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.