The wait is over! Sway – a contemporary Thai restaurant on South First Street in Austin – will open its doors on December 9. For those who haven’t followed news about the much-anticipated restaurant, Sway was originally supposed to open this past summer.

For over a year now, the La Condesa team has been releasing tidbits of information about the top secret project. Over the past few months, individuals learned a myriad of details about the restaurant, including the name (Sway, meaning elevated, delicious) and a few of the menu offerings.

Rene Ortiz

The inspiration behind Sway stems from Rene Ortiz’s time of living and working in Sydney, Australia, where he first encountered the modern Thai food movement. Ironically, La Condesa’s owners – Jesse Herman and Delfo Trombetta – also lived in Australia for a time where they too were exposed to the same innovative cuisine.

Back in July, Pat Sharpe and I were invited to try some of the eclectic dishes on Sway’s menu, and even then I believed Sway would become one of the most respected restaurants in the Austin culinary scene – when it finally opened, that is. Here is some of what Pat said about the Sway experience…

“As anyone who’s eaten the interior Mexican cuisine at La Condesa knows, Ortiz takes considerable and tasty liberties with traditional recipes. Sway will be no different. A sampling of six dishes from the fifty-odd on the menu was notable for completely avoiding the sweet, spicy, coconut-milky profile of so many Americanized Thai restaurants…”

Pad Kweitio (cispy pork belly, holy basil, eggplant, wok water) at Sway

Some of the dishes to look forward to on the Sway menus include Jungle Curry (red curry of chicken with eggplant and French beans); Rose Apple Stir-Fry (chicken with shiitake, holy basil, and red chili); Steamed Yuzu Pudding Cake (drunken berry, coconut, Sichuan pepper meringue, and avocado sorbet); Jasmine Tea Panna Cotta (lychee, grape, Thai basil, cilantro, and coconut lychee sorbet); and numerous other Thai-inspired offerings.

Reservations are only accepted for parties of eight or more, the family-style feast, or the signature Moo Sway menu. Visit the restaurant’s website, Twitter, or Facebook for information on menus, hours, etc.

Tagged: austin, Delfo Trombetta, Jesse Herman, Laura Sawicki, Layne Lynch, Rene Ortiz, South First Street, Sway, Thai

Attention, Austin foodies. You know that Thai restaurant that’s being built across from the Elizabeth Street Café by the La Condesa people? The one we’re all watching slowly rise from a vacant lot seemingly forever? Two of the most pressing questions about it have now been answered: The restaurant’s name will be Sway and it’s opening late this summer.

That’s sway, as in “beautiful” or “pretty” in the Thai language. More to the point, it means “delicious” if you’re talking about food. The other day co-owner Jesse Herman and executive chef–partner Rene Ortiz threw a small sneak-peek tasting party. Afterward, Herman led a walk through the new digs (still a work in progress), which are being designed by Austin architect-of-the-moment Michael Hsu.

The space, which seats 150 inside and out, is like nothing else I’ve seen in Austin. The kitchen is literally part of the dining room, like a theater in the round. All the seating is at community tables and counters, and the walls and furniture are made entirely of mahogany. By my rough estimate, the kitchen takes up nearly a third of the interior space. In fact, diners can even eat in the kitchen at a stainless-steel “chef’s counter.” Given the openness, Herman admitted he might need to ask the cooks to watch their language. (We can all imagine that speech: “No F-bombs! None! Ever!!”)

Guests who don’t book the coveted chef’s counter will dine at the massive community tables throughout the dining room and at the counters that line the plate-glass windows looking onto the garden. (So get used to chatting with strangers, à la Barley Swine.) Except for the curvy counter chairs, all the seating will be benches. The custom-built tables are so massive that it takes four or five men to move one. Maybe it’s all that wood, but the whole time I was there I kept thinking, This reminds me of a den. I know it’s based on the traditional Thai-style lanna house, but to me it felt like a large, exotic, comfy den.

But enough about the space. What about the food? As anyone who’s eaten the interior Mexican cuisine at La Condesa knows, Ortiz takes considerable and tasty liberties with traditional recipes. Sway will be no different. A sampling of six dishes from the fifty-odd on the menu was notable for completely avoiding the sweet, spicy, coconut-milky profile of so many Americanized Thai restaurants. Pad kweitio, for instance, was a mélange of soupy wide rice noodles topped with great crisp pork belly, purple Japanese eggplant, cilantro, and the aromatic herb known as holy basil. Another, incorporating Chinese ideas, was a gorgeous heap of salt-and-pepper lobster that came to the table in its shell (cut into manageable pieces, thank goodness), tossed with fermented black soybeans, cayenne, and a blend of sea salt and pungent powdered Sichuan peppercorns.

Many aspects of Ortiz’s approach come from having lived and worked in Sydney, Australia, for several years, under well-known modern Thai chefs. In that country, much of the restaurant workforce comes from Thailand and Thai restaurants are as commonplace as Mexican restaurants in Texas. In an odd but happy coincidence, both of La Condesa’s owners, Herman and Delfo Trombetta, also had lived in Thailand Australia, where they too were exposed to the contemporary Aussie approach to Thai cooking.

As at La Condesa, desserts will be provided by executive pastry chef Laura Sawicki, recently named one of Food & Wine’s best new pastry chefs in the United States. Going even farther afield, her creations use Thai flavors basically as a jumping-off point, like her bracing affogato with Thai tea and tapioca pearls on ice cream, or her cashew fudge brownies lavished with chocolate mousse, honey-tinged popped amaranth grain, maldon sea salt, and dabs of miso cashew butter.

Hiring for the kitchen and front of house should start in a few weeks. If all goes according to plan, Sway will be open in late summer, and you’ll never feel quite the same about plain old pad thai again.   (The address is 1417 S. First.  Sway will be open for both lunch and dinner seven days a week.)

Tagged: Delfo Trombetta, Jesse Herman, la condesa, Laura Sawicki, Rene Ortiz, Sway

For five years, Jesse Herman, owner of La Condesa, has been working on the concept behind his yet-to-be-opened Thai restaurant in Austin. His modern Mexican establishment, La Condesa, has garnered culinary praise from all over Lone Star State and the nation. So what’s a guy that owns one of the most respected Mexican restaurants in Austin doing opening a Thai restaurant? Is it insanity, or pure genius? Herman talked with TEXAS MONTHLY about his Thai restaurant, Australian cuisine, and how Rene Ortiz is so fluent in Thai…food.

Jesse Herman

Your other restaurant, La Condesa, embodies modern Mexican cuisine. Why open a Thai restaurant?

That’s a cool question because a lot of people have said it’s odd what we’re doing, but they don’t understand the reasoning behind it. Both my business partner and I lived in Thailand at different times during college. I [also] lived in Australia, and there is this style of modern Thai food in Australia and it’s as significant as Mexican food in Texas. You’ve got a culture of Australian chefs preparing Thai food that are influenced by modern Australian cuisine. It doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the world, except Australia, and it reminded me of La Condesa’s concept as far as it being a modern take on food where you can relate to it and understand it, but you experience it in an elevated way, in terms of the atmosphere, the food, the presentation, the service, everything. Five years ago, I put together a business plan for this idea, but I didn’t know how to do the food because it’s not something you really see around here. It all came together when Rene [Ortiz] cooked dinner at a birthday celebration and he made a whole fried fish, which is very traditional Thai, and he also made crispy pork hock, which is a dish from a very well-known Thai chef, David Thompson, an Australian that owns restaurants in Sydney, London, and Bangkok. I asked him how he knew how to make this dish, and he said, “Well, I learned to cook Thai food in Sydney.” He had lived there for a few years and worked with a chef in Sydney. A lightbulb kind of went off, and we’ve been working on the project ever since. All the pieces just fell into place.

Interior of La Condesa

Will Rene be the chef at the restaurant?

Yeah, Rene will be the executive chef and partner and Laura [Sawicki] is going to be the executive pastry chef. A lot of the kitchen crew will be coming over from La Condesa.

When are you planning on opening?

Within the next couple of months. We’re getting closer and closer to opening.

Is Thai food well represented in Texas?

It has nothing to do with Texas. Nationally, we’re used to a certain type of experience with Thai restaurants, and we [hope] to turn that upside down.

What are some dishes or things we can expect from the restaurant?

Because of how we work with seasonality, I don’t even know what the opening menu is going to be like, but what I can tell you is that there is going to be a lot of familiar things that are still going to be prepared traditionally with a little bit of our twist on it. There are going to be a lot of things that people have never heard of, seen, or tasted before. We’ve been working on this menu for a long time, and one of the unique aspects from our culinary standpoint is that Rene and Laura work very closely together, and you don’t often see chefs and pastry chefs working so closely together. Delfo, Rene, and I spent a couple of weeks in Australia visiting all of the restaurants that had inspired me and that inspired and taught Rene. We visited a lot of his old friends in Sydney, and that was really refreshing to see exactly what’s going on and how we want to adapt that here. I wouldn’t have opened the restaurant if I felt this was something we were trying to just figure out how to do. Ethnic food inspires Laura and Rene and our partners, but at the end of the day, if you want to execute at a certain level, it takes a tremendous knowledge base and skill to do something like this. We can’t wait to showcase what we have in store.

Tagged: austin, Jesse Herman, la condesa, Laura Sawicki, Layne Lynch, Rene Ortiz

After 26 years of showcasing the Texas Hill Country as one of the most desirable destinations in the Lone Star state, the Texas famed Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival will don a new name, a new home, and new leadership for the next festival in the spring of 2012. The new Austin Food & Wine Festival will now be a part of the nationwide culinary series by acclaimed Food & Wine magazine and will be produced by C3 Presents (of Austin City Limits Music Festival fame) along with Texas culinary juggernauts Tyson Cole (Uchi/Uchiko, Austin), Tim Love (Lonesome Dove Bistro, Fort Worth), and Jesse Herman (La Condesa, Austin).

Recent James Beard award winner Tyson Cole, chef/owner of Uchi and Uchiko has spearheaded the renewed festival concept for the past year. “I’m proud to the lead the way in bringing Austin’s culinary landscape into the national spotlight with the creation of the Austin Food & Wine Festival,” says Cole. “It’s the next step in a city coming into it’s own in the food world, and I’m excited to use this as a vehicle to feature a wide array of talent our city has to offer.”

Most “foodie-philes” are aware of the celebrity-studded Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, which draws the likes of high profile chefs as James Beard award-winning José Andrés, Tom Colicchio, Mario Batali, John Besh, and Thomas Keller. This new event will build on the national brand that Food & Wine magazine has bestowed on Aspen but with a decidedly Tex-ified style.

“We really wanted to be a part of creating something that is representative of the changing food scene in Austin as well as the rest of Texas,” says La Condesa owner Jesse Herman who will work with C3 Presents, Cole and Love to leverage local and national contacts to create a well rounded showcase of Texas food and wine culture. “We really want to create a food and wine festival that is on par with the greatness of the ACL Festival and South by Southwest.”

The architects behind the original Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival will now restructure the organization to become a 501c3 nonprofit extension of the Austin Food & Wine Festival that will be the festival’s charitable arm and will receive annual support as a beneficiary to the festival’s success.

“This is a huge endorsement of the many years of work and commitment that has gone into the previous festival and we’re excited to support the new Austin Food & Wine Festival, which will bring Austin’s food and wine community in the national and international spotlight,” says Cathy Cochran-Lewis, President of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival whose leadership in 2011 brought the festival its most profitable year to date, a coup which will give the new nonprofit arm a firm foundation with which to promote the food and wine culture in Central Texas. “This opportunity aligns with the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival’s original mission to create a platform and awareness of the outstanding chefs, restaurants, artisan producers, wines and spirits that makeup our unique culinary culture.”

The changeover not only marks a significant boon for the city of Austin as a premier culinary and viticultural destination, but for all of Texas. And with an ever increasing number of James Beard Award nominees, Food & Wine magazine Best New Chefs, and chef contestants on national food competition television shows, the event will garner national recognition for the Capital City not only as the Live Music Capital of the World, but as a culinary force to be reckoned with.

The official announcement of the new Austin Food & Wine Festival was made today by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell at an event held at Jesse Herman’s Malverde bar. The 2012 Austin Food & Wine Festival is scheduled for March 30 – April 1. Stay tuned for details as the event planning unfolds!

- Jessica Dupuy

Tagged: Austin Food and Wine Festival, C3 Presents, Cathy Cochran-Lewis, Jesse Herman, Jessica Dupuy, Texas Hill Country Food and Wine Festival, Tim Love, Tyson Cole