This is how we think a beet salad should be made. Its not flashy. We didn’t candy any nuts or go crazy on the dressing. We just found beautiful delicious local ingredients and organized them on the plate in a way that felt pleasing. The beets are from Tecolote Farm, the goat cheese from Pure Luck, arugula is from Boggy Creek Farm, and we used Texas olive oil. (Ok, the walnuts are from California I think.) Come join us for beet salad and a glass of wine.

bon appetit ya’ll – hope to see you soon,
murph

A picture is worth a thousand words as they say. Ben was at Boggy Creek Farm bright and early this morning and the above are just a few trophies from the first tomato haul of the season – Early Girls, Sun Golds, Lemon Boys, and Russian Golds.  Not sure exactly how we will feature them, but I can assure you that these beauties will be on the menu tonight.

In other news:

Do you ever get that nagging peckish feeling?  Perhaps you’re concerned about anemia, or that you might be just a bit low on protein?  Have you considered addressing those very real concerns with MEAT? We gotcha covered with our very slow roasted Windy Bar grass fed beef shank. It’s going out with a fully organic non-GMO polenta (hand ground no less eminent a personage than Larry Butler of Boggy Creek Farm), and freshly hewn swiss chard from the ever green and generous thumb of Chandler Ford.

Hope to see you all soon – bon appetit,

murph

Our Bruschetta this week is spread with a lovely guinea fowl liver pate that based on an Alice Waters recipe.  The birds are from Sebastian at Countryside Farm.  In addition to the livers, the recipe uses capers, anchovies, shallots, and Marsala – no cream.  And as you can see, we topped it with arugula from Boggy Creek Farm and shaved parmigiano reggiano (that would be parmesan cheese, or what I used to call par-MEE-sian when I was a kid and it came in a green can with a yellow plastic shaker top and lived in the fridge).  The bruschetta will be here all week folks – don’t miss’m – and be sure and tip your waitresses and bartenders.  Wait, we don’t have bartenders… because we don’t have a bar to tend…  Come to think of it, we really only have one waitress.  Oh well, you get the idea.

Now, about Mothers’ Day.  We’re open for brunch and lunch as usual this Sunday, but we’re normally closed for dinner on Sunday evenings.  With that in mind, we wanted to float this offer.  If some folks would like to come, we’ll open up and make a few special items for an early dinner on Sunday evening.  Let us know asap, and if we get enough interest, you’re on.  Email us, or you can text me at 512.563.9048.  I’ll send out an email late today or early Thursday with an update.

hope to see you all this week – bon appetit,

murph

Dear Texas French Bread Customers

Per our email of last week, beginning the week of April 1, 2013, we will commence dinner service at 5:30pm on Tuesday through Saturday evenings.  Our new hours of operation are listed below.  Please disregard the hours posted to the right:

Monday – 7am – 5pm

Tuesday – Thursday – 7am – 9:30pm

Friday – Saturday – 7am – 10pm

Sunday – 8am – 5pm

We apologize for any inconvenience resulting from these new hours, particularly if you were coming for dinner on Monday evening.  We do hope you’ll join us another night this week.

Best,

Murph & Ben

Dear Friends,
We’ve made a couple of changes to our dinner menu over the past week or so that seemed noteworthy:

ROAST CHICKEN – Ok we’ve changed the chicken.  Yeah, I know.  But before you start throwing things at the computer, please just hear me out.  For 2 years we’ve been using a 2.25lb bird.  We’ve called it a Poussin, but technically, it’s closer to a “spring chicken” (Poussin refers to a bird that is under 28 days old and typically weighs in at under 1.5lbs).  We went this direction in order to serve an entire half bird (dark meat and white) without sending you home stuffed like a bird yourself.   But I noticed when I cooked the breasts of larger (3lb+) birds from Dewberry Hills that the white meat was exceptional.  It had the same crisp, salty exterior, but was far tenderer and juicier inside than the petite spring chicken we’d been serving – which frankly, just wasn’t large enough to roast well.  Well anyway – Viola! I had an inspiration (which is way better than an expiration).  We could use the larger birds and simply offer the dish for two.  Get it with local asparagus and oven roasted sweet potatoes – seriously, shockingly good.  And at $31 for 2 people, we even lowered the price – just absolutely not to be

RAVIOLI – as I believe I mentioned a few days ago, we also reintroduced our homemade ravioli.  This took mad skilzz of persuasion (by your narrator) to get it done, but Ben and Mike Hamley finally relented (read caved) and agreed to bring this perennial favorite back.   I understand their resistance – these things are a serious pain, er…, sorry, I mean very labor intensive – to produce.  Anyway – this week’s rav are stuffed with chevre and roasted beets and topped with sage brown butter -

MUSSELS – we’re also bringing back another old favorite, the mussels served with fennel and Pernod.  (For anyone who doesn’t know, Pernod is an anise flavored liqueur produced in France that pairs terrifically with fresh fennel).  We had moved on from this preparation a while back as we wanted to use the mussels dish as a test kitchen of sorts for various kinds of local produce -fennel for the most part not faring particularly well in our central Texas climate, we end up getting it from California.  But we’ve had so many requests for the dish that it is back by popular demand starting this week.

EAT YOUR SALAD – over the last several weeks, we’ve had a plethora of beautiful fresh local salad greens on the menu.  We’ve served a simple market salad with shaved parmesan and Texas olive oil, a terrific Ceasar with Ortiz anchovies, our signature take on the Salade Lyonnaisse, and a lovely spinach salad with a 6 minute egg and a bacon dressing at various times.  Friends – we live in Texas.  Gather Yee and eat Yee yer salad greens while Yee may, because unfortunately – lettuces don’t grow so good in 100+ degree weather, and it will be here before you can blink.

MONDAY MONDAY – EVERY OTHER DAY, EVERY OTHER DAY OF THE WEEK IS FINE…

Finally, a scheduling note – for the last year or so, we’ve been open 6 nights per week for dinner – Monday through Saturday.   Alas, Monday has proven the most challenging of the 6 evenings to gather a reasonable crowd.  We’ve also been aware that a number of folks would like us to open a bit earlier for dinner.  With that in mind, in order to accommodate several overlapping priorities and give you our best work – beginning next week we will be cease dinner service on Monday evenings.  We will continue to serve dinner Tuesday through Saturday evenings, but we will change our schedule to begin dinner service at 5:30pm.  We apologize for any inconvenience, but we do hope that the additional half hour of service beginning at 5:30pm will make up for it somewhat.

Hope to see you all at TFB soon – bon appetit,

murph, ben, & crew

PS – Happy Nuptials to your favorite ginger headed server and ours, Ben Dechard who will tie the proverbial knot with bride to be Justine this Friday at Laguna Gloria.  Justine – just so it’s clear, you are now expected to hang out and drink with us on the weekends, so saddle up – yee haw.

We’ve had a couple of last minute cancellations and we can accommodate a few more guests for dinner tomorrow evening on Valentine’s Day.  Email us at tfbreservations@gmail.com and we’ll see about squeezing you in.

February 14 – Valentine’s Day

Amuse Bouche

Appetizer (choose one)
bruschetta w/ succulent spinach, 6 minute farm egg, Ortiz Anchovies
beet & chevre ravioli w/ beet greens & sage brown butter
market salad w/ shaved parmigiano reggiano
Vietnamese cabbage roll soup

Main (choose one)
buttercup squash risotto w/ roasted buttercup seeds & dandelion greens
beef shank roast w/ jerusalem artichoke mash & dried cherry wine reduction
shrimp & lobster stew w/ white beans, red potatoes, baby carrots & green goddess oil

Dessert (come on, choose one)
butterscotch budino
strawberry & meyer lemon curd tartlet
chocolate pots de creme
halsey tart

$45 
Add a course for $10
corkage included