coffee is Austin coffee. This is a tetchy subject, and I don’t want to get deeply into it here, but it’s what you get when you order coffee here in town. It’s black as hell and brewed too strong and too hot, and it comes out tasting like Austin coffee. My theory is that, in Austin, we do not like coffee, we like coffee beverages with cream and sugar. I have yet to be proven decisively wrong by a coffee shop or restaurant experience. Take it for what it is: a snobbish opinion from a budding coffee snob.

Their selection of baked goods is external and unremarkable. It’s fresh, or it has been every time I’ve been here, and that is several times. Will this be the final time? Maybe.

Because, my experience here has become polluted, as experiences inevitably do. By a plate.

I tried to take a picture, but it does not appear in photographs. I tried to reassemble it in a popular photo program, but the horror does not, as horror so often does not, translate. It is a plate, depicting a cartoony coffee pot. In no fewer than seven different fonts is the phrase (the quotation marks are on the plate) “The PERKS are BEST here”

I shudder at the thought. Each word, and the quotation marks in an additional two. Yick.

The rest of the wall hangings, although often puzzling, are not so troubling to the soul. The half board game on the wall of the sitting room, off the main, is nifty but useless, hanging as it does cockeyed on the wall. The Gulf G in the main room over the fireplace is a fine touch, hanging as it does, in the classic pose, rampant over three green frogs bearing the same initial.

But that plate, it ruins the whole experience for me. I hate to be in the room with it, and now that I’ve seen it, I can’t remove it from the edge of my vision, following and taunting me throughout my experience. Ah, well.

24% “Apple’s”, 36% “Orange’s”

Hoover’s Cooking

Hoover’s Doesn’t Suck

And with that line out of the way, I’m going to spend less time on the food than on the restaurant itself, beginning with a couple of things that are not remotely the fault of Hoover’s and entirely unfair to bring up at all.  The first of these would be the physical establishment itself, located in a sort of strip-mall-esque shopping center; everything about the tone and mood of the place screams that it ought to be located in something more like a, if not actually an old refurbished, barn, but unfortunately they’re stuck with a building more evocative of a former Payless Shoes.

The other unfair quibble is that the neighborhood around it is dominated — visually and seemingly spiritually — by the Texas State Cemetery, a necropolitan sprawl occupying several city blocks, not all of them contiguous, so that when you think you’ve passed the boneyard, another arm or annex suddenly turns up around the corner.   Between blocks of tombstone residency are weathered, older, Chainsaw-evocative homes presumably for the living, and an unsurprising prolificacy of memorial carvers and mortuary services, giving the experience of driving around looking for the place an inevitably funereal feel difficult to shake off on arrival.

Once inside, though — and into the realm of things which are actually related to the eatery under consideration — the down-home charm is immediately, even aggressively apparent.  From the six-pack condiment holders, including a jar of pickled peppers, to the brown butcher paper covering the tables in lieu of placemats and creating the impression that the foodservice might not involve plates, Hoover’s would like to cheerfully pin your shoulders to the floor and scream in your face that this is homestyle, SOUTHERN food dammit.

But at least they deliver on that.  Unlike any number of other places in Austin, Hoover’s offers what they offer without trying to force a broadened palate upon us provincial Philistines — just solid, honest food of the type where the only problem is, seven or eight hours later you’re hungry again.

About the service I can’t comment, since the place was full near to capacity at the time we visited and I could hear behind me the steady drone of a manager getting on the servers’ asses, in that managerial way that helpfully slows the servers down and lowers their inclination to be friendly, so I’m driven to overlook any lapses of service that occurred at that particular hour, only to note that yeah, a couple of lapses did occur.

But none of it detracts in the slightest from the charm of Hoover’s we’re-sure-homemade attitude and the true attraction of the place, excellent homestyle food in decent portions for a reasonable price.  So, four pickled peppers out of five, and a hearty recommendation to check the place out when you’re in a mood for a good no-nonsense lunch or dinner.

Hoover’s Cooking

A Place Whereby People Obtain Food
Linq:Hoover’s

I’m fond of Hoover’s. I know, that’s not a revolutionary opinion, and it’s not one that will start any fires out of spite, either, but I like to say it online and I like that, at least in theory, I am saying it to person or persons who did not have that information prior. Hoover’s is an establishment which can engender fondness.

Whew. Feels good to get out of that closet, let me tell you.

When I go to Hoover’s, I am not shy about ordering catfish. I’ve worked my way slowly around the menu from the chicken fried steak to the meatloaf, and I wind up back at catfish, because, really, the entree is kind of fungible. They make fine and tasty food which is precisely what you order. You will not be surprised. You will not order meatloaf and get a reduction of escargot au vin on a bed of crème anglaise. If you want adventure, go elsewhere. If you want solid food, that’s fine, but you go to Hoover’s for the side dishes.

I don’t, but you can. At any given moment, they offer between eight and twenty side dishes, any one of which will warm you to your cockles (if you roll like that) and complete your dish. There is no magic formula, although they try to suggest things, but you don’t need to be told that you want their macaroni & cheese. You know this, deep in your heart, and no coercion from an inanimate menu-type object will convince you more. Go ahead, get any one of them, and you’ll be happy. I won’t. I don’t roll like that. My favorite of the sides oscillates between the squash, because I never get enough squash, and the mustard greens, which rate their own paragraph.

The mustard greens are wonderful. They come in a little bowl, chopped all to hell and cooked in a sweet liquid that hovers among the flowers and tinkles raindrops of mildly-sweet greens over the fairy-flecked ground, swinging through the treetops of the (in my case) catfish filet and slamming, echoing, off the broccoli jungle.

I really dig the mustard greens, but they aren’t why I keep coming back.

I come back because I am one of the sad few who noticed that, in this world, the supply of really good pie is dwindling. If you don’t make it your damn self, and I do from time to time, you can get pretty hard pressed to obtain even a single slice of the wonderful stuff, unless you go to Hoover’s and ask the right question on the right day. That question is “what kind of pie do you have,” and that day is the one upon which the answer includes the words “sweet” and “potato.”

Need I continue? Must I extoll the virtues of the tight slabs of orange wonder dolled out by Hoover’s on a regular basis? Do you really need to be told that a fine pie hides behind the famously comfortable food at Hoover’s? Yeah, you do, and here’s why: Unless you keep the sapphire of the pie in your mind through your entire Hoover’s experience, you will try to save room, and you will fail. It will be a delicious failure, and until you’ve been whisked into the pie via the highway of your fork, you will be unconscious of its allure, but it is there, and now you know, and the rabbit hole goes precisely as deep as a pie.

I’m going to say it again: pie. Pie pie pie pie pie.

4 Grapes out of 7.