Austin Eats - Foreign & Domestic
Went to F&D for dinner w/ Ben last night (The Nikki was still on her way in from NY). One word description - Brilliant
Upscale-ish - i.e., casual, but with a remarkable amount of attention paid to the food. Its quite a small place (15 tables? Bar seats 10?), but thats part of the charm - you don't feel like you're in a barn, one of the crowd, on the receiving end of conveyer-belt food.
Au contraire, the crowd seems to have a decent set of regulars, and the waitress recognizes you, etc.
The place used to be a furniture store, prior to its conversion into F&D (does this matter? Dunno, but the mention seems somehow appropriate). The owner (?) Ned has quite a flair with the food, and can almost always be found in the open kitchen Cooking.
Anyhow, the concept - such as it is - is that its 'comfort food' done w/ furrin' flair. +Ben Phenix describes the menu - appropriately - as
Ben had the duck-fat fried chicken, which looked mad-greasy, but wasn't.
The experience of dining (sit at the bar!) is even better than the food - and that is saying a lot - the folks are friendly, the open-kitchen is the very best type of dinner theater, and the congenial atmosphere makes you want to come back (we're probably going back there tonight for The Nikki's edification)
Soooo, go.
Really.
Just. Go.
p.s. They seem to be on the sous-vide kick. Again, not bad...
Upscale-ish - i.e., casual, but with a remarkable amount of attention paid to the food. Its quite a small place (15 tables? Bar seats 10?), but thats part of the charm - you don't feel like you're in a barn, one of the crowd, on the receiving end of conveyer-belt food.
Au contraire, the crowd seems to have a decent set of regulars, and the waitress recognizes you, etc.
The place used to be a furniture store, prior to its conversion into F&D (does this matter? Dunno, but the mention seems somehow appropriate). The owner (?) Ned has quite a flair with the food, and can almost always be found in the open kitchen Cooking.
Anyhow, the concept - such as it is - is that its 'comfort food' done w/ furrin' flair. +Ben Phenix describes the menu - appropriately - as
Everything on the ever-changing menu is really good, but there are one or two items that are simply spectacular. Part of the fun is in finding those itemsIn my case, I found it first pass - Its the strotzzapretti (strangled priests to you), which is a type of cavatelli claimed by a couple of places in Italy (yeah, yeah, thats true of pretty much every pasta type, natch). In this case, its not particularly italian - snails, bacon, clams, corn, jalapeno and squash making for a combination which really smacks of something I threw together with the left-overs in the fridge, but yikes is it good , but boy oh boy does it ever work.
Ben had the duck-fat fried chicken, which looked mad-greasy, but wasn't.
The experience of dining (sit at the bar!) is even better than the food - and that is saying a lot - the folks are friendly, the open-kitchen is the very best type of dinner theater, and the congenial atmosphere makes you want to come back (we're probably going back there tonight for The Nikki's edification)
Soooo, go.
Really.
Just. Go.
p.s. They seem to be on the sous-vide kick. Again, not bad...
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