Food and Drink
Joys in the 'Hood
Remember funky restaurants where you felt at home and the bill didn't break the bank? Here are four new variations on the theme.
Whatever happened to neighborhood restaurants? This question occurred to me the other night when I was sitting in yet another temple of haute cuisine while my waiter held forth on the evening's specials. Halfway through his description of sushi-grade New Zealand bat wing encrusted with free-range frog's eggs, I experienced a flood of longing. I yearned for the obscure little restaurants of yore, off the beaten path, with good chefs and engaging but simple menus, where you could eat a couple of times a month without taking out a second mortgage.
So, feeling simultaneously nostalgic and contrarian, I set out to see if there were, in fact, any good, new, funky restaurants around, the sort of one-chef, one-whisk places that used to pop up all the time in converted storefronts and bungalows. In short, I went searching for today's versions of great old-timers like Austin's East Side Cafe or San Antonio's Liberty Bar. The task was much harder than I had ever imagined. Not only do chefs not stay put long enough to get a following, but the bungalows have been taken over by lawyers' offices and the traditional storefronts are both costly and scarce. Today's neighborhood restaurants are in new strip centers or older, unprepossessing commercial buildings. No cozy nooks there. But if you accept these limitations, you can still find some latter-day neighborhood restaurants. They may not look like they used to, but they still make you feel at ease, feed you well, and don't pick your pocket.
Tim Love is the one in the chef's coat and cowboy hat in Lonesome Dove's tiny kitchen. His wife, Emilie, is the one at the door in the short black dress and turquoise cowboy boots. Five months ago the young couple opened the Dove in Fort Worth's historic Stockyards district, an area mainly known for major-league honky-tonks and Mexican restaurants. From the first week, it was a huge success. When I walked in, I was taken aback by the smart white tablecloths, black napkins, and heavy pewter candlesticks; this didn't look like a neighborhood joint. But finally I decided that the beat-up old building, unplastered brick walls, and worn wood floor helped it make the cut—along with the low markups on wine and the prices (entrées $15 to $26).
Tim Love, who is 28, decided to open his own restaurant—he had cooked in Tennessee, Colorado, Florida, and other states—in the aftermath of the tornado that hit the city last year, which gave him a "seize the day" epiphany. Although most of his experience had been with Southwestern cuisine, most recently at Reata in downtown Fort Worth, he determined that "Western" best fit what he wanted to do. "That gave me the freedom to use all of Texas' ethnic groups," he says. As a result you'll find an Asian dish next to a cowboy dish next to a Mexican dish, with a few Mediterranean classics thrown in for good measure.
But Southwestern has the strongest presence. My quesadilla, for instance, consisted of two flour tortillas sandwiching chunky grilled quail, melted Texas goat cheese, and julienned red bell pepper. My friend's excellent king salmon entrée, though, was cross-cultural with a vengeance. In short order I was spearing bites of his thick, medium-rare filet, crunchily coated with black and white sesame seeds and basking in the juices from the accompanying jalapeño-honey stir-fried vegetables. My tenderloin, at least two inches thick, rare, and marvelously juicy, had been perked up with a salty rub; it was so tasty I didn't even care that it wasn't fork-tender.
Of the two desserts tried, the sautéed banana split with vanilla bean ice cream and hot chocolate sauce was the showstopper, visually at least. My friend liked it so much that he declared a moratorium on chit-chat so he could concentrate on the flavor. It was just as well. I was deep into my silky cappuccino flan in a glaze infused with the brandy and citrus flavors of Tuaca liqueur, a brilliant combination. Sometimes you just have to shut up and eat. 2406 N. Main, Fort Worth (817-740-8810). AE, MC, V.
Greg Gordon is a funny guy. The 34-year-old kitchen veteran of Houston's renowned Daily Review Cafe and owner of La Vista Italian restaurant is doing a stand-up comedy imitation of what must happen in homes across the neighborhood at six o'clock every evening (right before the crowds start to converge on his little trattoria not far from Houston's Galleria). Arms straight out, gaze fixed, he zombie-walks across the room muttering, "La Vista, La Vista." Which might be seen as self-serving if it weren't so true. I know. I was there, back in September, on a couple of those 108- and 109-degree days. At seven-thirty there wasn't an available space in the tiny dining room or at the tables on the sweltering sidewalk or on any of the twenty or so plastic lawn chairs set out in the strip center's parking lot (jokingly referred to by the staff as "the lounge").
What we were all there for was Gordon's homey Italian food, both classic dishes and original ones, at extremely reasonable prices—pastas $8 to $13, entrées $16 to $19. Two minutes after my friend and I sat down, the man at the next table was strolling over and offering to share his bottle of red wine with us (the restaurant sells no alcohol). It's that kind of place. We started with mussels in bianco, then—to sop up the brothy white-wine sauce—ordered a loaf of "oval bread" topped with caramelized onions, pecans, rosemary, garlic, and morsels of fig. Omigod. I could have made a meal of the bread, the mussels, and the house salad.
But this is not a place where you stint, so I went for the fettuccine in cream and Parmesan with a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg, quirky seasoning that worked. My friend had La Vista's rack of lamb with grilled pears and tomatoes, lavished with Gordon's wildly original sauce of Jim Beam, Coca-Cola, and shiitake mushrooms. "How in the world did you come up with this?" I asked him. "Well," he said, looking sheepish, "I was here in the kitchen at two-thirty one morning, cooking for friends and I had a Jim Beam and Coke in my hand." He splashed some in the pan, and a new dish was born.
Of all the things I tried, in fact, the only ones I wouldn't order again are the gnocchi (heavy, doughy) and the desserts (they need flashing "Diabetic Alert" signs). As for the rest, I'm game. I like the funny, slangy menu; the servers, who are just as nice as they can be; and Greg Gordon, who's there in the kitchen, cooking like a madman. Next time, I'm going to buy a bottle of wine from the package store next door, and when I spot a fellow diner who doesn't have any, I'll share it with him. 1936 Fountainview, Houston (713-787-9899). AE, CB, DC, DS, MC, V.
Here's what I like about Austin's 34th Street Cafe, a spare but colorful cinderblock space northwest of the University of Texas: Almost every time I drop by for dinner, there are five people crowded around a table for four, laughing and talking over a bottle of wine, as comfortable as if they were at home. When I first heard about the cafe's newly inaugurated dinners this summer, I was dubious. After all, what could you expect from a place that cranks out lunchtime salads, sandwiches, and pizzas? But one taste of the fine chile-rubbed quail convinced me that the nighttime kitchen is very serious. Since July Courtney Swenson—who honed her chops as the executive sous chef at Hudson's on the Bend—has been turning out mouthwatering dishes at prices that have yet to crack the $20 ceiling. A native Austinite, the 37-year-old Swenson goes for full flavors and popping textural contrasts, even if modesty has kept her from giving her style a catchy name.
If the cafe has a theme, it is adult comfort food—those cozy restaurant classics that mean more to the boomer generation than mom's chicken and dumplings ever did. Swenson's fresh, sweet crab cakes were bursting with capers and nuggets of red bell pepper. Her jazzy roasted poblano stuffed with lamb picadillo snuggled up to a darkly flavorful ancho chile sauce. And talk about a grown-up classic: The lemony, caper-strewn chicken piccata was a testament to tart and tender, even if the meat was half of a breast rather than the thin slices that the word "piccata" implies.
Swenson was also on the money with her tostada-crusted filet of tilapia (texture like a cloud) on a sharp green chile-lime tartar sauce. Inevitably, one or two dishes didn't pass muster, like the mundane fried butterflied shrimp with a johnny-two-note sweet-hot chile sauce. But the desserts, by Russell's Bakery, made a strong finish—I am already planning another rendezvous with the flourless chocolate cake (here called a torte), devilishly dark and admirably uncloying. Now that is grown-up comfort food. 1005 W. Thirty-fourth Street, Austin (512-371-3400). AE, DS, MC, V.
The Thomas Avenue Beverage Company in Dallas is having an identity crisis. The first time I visited, the jukebox was blasting away and several male customers in khaki shorts and polo shirts were lolling around, nursing draft beers and watching a game on a television over the bar. But not ten feet away were two young women dressed in DKNY and Banana Republic, drinking Chardonnay and eating lobster enchiladas. What was going on here? The name said bar but the menu said nice restaurant. The affable chef, Kerry Kelly, 37, explained it to me later: "People used to come here to drink. Now they come to eat." Actually, they do both, plus shoot a little pool. The Beverage Company has carved out its own niche of upscale food at midscale prices (entrées $17.50 to $23.50) in the so-called State-Thomas area of Dallas, a fast-growing neighborhood of costly condos and townhouses near the McKinney Avenue dining-and-entertainment strip.
I had never eaten chicken Marsala in a sports bar before, and this version, sautéed in Kelly's thin, sweetish take on the classic Italian wine sauce, was quite good. Even better was his unusual black bean soup. The color of milk chocolate, it was spicy, rich, and almost like a porridge in texture. Cioppino, the California fish stew, brimmed with seafood, including beautifully cooked shrimp (but the salmon's assertive flavor seemed discordant among the milder fish and shellfish). By far the best dish I had was the grilled sea bass, massaged with lots of olive oil and a strong, spicy, almost blackened seasoning rub; the fish itself was so perfectly cooked the texture was as light as flan.
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Whatever happened to neighborhood restaurants? This question occurred to me the other night when I was sitting in yet another temple of haute cuisine while my waiter held forth on the evening's specials. Halfway through his description of sushi-grade New Zealand bat wing encrusted with free-range frog's eggs, I experienced a flood of longing. I yearned for the obscure little restaurants of yore, off the beaten path, with good chefs and engaging but simple menus, where you could eat a couple of times a month without taking out a second mortgage.
So, feeling simultaneously nostalgic and contrarian, I set out to see if there were, in fact, any good, new, funky restaurants around, the sort of one-chef, one-whisk places that used to pop up all the time in converted storefronts and bungalows. In short, I went searching for today's versions of great old-timers like Austin's East Side Cafe or San Antonio's Liberty Bar. The task was much harder than I had ever imagined. Not only do chefs not stay put long enough to get a following, but the bungalows have been taken over by lawyers' offices and the traditional storefronts are both costly and scarce. Today's neighborhood restaurants are in new strip centers or older, unprepossessing commercial buildings. No cozy nooks there. But if you accept these limitations, you can still find some latter-day neighborhood restaurants. They may not look like they used to, but they still make you feel at ease, feed you well, and don't pick your pocket.
Tim Love is the one in the chef's coat and cowboy hat in Lonesome Dove's tiny kitchen. His wife, Emilie, is the one at the door in the short black dress and turquoise cowboy boots. Five months ago the young couple opened the Dove in Fort Worth's historic Stockyards district, an area mainly known for major-league honky-tonks and Mexican restaurants. From the first week, it was a huge success. When I walked in, I was taken aback by the smart white tablecloths, black napkins, and heavy pewter candlesticks; this didn't look like a neighborhood joint. But finally I decided that the beat-up old building, unplastered brick walls, and worn wood floor helped it make the cut—along with the low markups on wine and the prices (entrées $15 to $26).
Tim Love, who is 28, decided to open his own restaurant—he had cooked in Tennessee, Colorado, Florida, and other states—in the aftermath of the tornado that hit the city last year, which gave him a "seize the day" epiphany. Although most of his experience had been with Southwestern cuisine, most recently at Reata in downtown Fort Worth, he determined that "Western" best fit what he wanted to do. "That gave me the freedom to use all of Texas' ethnic groups," he says. As a result you'll find an Asian dish next to a cowboy dish next to a Mexican dish, with a few Mediterranean classics thrown in for good measure.
But Southwestern has the strongest presence. My quesadilla, for instance, consisted of two flour tortillas sandwiching chunky grilled quail, melted Texas goat cheese, and julienned red bell pepper. My friend's excellent king salmon entrée, though, was cross-cultural with a vengeance. In short order I was spearing bites of his thick, medium-rare filet, crunchily coated with black and white sesame seeds and basking in the juices from the accompanying jalapeño-honey stir-fried vegetables. My tenderloin, at least two inches thick, rare, and marvelously juicy, had been perked up with a salty rub; it was so tasty I didn't even care that it wasn't fork-tender.
Of the two desserts tried, the sautéed banana split with vanilla bean ice cream and hot chocolate sauce was the showstopper, visually at least. My friend liked it so much that he declared a moratorium on chit-chat so he could concentrate on the flavor. It was just as well. I was deep into my silky cappuccino flan in a glaze infused with the brandy and citrus flavors of Tuaca liqueur, a brilliant combination. Sometimes you just have to shut up and eat. 2406 N. Main, Fort Worth (817-740-8810). AE, MC, V.
Greg Gordon is a funny guy. The 34-year-old kitchen veteran of Houston's renowned Daily Review Cafe and owner of La Vista Italian restaurant is doing a stand-up comedy imitation of what must happen in homes across the neighborhood at six o'clock every evening (right before the crowds start to converge on his little trattoria not far from Houston's Galleria). Arms straight out, gaze fixed, he zombie-walks across the room muttering, "La Vista, La Vista." Which might be seen as self-serving if it weren't so true. I know. I was there, back in September, on a couple of those 108- and 109-degree days. At seven-thirty there wasn't an available space in the tiny dining room or at the tables on the sweltering sidewalk or on any of the twenty or so plastic lawn chairs set out in the strip center's parking lot (jokingly referred to by the staff as "the lounge").
What we were all there for was Gordon's homey Italian food, both classic dishes and original ones, at extremely reasonable prices—pastas $8 to $13, entrées $16 to $19. Two minutes after my friend and I sat down, the man at the next table was strolling over and offering to share his bottle of red wine with us (the restaurant sells no alcohol). It's that kind of place. We started with mussels in bianco, then—to sop up the brothy white-wine sauce—ordered a loaf of "oval bread" topped with caramelized onions, pecans, rosemary, garlic, and morsels of fig. Omigod. I could have made a meal of the bread, the mussels, and the house salad.
But this is not a place where you stint, so I went for the fettuccine in cream and Parmesan with a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg, quirky seasoning that worked. My friend had La Vista's rack of lamb with grilled pears and tomatoes, lavished with Gordon's wildly original sauce of Jim Beam, Coca-Cola, and shiitake mushrooms. "How in the world did you come up with this?" I asked him. "Well," he said, looking sheepish, "I was here in the kitchen at two-thirty one morning, cooking for friends and I had a Jim Beam and Coke in my hand." He splashed some in the pan, and a new dish was born.
Of all the things I tried, in fact, the only ones I wouldn't order again are the gnocchi (heavy, doughy) and the desserts (they need flashing "Diabetic Alert" signs). As for the rest, I'm game. I like the funny, slangy menu; the servers, who are just as nice as they can be; and Greg Gordon, who's there in the kitchen, cooking like a madman. Next time, I'm going to buy a bottle of wine from the package store next door, and when I spot a fellow diner who doesn't have any, I'll share it with him. 1936 Fountainview, Houston (713-787-9899). AE, CB, DC, DS, MC, V.
Here's what I like about Austin's 34th Street Cafe, a spare but colorful cinderblock space northwest of the University of Texas: Almost every time I drop by for dinner, there are five people crowded around a table for four, laughing and talking over a bottle of wine, as comfortable as if they were at home. When I first heard about the cafe's newly inaugurated dinners this summer, I was dubious. After all, what could you expect from a place that cranks out lunchtime salads, sandwiches, and pizzas? But one taste of the fine chile-rubbed quail convinced me that the nighttime kitchen is very serious. Since July Courtney Swenson—who honed her chops as the executive sous chef at Hudson's on the Bend—has been turning out mouthwatering dishes at prices that have yet to crack the $20 ceiling. A native Austinite, the 37-year-old Swenson goes for full flavors and popping textural contrasts, even if modesty has kept her from giving her style a catchy name.
If the cafe has a theme, it is adult comfort food—those cozy restaurant classics that mean more to the boomer generation than mom's chicken and dumplings ever did. Swenson's fresh, sweet crab cakes were bursting with capers and nuggets of red bell pepper. Her jazzy roasted poblano stuffed with lamb picadillo snuggled up to a darkly flavorful ancho chile sauce. And talk about a grown-up classic: The lemony, caper-strewn chicken piccata was a testament to tart and tender, even if the meat was half of a breast rather than the thin slices that the word "piccata" implies.
Swenson was also on the money with her tostada-crusted filet of tilapia (texture like a cloud) on a sharp green chile-lime tartar sauce. Inevitably, one or two dishes didn't pass muster, like the mundane fried butterflied shrimp with a johnny-two-note sweet-hot chile sauce. But the desserts, by Russell's Bakery, made a strong finish—I am already planning another rendezvous with the flourless chocolate cake (here called a torte), devilishly dark and admirably uncloying. Now that is grown-up comfort food. 1005 W. Thirty-fourth Street, Austin (512-371-3400). AE, DS, MC, V.
The Thomas Avenue Beverage Company in Dallas is having an identity crisis. The first time I visited, the jukebox was blasting away and several male customers in khaki shorts and polo shirts were lolling around, nursing draft beers and watching a game on a television over the bar. But not ten feet away were two young women dressed in DKNY and Banana Republic, drinking Chardonnay and eating lobster enchiladas. What was going on here? The name said bar but the menu said nice restaurant. The affable chef, Kerry Kelly, 37, explained it to me later: "People used to come here to drink. Now they come to eat." Actually, they do both, plus shoot a little pool. The Beverage Company has carved out its own niche of upscale food at midscale prices (entrées $17.50 to $23.50) in the so-called State-Thomas area of Dallas, a fast-growing neighborhood of costly condos and townhouses near the McKinney Avenue dining-and-entertainment strip.
I had never eaten chicken Marsala in a sports bar before, and this version, sautéed in Kelly's thin, sweetish take on the classic Italian wine sauce, was quite good. Even better was his unusual black bean soup. The color of milk chocolate, it was spicy, rich, and almost like a porridge in texture. Cioppino, the California fish stew, brimmed with seafood, including beautifully cooked shrimp (but the salmon's assertive flavor seemed discordant among the milder fish and shellfish). By far the best dish I had was the grilled sea bass, massaged with lots of olive oil and a strong, spicy, almost blackened seasoning rub; the fish itself was so perfectly cooked the texture was as light as flan.i>
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