GUD BLOG: SINGLE POST

Austin Dead Blog: The Finale

Tuesday: On Which We Eat Like Kings

Unquestionably the best meal I’ve had so far was at Congress. My colleague Rachel and I closed out our trip right with three great courses plus some dessert and drinks. After a sweet pea custard with Parmesan foam amuse bouche – sounded kind of showy, but the flavor was all there -  we had our first course: I had a beef tartare with fried oysters, cheese, and black truffle, and Rachel had an arugula salad with beets, grapes, and a ball of burrata cheese. Both were as good as I could imagine, and the presentation was gorgeous. While it’s a little over the top to have specialized plates for virtually every possible food configuration, it’s impossible to deny that the plating induces some awe and head-shaking.

Second course. Veal shortbreads for Rachel and braised oxtail with garlic and chive gnocchi for me. Again, both amazing.  For the main entree, Rachel had two preparations of veal and I had lamb chops over salsify with candied oranges and a cardamom yogurt.

Desserts produced more “wow” moments: I had sweet potato beignets that were fluffy and covered with lightly salted chicory and set aside some pecan brittle and salted butter ice cream. It’s one of the best desserts I’ve maybe ever had. Rachel’s strawberry shortcake was perfectly fine, but it was the Green Chartreuse ice cream with homemade pop rocks that had us in fits. I’m going to try and make the former.

The drinks were so good that they deserve their own post after I’ve experimented with some of them and can try to replicate them for posting, so watch for that. A few of them use some pretty outrageous ingredients — like tamarind gastrique — but they’ll be worth the effort.

It’s hard to even mention lunch with a dinner like that, but I also had lunch at Coreanos, a Korean taco cart that does some awesome stuff. I think the photo kind of speaks for itself, actually. Two bucks a pop, so four dollars total for these delicious bites.

Wednesday: On Which I Get to Sleep in My Own Bed

With SXSW Interactive now completely over, I took the morning before my flight to go walk around the U-Texas campus, which is BEAUTIFUL. Very cohesive, very classic – a little too classic in some cases, namely the Jefferson Davis statue standing near statues of George Washington and Woodrow Wilson.

They also have a great campus art museum – the Blanton Museum – most of which I covered in about an hour. Two hours would be ample time to see the whole thing, I think. Completed in 2003, there’s a contemporary installation piece done in blue acrylic that serves as the centerpiece of the whole building.

We ate lunch at Frank – the artisan hot dog place I’d been to a few nights prior – so Rachel could try it, and while sitting there eating our dogs, Jack White of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, Dead Weather, et cetera walks right by us – no more than a foot away – and ends up hanging out at a table across the room the entire time we were there. He seemed pretty open to the dozen or so people who came over for photos and quick chats and all that, so I found it all the more hilarious that these hoochied-up two girls were literally stalking him while he was in there.

Then we got on a plane and came home. Now I get to go to bed. Thank goodness.

I imagine none of this is terribly interesting to anyone other than myself, for any readers, sorry. But I know that I’ll personally enjoy going back and reading over this in the future, so pardon the self-indulgence!

Posted on 2011.03.16 by Evan Hansen at 11:21 pm
This entry was posted in GUD Blog and tagged travel. Bookmark the permalink.