The Ultimate Austin Movable Feast
I fantasize from time to time about staging the ultimate Austin movable dinner. You know, one course at each restaurant with a fleet of limos at our disposal as we move for each course. Of course each limo would be stocked with chilled bottles of Yellow Lable Veuve Cliquot! Starter Cocktail This would be the […]
Is Austin Where it Should be on the Ethnic Dining Front?
Could it be that the reason that Austin doesn’t show up on more Top Ten lists for food (as is does on just about every other list these days) is our lack of diversity of ethnic restaurants. And no, Tex Mex doesn’t count. Let’s look at some various cuisines, and analyze our standing on each […]
Perry’s Grows from Houston Butcher Shop to Texas Steakhouse Chain
When Chris Perry was growing up in Houston in the 1980’s, the plan for him was to follow in the path laid out by his father Bob, who had once been the regional manager at Kroeger’s Meat Markets. But a Butcher Shop intervened and soon a second location in Friendswood. And the younger Perry had […]
Austin’s Best Pizzas: Pizza Wars 2013
Welcome to the 7th installment of our annual review of owner-operated central Texas pizza restaurants. We fondly call it Pizza Wars. As many of you may know by now, I grew up in one of the best American pizza cities, New Haven, Ct. Classics like Frank Pepe’s (1925) and Sally’s (1931) both located on Wooster […]
Wild Wood Bakehouse Serves Up Gluten-Free Cuisine Just North of Campus
Joan Griffith is one indomitable lady. She’s taken an amazing work ethic, entrepreneurship, and an abundance of knowledge about various foods and turned it into a successful restaurant called Wild Wood Bakehouse just off Guadalupe near 30th (former site of El Greco). Having breakfast with Joan is like attending a crash course in everything you’ve […]
Making Sense of the Lingering Sushi “Substitute” Problem in Austin
I’ve been getting quite a few emails from our readers lately after the recently released results of a two-year national study by non-profit Oceana. Turned out that according to the study, many restaurants and stores across the US were apparently substituting a cheaper fish for the fish they told the customers they were purchasing. Worse […]
The Back Story at Soto: Chef Andy and His Family Rock at Lakeline Mall
One of the more dynamic openings in North Austin has to be the recent introduction of Chef Andy Okamoto’s Soto restaurant to Lakeline Mall. Andy’s passions for cooking date back to his 10th birthday where he worked at his uncle’s restaurant in Kyoto, Japan. He moved to Boston several years later and worked at the […]
Judging Taste North Austin Unveils Some Delicious Dishes
A couple of days ago I was baking in the midday heat at the Domain along with my fellow judges at the Taste North Austin competition. Over 20 restaurants participated and at least for me, there were some pleasant surprises. And the heat only started to bother me about the time the 19th dish arrived. […]
Pizza Wars 2013 Part II: Pieous, the Cave, Winflo and More
It says a lot about the Austin pizza scene that our long running Pizza Wars series now requires two complete installments instead of the few paragraphs that we needed way back when. And that’s good for pizza lovers. Let’s start with some of the newer pizza joints that have come on line. Surprisingly, the Dripping […]
Main Street Grill: Chris Mercer Leads Pioneering RR Bistro into New Era
The wine room at Main Street Grill in Round Rock has a lot of memories for me. When we first tried the restaurant 13 years ago, we had the pleasure to taste our first Monica’s Salad (which is still the most asked for salad) along with a killer Ribeye and a bottle of Caymus in […]
Hao Q and Hao Hao: Brothers and Sisters
The story behind Austin restaurants Hao Hao and Hao Q has many interesting layers to it. It began with brothers Kevin and Young Quach who emigrated to the US from Vietnam. They started at the bottom, washing dishes and bussing at various Asian restaurants, but all the while they were learning how different dishes were […]
The Dog and Duck’s Susan Forrester
You’ve got to admire many things about the Dog and Duck‘s female half, Susan Forrester. First, she is a genuinely nice person free of the hubris that has doomed many business owners over the years. She’s fun to know, and I would she’s imagine fun to work for. You don’t keep an owner-operated enterprise going […]
From India to Austin: Vir Singh and Son Jae
Anyone who has dined at the Star of India on Anderson, the Bombay Grill in Westlake, or the recently opened Royal India on 290W has tasted the dishes of Vir Singh. A farmer in his native India, Singh journeyed to New York and joined a friend at an Indian restaurant. After a few years he […]
From Russia with Love: The Backstory of The Russian House’s Vladamir and Varda
You’d have to really let your imagination fly to come up with a more interesting and ironic story than this one. Austin’s only Russian restaurant’s leading couple have quite a story. Meet Vladamir and Varda of the Russian House. Varda played college basketball at prestigious basketball power Georgetown University. She was drafted off the Russian […]
Pieous is the Culmination of Long-Time Dream for Josh Kaner
I first ran into Josh Kaner several years ago at the HEB in Dripping Springs. He engaged me in a discussion of the quality of Austin pizza, and advised me that it was his goal to open a pizzeria somewhere in the area. Fast forward several years later to the former site of Cartwight’s BBQ […]
