Dining Out
The Best Food In Austin
Beyond the Mexican food and barbecue are restaurants with style and tradition that can hold their own with the best in the state.
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Because it pretends to be more than it is, the Polonaise has incurred the scorn of sophisticated Austinites. By and large this treatment is unjustified. It is expensive, and neither the decor nor the menu (with certain exotic exceptions) is particularly interesting; but there is no place in Austin which serves such a variety of consistently good seafood, and the skillfully-prepared U.S. Prime steaks, especially those accompanied by a sauce, are immensely superior to the monotonous sorts of things one gets at typical Texas steak palaces. What the restaurant lacks is finesse, the confident self-assurance that what comes out of the kitchen is worthy of the guest's expectations, the feeling that something more inspired than a straight-forward commercial transaction is taking place. There is nothing wrong with the Polonaise that a spirit of adventure and a boost in morale wouldn't solve, and the two are probably related.
On our most recent visit (after a ten-minute wait for the menus) the service was good, although somewhat more folksy than one might expect in such a place. A small slice of cold quiche is served gratis as an appetizer with each meal—a nice touch, but how much better it would be if it were warm! The soup du jour, cream of broccoli, was flavorful but had been thickened too much. The onion soup tasted—I swear to God—as if it had been made with Coca Cola; it is one of the strangest sweet-and-steely flavors you will ever encounter, and definitely not to be recommended except as a curiosity. It wasn't very hot, either.
By contrast the salad was respectable and the avocado house dressing delicious. The entrees were outstanding: one, delightful frog legs; the other, Tournedos Henry IV , a filet of exceptional quality, beautifully cooked, with bearnaise and a wine sauce far more delicate than the chausseur at the Inn at Brushy Creek. The accompanying mixed vegetables were deftly seasoned.
The Polonaise shares with the AlpenHof the distinction of having the most intelligent, informed wine service in town, and Norman Baton's collection of bottles is second to none. Our waiter, asked for his suggestions, recommended a St. Julien which was not on the printed list. It proved to be quite a fine bottle, squarely within the price range we had indicated (as at most other Austin restaurants, wine prices at the Polonaise are unconscionably high). Rare indeed is the Austin waiter who has judged any of the wines he sells, much less developed the ability to compare them. This waiter had.
THE OLDEST FINE RESTAURANT IN Austin—and still one of the best—is Green Pastures. Located in a residential South Austin neighborhood, this plantation-style mansion is the closest thing to true Southern hospitality one is likely to find in Central Texas. Despite fires, changing tastes, and rising costs, Green Pastures has stuck to its traditions.
Although the restaurant is open every day, there is no better time to visit Green Pastures than Sunday noon. The Old South buffet lunch served then is an elegant affair, not just an ordinary after-Church cafeteria line. Silver chafing dishes containing freshly-cooked foods are personally supervised by the owner, Ken Koock; they are kept covered when a guest is not actually passing down the line, thus retaining their warmth and dispelling the usual chuckwagon atmosphere that so often blights buffets. Unobtrusive piano music is provided in the background.
A superb milk punch (made with melted ice cream and just the right touch of alcohol) is served to guests as they arrive; refills are of course allowed. The meal itself includes a separate table of cold hors d'oeuvres, along with the main buffet which on a recent visit consisted of Swedish meatballs, an awesome round of rare roast beef, chicken Copenhagen (splendid, freshly-fried chicken seasoned with sage), homemade rolls, a tasteful but not especially exciting array of vegetables, and several wittily decorated cakes and pastries prepared by the restaurant's own pastry chef.
Children are not very much in evidence at the Sunday brunch, but those who come are far more welcome than they are at most fine restaurants; there is even a special dessert for them. The cordial treatment of children is simply one aspect of one of Green Pastures' most appealing attributes: its cheerful service. One never has the feeling that the waiters and serving personnel who handle the brunch are secretly wishing they were still in bed reading the Sunday papers. As one admirer of the scene remarked, "it's so nice to spend six dollars and be treated like a king."
In the evenings, a la carte dinners can be selected from a portable blackboard menu that includes such specialties as breast of chicken over wild rice, rib eye steak in an excellent and plentiful Bordelaise sauce, outstanding curried shrimp, shish kebab, and two or three others. The house salad dressing and homemade cheese appetizer are both quite good. Vegetables are generally too bland; on a recent visit, "squash medley" was closer to squash monotone. The wine cellar contains a number of fine bottles whose very existence is unfortunately obscured by one of the most misleading, uninformative lists anywhere. Once past the grands crus of Bordeaux ("price on request"), the list descends into such descriptions as "St. Emilion" with no year, only a price (in this case, $8.25 for a half bottle). Assistance from the staff was nonexistent on our last visit. If the guest did not know independently that the bottle referred to was actually a 1967 classed growth, he would be hard pressed to find it out.
Nevertheless, the service (apart from the wine) is up to Green Pastures' very high standard, the coffee is some of the best in town, and guests usually leave with the feeling that they have had a very pleasant experience indeed.
Old Vienna is a curiosity among Austin's fine restaurants. People seem either to love it or to hate it. Younger than most (it opened in 1972), it is securely ensconced in a stately old mansion on a residential avenue of faded elegance close to downtown.
There is nothing faded about the decor, however. Sumptuous and plush, it reminds some visitors of imperial Europe at the height of her glories. To others it more nearly resembles what Emperor Franz Josef might have chosen for the boudoir of his mistress. At least this much can be said: you will not soon forget it.
We must confess that, for us at least, Old Vienna is a classic example of a restaurant that places show above substance. This is not to say that its various continental specialties are not worth sampling; they are, and you can enjoy a creditable meal there. But the parts do not add up to a satisfying whole because they often exist more for the sake of appearances than to provide an essential component of dining.
Item: the service. Despite formal attire, mysterious accents and much gliding around, the waiters do not behave as waiters should. On our most recent visit ours departed, crestfallen, when we declined to order cocktails, and we spent the next 15 minutes trying to coax him back. As the food began to arrive, we found that he belonged to the "who gets the—?" school of service.
Item: the food. In principle there is nothing wrong with the food. Almost everything, however, is done to excess, apparently on the theory that if a little bit of, say, salad dressing is a good thing, then a jeroboam of it would be even better and probably a lot more ritzy too, regardless of how soggy the hapless lettuce becomes. Chicken breast with parmesan cheese, a sensible and well-cooked dish, suffered from a surfeit of cheese. A spurious Cordon Bleu made (admittedly) with pork instead of veal was an unsubtle mixture of aggressive flavors. The other entrees fared better: Hungarian goulash was pleasant and reasonably authentic; fillet Eszterhazi was outstanding. The vegetables, however, were bland and soggy, and the garlic fumes from the potatoes were powerful enough to interfere with vision.
Item: the wine. Despite a ten to 20 percent penciled markdown in the listed prices, Old Vienna's wines continue to be overpriced. The list, moreover, is a peculiar one. Hungarian and Austrian wines predominate, harmless enough but ill-suited to the sort of dishes the restaurant serves (and certainly iIl-suited at Bordeaux prices). Withal, the wine is better than the wine service. We selected an Austrian white from the list and, after ordering our food, gave the waiter the name and number of the bottle we had chosen. A dark shadow of panic crossed his face. "What?" he asked. The description was repeated. "Show me," he pleaded, clutching frantically for the wine list and dropping three menus onto the floor. The appropriate area was pointed out. "I only have one on that page," he said with a mixture of sorrow and self-defense. (One could almost hear the ghost of Evelyn Waugh snorting: "I! I! Not only does this man know nothing of these wines, he presumes to be the custodian of them!") Predictably, the wine we had chosen was not the one he had. Rather than pay $7 for a bottle of "Bull's Blood of Eger," we chose to drink iced tea.
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