This month, we’ve selected a wine you’re sure to love. It’s the 2010 McPherson Cellars Roussanne Reserve and it is a winning example of what this southern French varietal can do in Texas. In fact, if you pay close attention, you’ll probably notice it taking a stronghold as one of the top white wine varietals in the state.

This wine gets the “Wine of the Month” vote at the suggestion of James Tidwell, Beverage Director of the Four Seasons Resort and Club in Las Colinas. As one of the seven Master Sommeliers in the state, Tidwell has an eye—or should we say taste—for top notch wines and this particular Texas white wine is one he serves by the glass at the  Four Seasons.

Tidwell isn’t your average wine geek—though it is definitely a term he’s comfortable to embrace. With a degree in International Trade and Finance as well as a degree from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, the Louisiana native has a vast knowledge of many different things, the result of being born to two academic professors. It was during his time in culinary school that he developed an insatiable curiosity about wine.

“I liked the creativity of cooking, but so many kitchens are just day-to-day production and the routine got monotonous,” says Tidwell. “Studying wine opened the door to so many other disciplines and arts that are out there. Plus, it’s a lot cooler on the other side of the kitchen doors and when you’re serving wine, you get to talk to guests and have immediate feedback on the job you’re doing.”

James Tidwell courtesy Four Seasons Hotel Las Calinas

Tidwell eventually found his way to Texas and landed a job at the Four Seasons Las Colinas where has has been for 10 years. Along the way, he has managed to add myriad wine-related certifications to his resume including a diploma from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, Certified Wine Educator from the Society of Wine Educators and the highly esteemed Master Sommelier certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers. In short, Tidwell rates up there as one of the most studied wine experts in the state. It was during his pursuit of his Master Sommelier status that he was introduced to Drew Hendricks of Pappas Bros., who was also working his way towards a Master Sommelier certification. The two became fast friends, earned their Master’s pin and also came up with the idea to host a Texas-based sommelier competition that would help promote wine education in conjunction with a wine and spirits conference for both professionals and consumers. In 2005, the Texas Sommeliers Conference (TexSom) was born.

Though Tidwell jokes that the conference was a great excuse for him to throw a weekend-long party at the Four Seasons Las Colinas for his friends in the wine industry, the evolution of TexSom has become significantly more that that.

“When we started TexSom, Texas was an under-served market in terms of wine knowledge and appreciation,” says Tidwell who added that there was only one Master Sommelier in Texas when TexSom began, now there are seven. “We wanted to offer people in Texas [professionals and consumers] the opportunity to see what is going on the rest of the wine world. The competition portion is a way for us to help other Texas Sommeliers with their continued education in wine.”

Registration for TexSom 2012 opened this week—and it is anticipated to sell out. Now in its 8th year, TexSom is a national hub for wine professionals and enthusiasts to mix, mingle, sip, savor and discuss the world of wine and has more than quadrupled in attendance with a growing contingent of consumers eager to join in on exclusive tastings and educational seminars.

“This conference has really shown just how dynamic the Texas market is and just how interested Texas wine consumers are in knowing more about the world of wine,” says Tidwell.

But Tidwell, and sidekick Hendricks, have now taken their Texas focus to the next level with a mind towards promoting Texas wine. The two are in the early planning phases of creating a private marketing organization that will help promote participating Texas wineries to expand their brand both within the state and nationwide.

“Sommeliers tend to be attracted to wines from new and unusual areas and yet sometime we overlook what is in our own backyard,” says Tidwell. “If I’m promoting wine from all over the world, I need to be sure that I give every area a fair shot. Texas wines have grown by leaps and bounds since I arrived here 10 years ago. I’ve tasted beautiful wines from this state and I want other people to know about them.”

One wine Tidwell can’t seem to stop talking about is from celebrated Lubbock-based winemaker Kim McPherson of McPherson Cellars. The 2010 McPherson Cellars Rousanne Reserve has been a show stopper since its release, giving wine fans a double-take upon first sip.

Food & Wine magazine’s Executive Wine editor Ray Isle said he was blown away by this “really good Roussanne” when tasting it for a Texas Wine Panel at the Austin Food & Wine Festival in April.

Tidwell was quick to add this wine to his “by the glass” menu at the Four Seasons particularly for its balance. He notes qualities of citrus, ripe peach, tropical fruit and a slight waxiness in the nose and on the palate. “There’s a lot of fruit on this wine, but it’s not sweet and it’s beautifully balanced. It continues to prove itself with many types of people and it goes well with so many different foods.”

Try it with ahi tuna and fresh spring vegetables, seared scallops and grilled corn, or roasted chicken and rosemary potatoes, this Roussanne wine holds up against a variety of flavors.

“This is a wine I recommend time and time again for people in Texas, and it has been a huge eye opener for people regarding how great Texas wines are becoming,” says Tidwell. “I even brought it to a wine conference in Washington and opened it for a bunch of sommeliers during a ‘show and tell’ break and it was a huge hit.”

This wine is classified as “reserve,” which really only means that it was produced in a fairly small quantity—a little more than 200 cases. Unfortunately, you can not find it at retail outlets across the state but you can order it directly from the winery online for a mere $18.

Or you can head to the Four Seasons Las Colinas and have James serve you a glass and explain first-hand why he thinks it’s so great.

The baby brother to this elegant wine is the McPherson Cellars 2010 Roussanne. It’s a slightly different style with a little more grapefruit and tea, but it’s still an excellent example of what McPherson is doing with this grape. You can find this at a number of retail outlets across the state for about $14.

Winery: McPherson Cellars

Retail: $18

Availability: Winery and some select restaurants

– Jessica Dupuy

Numerous Texas chefs credit their profound talents to years of hard work in culinary school, rigorous training alongside great chefs, or hours of sweat equity in restaurant kitchens. Great cooking, however, is not a subject that can be summed up in the span of a few short years in the kitchen; lessons usually begin when an individual is too small to even see over the kitchen counter. In fact, our earliest culinary memories usually stem from witnessing, smelling, and tasting food prepared by our mothers and grandmothers.

This Mother’s Day, TEXAS MONTHLY spoke with three cooks who say much of their culinary knowledge comes from days of studying their mothers cooking. Eric Silverstein of The Peached Tortilla and Yumé Burger believes growing up in Japan eating street food and his mother’s adventurous Chinese dishes helped develop his extensive palate. Nineteen-year-old Thorne Russell, son of Sonya Coté, says his mother’s work at East Side Show Room and Hillside Farmacy has inspired him to watch and learn from her. Miguel Ravago, executive chef of Fonda San Miguel, was excited to bring the authentic Mexican dishes from his childhood and his mother’s cooking to the Austin culinary scene. Read below to see some of the cooks’ culinary experiences with their mothers.

Did your mother teach you how to cook?

Thorne Russell: Learning how to cook from my mother was like osmosis for me. I watched her do everything. She told me what she was doing when she was doing it, but that was it. We never did anything that was a lesson, like ‘Let’s make this together!’ I watched her do it, and she would say, “This is the right way to do it.” I now cook every single day and try to make something different every single day. I’m lucky enough where I can have people come over and ask them, “What do you want to eat? What’s your favorite food?” and I can make that for them. I wouldn’t have been able to do that without my mom… She was busy with her chef career when I was a kid, and she couldn’t always be home to make dinner for me. I learned how to make my own gourmet meals, and now I cook for her a lot of the time.

Sonya Coté: It’s funny. I didn’t necessarily want to teach him how to cook. I wanted to teach him how to eat, but knowing how to eat usually means knowing how to cook for yourself. Part of raising a kid is making sure they have the skills to take care of themselves.

Thorne and Sonya

What did you make for Thorne when he was a kid?

Sonya Coté: I got him a weekly produce box from Farmhouse Delivery every Wednesday and bought proteins to stock the fridge. I made him a lot of Italian food that was half-homestyle and half-hippie. We’d go out to eat Asian food a lot when we were in Dallas.

Do you want Thorne to be a chef?

Sonya Coté: No, I don’t want him to be a chef. I want him to be something like an environmental engineer or do something good for the environment. He is a smart kid. I don’t want him in the kitchen.

Thorne Russell: It totally depends. I don’t have a calling to do the stressful line work. I like to work under pressure. I love to cook, and I see it as an art.

What culinary influence did your mother have on you?

Eric Silverstein: She had a big influence on me in terms of food culture. Food was an integral part of her own family growing up. Whenever we would we would go visit her family, food was always central to those visits. She carried on traditional Chinese cooking methods into our family, so whenever she made meals for us it was usually stuff she grew up eating.

What did you grow up eating?

Eric Silverstein: I was raised in Japan, and Japanese food culture is one of the most intriguing ones out there. They put a lot of emphasis on quality. I still remember eating street food and at hole in the wall restaurants in Japan. Japanese cuisine is much more diverse than sushi, and we usually think [Japanese food] is just sushi in the U.S. Eighty percent of the rest of Japanese food takes a backseat to sushi here, and I wanted to bring a new concept forward through the Japanese burgers at Yumé Burger.

Eric Silverstein and his mother

What was your mother like as a cook?

Eric Silverstein: She cooked a lot with her own mother. She doesn’t have a culinary degree or anything, but she was a great home chef. Every day was family dinner. There wasn’t one day when we weren’t eating together. And she cooked everything. We would eat a lot of pot stickers, soy-sauce chicken, steamed fish, different noodle dishes, a lot of very unique Chinese dishes, and different stir-fry dishes. She also made something that was almost like a meatloaf, but with steamed pork.

What influence has she had on your culinary projects?

Eric Silverstein: She had less of an influence on The Peached Tortilla, but when we started Yumé Burger I flew her out here and to be involved with the tastings. She had the Japanese burgers that influenced me in this project when we were living in Japan.

How does she respond to your success?

Eric Silverstein: She is proud of what I’m doing. I know she follows me more closely than anyone out there. She finds it exciting, but my family comes from the restaurant business. They’ve had their successes and they’ve had their failures, so she is always cautiously optimistic. I get that from her. I want to do a restaurant down the road. It’s always been a dream of mine. To really be considered an icon in Austin, you have to have a restaurant.

How has your mother influenced your restaurant?

Miguel Ravago: She helped me learn about Mexican cuisine. She would make me taste everything just to teach me about it. We traveled through Mexico a lot, and that’s how we realized each state has a different cuisine in Mexico. That really helped me understand the cuisine… Her and my grandmother helped me when I came to Texas because they knew the cuisine so well. They showed me how everything should taste. It has influenced me a lot.

Miguel Ravago and his mother

What dishes did your mother make for you?

Miguel Ravago: She’s from the northern part of Mexico, so she made a lot of stewed meats, corn tortillas and flour tortillas that were thin like crepes, tamales, and mole. We ate a lot of seafood. She did these great chile rellenos. It was fantastic. I liked her interest in it and her curiosity. That helped me a great deal.  I’m creative because of her.

Tagged: East Side Show Room, Eric Silverstein, Fonda San Miguel, Hillside Farmacy, Miguel Ravago, Sonya Cote, The Peached Tortilla, Thorne Russell, Yume Burger

4.0 Cellars in Stonewall, Texas

Last weekend I took a trip to the Hill Country to check out the grand opening of a new winery, 4.0 Cellars. As much attention as this destination region has received for its perpetually growing list of wineries, it’s becoming more and more challenging to navigate among the best ones to try. My initial suggestion would is to simply park yourself at a bed and breakfast near or around Fredericksburg for a long weekend and try them all. But if time is tight, this is one winery you don’t want to miss. It’s not really a start up. In fact, it’s a winery that combines more than 50 years of Texas winemaking experience under one roof from some of the state’s most well-respected wine producers.

Located just seven miles east of Fredericksburg, 4.0 Cellars is the collaboration of three wineries under one roof: McPherson Cellars of Lubbock, Lost Oak Winery (formerly Lone Oak Winery) of Burleson, and Brennan Vineyards of Comanche.

It’s a concept conjured up by Pat Brennan of Brennan Vineyards, who realized his wines would reach more people if they were located in a more highly-trafficked location. Though Comanche may be great for growing grapes such as Blanc du Bois, “it’s not exactly a thriving metropolis,” says Brennan.

Pat Brennan, Gene Estes, Kim McPherson of 4.0 Cellars

So he started putting out feelers for a good place to open up a new space. That was three years ago. Along the way, he picked up a few contributing partners in Kim McPherson, a longtime Texas winemaking great whose Lubbock winery wasn’t exactly pulling in the droves either, and Gene Estes out of Burleson, whose Lost Oak Winery had the same challenge. Together, they settled on a 4-acre property in Stonewall and built a new facility from scratch.

The mission: To come together in one place to bring a quality Texas wine experience and to eventually get a bottle of Texas wine on every table in Texas.

“Welcome to our dream,” says Kim McPherson who touted the winery’s commitment to producing wines from warm climate varietals such as Viognier, Tempranillo, Roussanne and Vermentino. “We’re here to represent some of the best wines from the far reaches of the state in one place.”

Guests are able to come in and taste a whole portfolio of wines from each of the individual wineries. And before long, there will be a separate collection of wines under the 4.0 Cellars label as a collaboration project among the three different owners—something I’m eagerly looking forward to.

“The Texas wine experience is not just about ourselves,” says Brennan whose talking point included the fact that 74 percent of the tourists in the Fredericksburg area are Texans. “It’s about all of Texas wine and giving people they quality they’re looking for.”

Luckily, I wasn’t the designated driver, so I sipped as many wines as I could—after all, when else do you get a chance to taste such a wide selection of wines in one place?

4.0 Cellars outdoor pavilion and wine bar

Note: tasting, drinking, enjoying wine have different meanings. Tasting means you’re thinking about what you’re sipping and then moving on to the next thing. Drinking means, you’re not thinking at all, you’re just consuming. Enjoying can involve either tasting, drinking, or both—it just depends on who’s driving home.

In my case, since I wasn’t driving, I tasted at first to help determine which wine I would be drinking before enjoying a responsible ride home among friends.

Among my favorites to taste:

2010 Lost Oak Tempranillo: This wine has a lot of complexity and weight, much like the long-aged Rioja reservas (aged 3 years) and even gran reservas (aged 5 years) of Spain. You can thank Estes for that. Though a bit of the grapes are a tad on the ripe side, the acidity and tannin structure are well balanced, making this a great wine for big meaty, game dinners but just as appealing for poultry—as long as they’re grilled or smoked.

2010 Brennan Vineyards Viognier: Perhaps one of the best producers of Viognier in Texas—and that’s saying a lot considering how popular that varietal has become in the state over the years—the Brennan Viognier is perhaps the Chantilly lace of the whole cadre of Texas Viogniers. It’s bright and elegant with hints of white lily and orange blossom as well as a medium-plus finish that is dry with the tiniest hint of honey. It’s a great summer sipper on it’s own, but would be beautiful with pan-seared scallops or shrimp scampi.

2011 McPherson Cellars Albariño: I’ll be honest, I’d already tasted most of the McPherson line and am a fan of pretty much all of them. So I’m putting this one out there because it’s a very new release. Pronounced “al-ba-ree-nyo,” this white Spanish varietal is common on the northwest coast of Spain, above Portugal and is known for its crisp, refreshing “greenness,” with expressions of pear, kiwi, banana and even “Juicy Fruit” gum—trust me, if you go buy a pack of it and then sniff a good Albariño alongside, you’ll catch what I’m saying. Most Albariños have more coastal influence than what McPherson can get out there on the High Plains of Texas, but in truth, thousands of years ago, this region in North Texas was nothing but the bottom of a big ocean anyway, so we’re ALMOST talking apples to apples, here. Though McPherson’s fruit is a tad ripe—thanks to the Texas heat—this wine is a beautiful expression of this grape. It’s crisp and balanced, as it should be. And though it is a little high in alcohol—13.5 percent compared to 11-12.5 percent in Spain—it has the quality of fruitiness with restraint.

These are only three of the many wines you can taste during a leisurely experience at 4.0 Cellars. I could list more, but it’s honestly so much better if you can taste these for yourselves glass-to-glass. It’s something far better than making a quick guess while perusing the shelves of your local grocery store. Which is probably what make this concept so unique. At 4.0 Cellars, you can sip, savor and quickly narrow down the wines that suit your tastes.

The new modern-rustic winery was designed with an architectural eye for a contemporary, yet distinctly Texas feel with rustic metal and limestone exteriors, an open outdoor pavilion area for events, and a stunning display of native landscaping. The tasting room alone is a spacious 5,000 square-foot space with a large central bar for public tastings as well as a private tasting room in back for a more intimate experience. Inside, the industrial, open design is decorated with colorful, modern paintings by local and Texas artists.

The winery will charge $10 for a tasting of six wines plus a featured wine of the week, which includes a complimentary wine glass. The tasting fee is refunded with a purchase of two or more bottles of wine. A selection of domestic and international cheeses and deli meats will be offered with seasonal fruit and a sampling of Fredericksburg chocolates. In the coming months, it will begin to host live music and other special events.

- Jessica Dupuy

In 2007, Ellise Pierce packed up her life in Texas and moved across the world to join her boyfriend in Paris. The idea seemed romantic: a talented freelance writer living in Paris writing by day and cooking Texas-inspired cuisine for her sweet boyfriend by night. Things didn’t pan out.

When Pierce arrived in Paris, her writing career stalled. She had trouble conquering the language barrier. The magazines she had written for at home were cutting their freelance budgets, merging with other media entities, or were simply going out of business. And at French markets, Pierce couldn’t tell the difference between powdered or granulated sugar. She started to severely miss her family and Texas cuisine. She had moved here for love and happiness, so why wasn’t she happy?

In her book Cowgirl Chef, Pierce says she “retreated to the only world [she] knew: the kitchen” to cure her longing for home. After a while, the sadness lessened and understanding French ingredients got easier. Pierce joined a support group of other Americans who had moved to Paris to pursue dreams, loves, and careers. Over time, members of the group suggested Pierce consider her hobby of cooking as a means to support herself. Out of ideas, Pierce figured ‘What the heck?’

She started a catering company called Cowgirl Tacos that specialized in Tex-Mex cuisine, created a food blog called Cowgirl Chef, and used the blog to pitch recurring columns back home in Texas. Success followed, and now she has a new book out called Cowgirl Chef based on the food she cooked for her catering company and her blog. This month, Pierce starts her statewide book tour and talked with TEXAS MONTHLY about her experiences in France, growing up in Texas, and how she created a Texas-sized salad for her book.

Tell me the story behind the book.

The book came along with my catering business Cowgirl Tacos and my blog Cowgirl Chef. I was also writing for publications back home under the Cowgirl Chef byline. I was doing quite a bit of recipe development and testing and writing columns. Someone suggested to me that I write a cookbook, and I thought ‘Yeah, right. I can’t do a cookbook.’ But, I went back to Paris and decided I would at least see what recipes I had. When I looked at what I had actually written so far in terms of recipes and stories, I realized I did have enough for a cookbook. That was about a year ago.

What Texas culinary influences made their way into this book?

I had a mom who cooked every night. She’d cook big dinners and she was happy to have me hang out with her in the kitchen while she was making dinner. We always had dessert. She would cook up a pound cake or some kind of cake. There was an emphasis on having a full meal and sitting down and having dinner as a family. She would make a big pot of meat sauce for spaghetti night, which is what you did back then. It wasn’t just ‘Let’s sit down and have spaghetti.’ It was ‘Let’s get out the red and white checked tablecloth and an old Chianti bottle with a candle in it.’ She would do beef stroganoff or some kind of Chinese food. She was pushing herself and taking us to different places around the world at the table. Maybe all families are like this, but my family always seemed to be thinking about food or talking about food.

How did your blog Cowgirl Chef develop?

I came up with the blog to support my catering business that I started. I thought the blog could tell people what the catering business was doing or tell them about a new class that I was offering, and it just went from there. If you look at early posts it was a lot of “Oh look, we have a new class next week.” The Cowgirl Chef blog became something I loved doing, so I continued to write for that even when it wasn’t about Cowgirl Tacos. It took over my life. That made it possible for me to go back to the U.S. and say, “Look, I’m doing this blog called Cowgirl Chef, and I would like to write for you and do a column called Cowgirl Chef,” and I did. It was a natural evolution.

What was it like to move to Paris and come into a whole new world of cuisine?

I traveled to Paris for years and years. The cuisine itself wasn’t new to me. I was familiar with French cuisine. What I wasn’t familiar with was the day-to-day stuff. It completely blew my mind and caused me all kinds of anxiety when I would go to the grocery store. I was living with a French guy who doesn’t know one thing from the next when it comes to food. I’d say, “What crème fraîche is like whipping cream?” or “Which one of these milks is the one that has less fat in it?” He didn’t know any of it. He was no help at all. I was constantly going to the grocery store and buying things I thought I needed and it was the wrong item. I had no friends over there I could call on to get that advice. The whole thing was trail and error, and it was a lot of error in the beginning.

How did you know what recipes you wanted to put in the book?

By the time I sat down to write the book, I had the recipes already assembled. The recipes reflect my time in Paris at that point. There are a lot of recipes that reflect what I was going through. There are some that come from my homesick period, like black-eyed peas, cornbread, the taco recipes, and other recipes that reflect my need to connect with Texas. The longer I lived there, the more I assimilated to what was around me, so the recipes for more French-style foods came up. The two different cuisines [of Texas and Paris] were starting to merge after a while.

Is there a recipe in the book that resonates with you?

I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, but this just popped in my head. There is a recipe for My Big Fat French Salad in the book. Suzanne was a poet I met in Paris, and she has become an incredible friend. We would go meet at this place where you would get these enormous salads. She would tell me about it, and I’d think ‘Yeah, Yeah. Big salads. They are all over the place.’ But these salads were huge! They had these fried potatoes on top and little pieces of ham, discs of goat cheese on toast, and the size of it reminded me of Texas. The fried potatoes on a salad were amazing. It was something that helped root me in Paris, and I wanted to make it at home.

My Big Fat French Salad

Did you look at any other French cookbooks when you were putting your book together?

Yes. I have a wonderful friend and mentor in Dorie Greenspan. She is awesome. She lives in Paris part time and was readily available to sit down with me over a cup of coffee or lunch and talk about the book, where I was on it, my frustrations, and how to get through them. She was just a phone call, an email, or a lunch away.

Adapted Recipe for My Big Fat French Salad from Cowgirl Chef

Makes 2 dinner-size salads
1/2 pound of red-skinned potatoes, cut into 2-inch pieces
olive oil
sea salt and pepper
8 slices of bacon
6 slices from a baguette, toasted
about 6 tablespoons of fresh goat cheese
1 head of romaine lettuce, rinsed, dried, and sliced into 2-inch/5 cm strips
a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
fresh herbs, such as chives, thyme, basil, parsley
Champagne-Honey Vinaigrette (recipe follows)

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Put the potatoes on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, add some olive oil, salt, and pepper, and toss this all together. Give the pan a shake so the potatoes aren’t crowded, and slide them into the oven. They’ll take about 30 to 45 minutes total, but after 15 or 20 minutes, the halfway mark, pull them out of the oven, and flip them over so both sides are evenly cooked.

Fry up the bacon. Once it’s cooked and crispy, let it drain on paper towels. Don’t forget to pour off the bacon grease into an old jam jar, and then keep it in the fridge; it’ll make your cornbread fabulous.

Toast the baguette pieces, then put a heaping tablespoon of fresh goat cheese on each piece of toast and slide back into the oven for just a minute or two so the cheese can warm up.

To assemble your salads, divide the lettuce between two bowls, crumble the bacon over, add the warm potatoes, and arrange the cherry tomatoes and baguette pieces around the sides. Use your kitchen scissors to snip your fresh herbs on top, serve, and pass around the vinaigrette.

Champagne-Honey Vinaigrette

Makes about 1 cup
1 shallot, finely chopped
¼ cup of champagne vinegar
1 tablespoon of lemon juice + the zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon of honey
sea salt and pepper
¾ cup of grapeseed oil

Combine everything but your oil along with a pinch of salt and pepper in a jam jar, and give it a shake so everything combines. Let this rest for 10 minutes or so. Add the grapeseed oil, and taste for seasonings.

Cowgirl Tip: When making vinaigrettes, let your own taste be your best guide. Add about half of the oil, shake it up, and add a bit more until you strike the right balance of oil and vinegar. I like my dressings slightly more vinegary, so I use less oil; you might like more oil.

Tagged: Cowgirl Chef, Cowgirl Tacos, Ellise Pierce, Layne Lynch

If Paul Qui were the type to get a swelled head, he would be getting one right about now. The young executive chef of Uchiko, in Austin, won the Best Chef: Southwest title at the James Beard Awards ceremony in New York’s Lincoln Center Monday night. This comes on the heels of his winning Bravo TV’s Top Chef: Texas on February 29.
Qui follows in the footsteps of his mentor (and founder of both Uchiko and its parent restaurant,Uchi, both in Austin) Tyson Cole, who was the Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: Southwest in 2011. Qui thanked his staff at Uchiko and Uchi as well as East Side King, his food trailer, and his girlfriend Deana Saukam.
Other national highlights of the prestigious Beard Awards were Outstanding Chef, Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park in New York; Outstanding Restaurant, Boulevard in San Francisco; Rising Star Chef, Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar in New York City; and Best New Restaurant, Next in Chicago.
Qui beat out three other Texas chefs for the Southwest title (Bruno Davaillon of the Mansion Restaurant at the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, Bruce Auden of Biga on the Banks in San Antonio, and Hugo Ortega of Hugo’s in Houston) as well Kevin Binkley of Binkley’s Restaurant in Cave Creek, Arizona, and Jennifer Jasinski or Rioja in Denver.
The Uchi juggernaut continues in other ways: the restaurant opened a location in Houston recently.

The James Beard Awards—which are “the Oscars of the culinary industry,” as has been said ad infinitum but which also happens to be true—happen tonight in New York starting at 5 Central time (6  Eastern). The best restaurants and chefs in the country—determined by a vote of chefs and other culinary professionals—will be announced at a gala awards dinner at Lincoln Center. The host will be television personality and chef Alton Brown.
If you want to follow along on the Internet, you’re in luck. The star-studded event will live-blogged and live-streamed on the Beard web site. The hashtag  #jbfa will be used for all awards-related Tweets.
What’s the Texas connection? Four Texas chefs are up for the regional award as  Best Chef: Southwest (there were only six  finalists in this category, so there is a good chance one of our folks will win). The nominees are Bruce Auden, Biga on the Banks, San Antonio; Bruno Davaillon, Mansion Restaurant at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, Dallas; Hugo Ortega, Hugo’s, Houston; and Paul Qui, Uchiko, Austin.  (The two non-Texas finalists in the Southwest division are Kevin Binkley, Binkley’s Restaurant, Cave Creek, Arizona; and Jennifer Jasinski, Rioja, Denver.)  Oh, in case you’re wondering why there’s a picture of the Empire State Building on this post, it’s because the edifice will be lighted orange and yellow tonight. Those two colors have special meaning for JBF. The walls of the organization’s headquarters, Beard House, were painted orange when chef and author James Beard resided there (“It’s like living in a bowl of tomato soup,” he would say), while yellow represents the pineapple, a symbol of hospitality and a motif in the Beard House decor during the Foundation’s early years.

Tagged: Biga on the Banks, Bruce Auden, Bruno Davaillon, Empire State Building, Hugo Ortega, Hugo's, James Beard Awards, Mansion Restaurant, Paul Qui, uchiko

Tomorrow is the day to put on your finest over-sized derby hats and sombreros and sit in front of the television sipping homemade cocktails for Cinco De Mayo and Derby Day. We’ve put together a list of two cocktail recipes to make at home for the occassion.

Texas Heat

Check out these two spicy libations.

Rattle Inn‘s Texas Heat

2 oz Republic Blanco Tequila
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz fresh orange juice
1 oz Monin Habanero Lime syrup

Shake and serve in a Martini glass garnish with an orange slice.

Star Bar‘s Habanero Martini

2 oz Herradura Reposado
1 oz Cointreau
1/2 teaspoon agave nectar
1/2 lime, squeezed
1 orange slice
2 oz Habanero-Lime Syrup

Mix all ingredients in a shaker tin and chill, pour into a chilled and salted martini glass, garnish with lime wedge, two olives, and a jalapeño slice.

Tagged: austin, Cinco de Mayo, Rattle Inn, Spirits, Star Bar

Yesterday, we shared baking tips from Christina Tosi. The famed pastry chef of Momofuku and Milk Bar was in town this weekend for the Austin Food & Wine Festival to explain her off-the-cusp pastry style and give some tips on how to make better cookies, cakes, and pastries. We had a few requests to share her recipes for Cereal Milk and famous Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies. See below for instructions on how to replicate the sweets.

Milk Bar Cookbook

Cereal Milk

2 ¾ cups (100 grams) cornflakes
3 ¾ cups (825 grams) cold milk
2 tablespoons (30 grams) light brown sugar, tightly packed
¼ teaspoon (1 gram) kosher salt

Milk Bar's Cereal Milk

Heat the oven to 300°F. Spread the cornflakes on a parchment-lined sheet pan. Bake for 15 minutes, until lightly toasted. Cool completely. Transfer the cooled cornflakes to a large pitcher. Pour the milk into the pitcher and stir vigorously. Let steep for 20 minutes at room temperature.

Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve, collecting the milk in a medium bowl. The milk will drain off quickly at first, then become thicker and starchy toward the end of the straining process. Using the back of a ladle (or your hand), wring the milk out of the cornflakes, but do not force the mushy cornflakes through the sieve. Whisk the brown sugar and salt into the milk until fully dissolved. Store in a clean pitcher or glass milk jug, refrigerated, for up to one week.

Toasting the cornflakes before steeping them deepens the flavor of the milk. Taste your cereal milk after you make it. If you want it a little sweeter, don’t be shy; add a little more brown sugar. If you want a more mellow cereal milk, add a splash of fresh milk and a pinch of salt.

Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies

16 tbsp. (2 sticks) room-temperature butter
1¼ c. granulated sugar
2/3 c. light brown sugar, tightly packed
1 egg
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1½ c. flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1½ tsp. kosher salt
3 c. Cornflake Crunch (see book for recipe)
2/3 c. mini chocolate chips
1¼ c. mini marshmallows

Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter and sugars; cream together on medium-high 2-3 minutes. With a spatula, scrape down sides of bowl, then add egg and vanilla and beat 7-8 minutes.

Reduce speed to low; add flour, baking powder and soda, and salt. Mix just until dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. (Do not walk away from the machine during this step or risk overmixing.) Scrape down sides of bowl. Still on low speed, paddle in cornflakes and chips until just incorporated, about 30-45 seconds. Paddle in marshmallows.

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Using a 2-oz. ice cream scoop, portion 1/3 c. dough at a time onto pan. Pat tops of dough domes flat. Wrap pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour or up to one week. (Do not bake room-temperature disks — they will not hold their shape.)

Heat oven to 375°. On a parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pan, arrange chilled disks a minimum of 4 inches apart. Bake 18 minutes, until cookies are browned on edges and just beginning to brown toward the center. Cookies will puff, crackle, and spread. Leave them in oven for another minute or so if they still seem pale and doughy on the surface.

Cool cookies completely on pan before moving them to a plate or an airtight container for storage. At room temperature, cookies will keep fresh for 5 days; in the freezer, they will keep for one month.

Near the end of February 2012, former New Yorkers Michael and Jessica Sanders opened their American neighborhood pub, drink.well., in the North Loop District of Austin, featuring a delicious selection of all-American cocktails, craft beers, wine, and spirits on the menu.

Michael and Jessica

In visits to Michael’s home state of Texas and music-centric trips to ACL and SXSW, the couple had fallen in love with Austin’s growing and evolving brewery scene. What they had seen start out as a limited craft beer market in Austin had grown leaps and bounds just in a few years, and they wanted to be a part of all the excitement and celebrate the movement.

“The opportunity for us to move to Austin suddenly came up, and I looked at Jessica and was like, ‘Let’s move to Austin and open a bar,’ and she was like, ‘Sure. Let’s do it,’” Michael says. The couple put in their two weeks notice the next day, and so began the genesis behind drink.well.

Years before relocating to Texas, both Michael and Jessica had dedicated blood, sweat, and tears to the notorious “rat race” in New York, working in the advertising agency, making end’s meet, and dreaming of a day when they would have the opportunity to be their own bosses. “I began setting aside money early in my career to be able to open a business,” Michael says. “I didn’t know what it would be, but as the years went on, a bar just seemed like the right fit.” The couple had always wanted to be in business together, so when the opportunity to open a bar in Austin came along, the idea seemed like a perfect fit for the duo.

Michael and Jessica lived on tight budgets day in and day out in New York, but they each discovered one of the main perks of working in advertising was the opportunity to be wined and dined.

“One of the great things about media is you get taken out, and I got to check out a lot of nice places, restaurants, and bars while I was up there that I wouldn’t normally have had the chance to,” he says. “I had always enjoyed bars and restaurants in college, and people would always say, ‘Why don’t we just drink at home,’ but I just loved the feeling of being in a bar. I think that’s one of the reasons Jessica and I fell in love with each other. We both shared that passion.”

Michael and Jessica started out as roommates and platonic friends for four-and-a-half years before they even considered entering into a romantic relationship. “We would just hang out together since we were already living with each other. We always had a good time going out to bars and restaurants, and that was one of the things we bonded on,” Michael says.

In planning the setup and design for drink.well., Michael and Jessica imagined embodying the menu selection of classy bar blended with the hospitality of a neighborhood pub. “We went to this sports bar with old Irish bartender that would remember your name and exactly what you drank, but then we would go to places like Death + Company that had all these great cocktails and great artisanal drinks, but that weren’t big on the hospitality. We imagined creating a mix of those bars.” They wanted to have the best of both worlds: a place where customers would get great craft cocktails, but have the bartender know the customer’s name and, likely, their order.

With a menu selection of cocktails, wines, and special brews, the couple also made sure to include some of their favorites like Brooklyn Brewery, Dogfish Head, Hops & Grain, Magic Hat, and Thirsty Planet on the bar’s menu.

Interior of drink.well.

It doesn’t end with the libations, however. Dishes like charred brussels sprouts with crispy bacon, macaroni and cheese with duck bacon, chicken sausage and waffles, homemade Twinkies, and fried bologna and cheese sandwiches is a creative representation of the couple’s effort to prepare classic all-American dishes with a tiny touch of upscale refinement.

“Jessica, my best friend and former roomate Roblé Ali, and I talked about the menu for a long time,and we all felt like the trends of ‘bar food’ were polar opposites. Either you could have fare [such as] chicken fingers and jalapeño poppers on one end and then foie gras profiteroles on the other end. We met in the middle with quality food that was approachable,” he says. An interesting side note: Ali recently got his own cooking show, Chef Roblé & Co., on the Bravo Network.

The bar has only been open a few months, but Jessica and Michael already have a vision of expansion in the years to come. “The planets aligned when this space became available,” he says. “We have a couple of top secret ideas that we want to develop. There is one idea that very much me and one idea that is very much Jessica. We’ll try to see if it would be humanly possible to do both, or we may have to play rock, paper, scissors. It would be wonderful if we could build a home base in Austin and eventually do something in New York or Jessica’s home in San Diego. If it’s possible, we’ll definitely do it, but for now we are focusing on drink.well.”

To check out the menu at drink.well., click here.

Tagged: austin, Drink.Well., Jessica Sanders, Layne Lynch, Michael Sanders

It’s hard not to eat at a Larry McGuire project these days – even if it’s by accident. The chef-turned-entrepreneur has his hand in a number of Austin’s most popular restaurants, including Perla’s, Lamberts, Elizabeth Street Café, and, most recently, Fresa’s Chicken al Carbon. The young restauranteur sat down with TEXAS MONTHLY to talk about his upcoming projects (including Jeffrey’s), his day-to-day life, and why he sometimes just wants fish and rice.

What is your day-to-day life like right now? You’ve taken on so many projects recently.

That’s kind of a big thing for us right now is figuring out what kind of company we’re going to be. I’m still figuring out what my days are really.

Do you go from restaurant to restaurant?

Yeah. I don’t really have a big plan or a big vision of what we want to do. It’s almost been real-estate driven. We’ve had these opportunities to take spaces, and we’re always kicking around a concept. When we did Lamberts, we hadn’t seen anyone doing barbecue in a new way. People were starting to get into sausage making and charcuterie. We were toying with that and we had both been cooking fine dining, so that’s how Lamberts started. After being so meat-centric, that kind of led us to wanting to do a lighter restaurant like Perla’s, and we’ve always been into Asian food, so that’s how Elizabeth Street got started. Fresa’s is almost like a P-Terry’s concept. People say, “You guys borrow so much stuff,” and I’m like, “Of course we do.” We travel. We eat out. We see what people are doing, and we try to figure out what we need or are missing in Austin. At the end of the day, we’re consumers. We wanted to make good handmade food that’s fast and convenient when we came up with Fresa’s. We don’t have this big plan or vision of what we want this company to be. I’m still figuring out what I want to do. I don’t really even consider myself a chef that much. I come from a food background, but I’m much more of an entrepreneur now.

I was going to ask you about that. How much time do you spend in the kitchen now?

At Lamberts, I probably spent a year and a half in the kitchen. I kept a line-cooking shift until we started Perla’s. I gave up my Wednesday grill shift. I enjoy line cooking a lot though. I miss that aspect, but at each of these places we’re trying to hire neat people. Each restaurant has its own team now. There isn’t a whole lot of bouncing around anymore. (more…)