Well – Jeeze.  I don’t even know where to start this week.  Many thanks to Michael Guerra for bringing a big group over from Zach Scott this week.  Apparently they are all working on a new 400+ capacity theater for Zach.  Anyway – Tuesday night was very well attended this week.   So well attended that I forgot to email everyone and tell you the menu on Wednesday.  Wednesday was not quite as well attended – but that’s alright – we’re here to stay PEOPLE.

One thing I wanted to be sure and mention is that Judy has been back in the house baking this week.  To date she’s made a shaker lemon tart (it has whole lemon slices in it – so you better like it tart – kind of like her salad dressing).   I also saw her at work on several pear crumble pies/tarts, and she’s revised the dough for our rustic apple tart.  Should be yum for sure.

Kara Bliss will be back in the house on Saturday December 5th and on New Years Eve – so plan ahead.  If you haven’t seen her sing – you’re missing it.  Her set list from her most recent engagement with us included songs by Tom Waits and Ricky Lee Jones, as well as Cole Porter, Kurt Weill, George Gershwin, and Irving Berlin to name just few.  Pretty good stuff, sung by our favorite singer.  I’ll get you more info on the upcoming shows as things develop.

Booking Kara has made me think more about our over all mission and where we want to head next.  We definitely want to create a home base where more different kinds of communities and cross pollinate one another.  We always felt like we should have something going here several nights a week – maybe music one night, some kind of salon discussion next, and then perhaps art or theater on another.  The trick is – how to do it well, how to pay for it, and how to package it in a form that people can wrap their heads around.  More soon…

Hope to see you all in this weekend – best,

Murph

For you long time TFB patrons out there – sad to say, we finally closed the Red River store on October 15.  Opened in 1982 as the newer larger location where our bread bakery could be housed (we had substantially outgrown the original store at 3400 Guadalupe), the venue was the site of some of TFB’s best work.  But as we’ve grown in our efforts at our Rio Grande cafe over the past few years and moved our bread baking operations over – we began to suspect that with only a few blocks separating the two stores, we were probably canabalizing our own market.  So we decided to really get serious and focus on our nighttime bistro business here at our flagship store, and have taken the risk of closing down the Red River store.  We hope this will free up a lot of our time and energy that can be devoted to making the part of this business were are most in love with as good as it can be.  Still – change is always bittersweet, and it seems worth noting that the Red River store was our best and most profitable endeavor for many years.

Hope to see you all here at 2900 Rio Grande tonight,

Murph

God I so totally suck at keeping this website and the menu up to date. People keep trying to get me to join face book and I’m thinking, I’ve already got a website, email blast software, an online menu, and so on. Now I’m supposed to keep up with that too. You want me to twitter to??? huh?

Well anyway – here’s some news – keep it under your hat. My favorite singer – Kara Bliss McGregor will be singing at TFB this Saturday Night at 9pm – hope you can make it. She is awesome.

WE JUST GOT A MESS OF BEAUTIFUL WEST COAST SARDINES IN.  ALL AUGUST IT WAS “YES, WE HAVE NO SARDINES TODAY.”  YOU LOVE THEM, THEY LOVE YOU.  WHAT’S TO DISCUSS?  COME EAT ALREADY.

Well Friends,

You know him, you love him  – he’s been living and working with family in the old country in Italy for the last few months, so he’s well rested, looking good, and ready to make Coq au Vin for you! Ladies and gentleman (and more importantly from Jude’s perspective Ladies) – for one week only – we give you ….

JUDE COCO!

I’ve been thinking about melons.  And how fresh produce is so much better for us than fake manufactured food.  There’s a great op-ed piece in the Times today by Michael Pollan on how related our food policy is to our health policy.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/opinion/10pollan.html?scp=2&sq=michael%20pollan&st=cse

Hi Friends,

Just wanted to point out a couple of quick notes about this week’s menu. First off – Ben’s rather popular squash blossoms are back on the menu. Come get them while they last.  OK – that’s one note – we’re kind of waiting for a weather shift before we add a bunch of new stuff, but we’re liking this menu a lot and you can see check it out – dinner menu.

Second, I want to thank Glover and the Tango folks for making Tuesday evening a really interesting event. It was interesting for me in the first instance, because we had a bunch of folks show up who a) had no idea that we were hosting the tango event, and b) didn’t realize that we weren’t normally open on Tuesdays.   I’m starting to get the feeling that we can just throw the doors open any night and quite a few folks are going to show up looking to eat, which is fantastic in so many ways.  

Anyway – we got it all worked out. We got everyone fed, and pretty much everyone hung around and watched the dancing – including me, and a bunch of folks who work here.  I was unware of this, but apparently tango dancing is about as much fun as you and a partner can have and still remain fully clothed.  More than once, I found myself watching and thinking that a youngish fellow who commanded even rudimentary tango skills, could do alright (you know – with the ladies).  I’m not sure he would need anything else - like a bank account – house – car – good looks, that kind of thing…  As dance goes – the tango is unbelievably romantic and uhhmm well – downright sensual? or is it sensuous? (that’s a little too close to lay vs. lie, and I just don’t know. In theory, my father is a linguist, so perhaps he’ll bust out and post a comment for us???) Pretty cool stuff regardless.  We’re going to do it every Tuesday for a bit, so a) this means we’re now open 5 nights a week – yeah! and b) you’ve got plenty of time to go find a lesson and come try out your mojo.

We’re cooking – come eat!

Murph

Hi Friends,

Spent the last couple of days in Dallas, I was late getting back, and I’m up against the clock here to get this posted – so let me tell you very briefly about a couple of the things we’re going to try this week – or you can go check our dinner menu.

First, Boggy Creek is just covered up in peppers, so we’re going to bring back the stuffed pepper appetizer. The difference is, this time we’re going to try one that is more like a chili relleno. We’re using poblanos, stuffing them with pork, queso fresco, and maybe some additional peppers – then we’re going to top them with bread crumbs and roast them.

Next, we’ve gotten in wonderful small Texas hard pears (also from Boggy Creek) – they are earthy and flavorful. We’re going to make a salad with these, Boggy Creek arugula, amaranth greens, and lambsquarters (that’s a lettuce, not the thing that goes bahhhh and jumps over your bed when you are trying to get to sleep) and we will top it with Pure Luck’s Hopelessly Blue blue cheese – should be yum.

Finally – we’re going to bring back our bruschetta, only this time we’re going to do it as a sampler with several different toppings that we’re excited about. We’re probably going to do some or all of the following: Crostini di Fegatini di Pollo (that’s a traditional Italian style chicken liver spread – when you say it, you’re going to want to gesticulate with your hands and splay out your fingers – kind of spit the name out with some ummph), prosciutto & arugula, Texas figs with chevre and pecans, olive tapenade with feta, and whatever else comes to mind. Ask one of us and we’ll tell you which ones we’re making that night.

We loved the pork chop, so we’re going to keep it on the menu. We’re going to keep the tomato pasta as long as we can keep getting local tomatoes from the McCall Farm crew in Blanco. Sardines won’t be available again until September.

Please remember that for now, we’re still doing an abbreviated menu on Wednesdays.

TANGO DANCING ON TUESDAYS

That said, next Tuesday we will be open from 6-10pm. We are going to clear the center tables to make room for Glover Gill who will join us to play tango music for dancers on our piano beginning at 8pm. Should be fun, please join us. We’re going to do a menu that’s a little more low key for Tuesdays and try to get everything prepped for Wednesdays beginning next week.

Come join us for dinner!

Murph

Hi Friends,

Perhaps this week’s missive should be called “WHERE’S BEN?” As I may have mentioned last week, he spent last weekend out in the country near Bertram – so you got my cooking. This week, he’s in New York. How did this happen, you may well ask? Well he’s visiting our dad, who spends most of the summer in a big old house in Saranac Lake – about 10 miles west of Lake Placid in the Adirondacks. It’s pretty nice up there. And it does leave me tallying things up. Let’s see… Judy got 3 weeks in Maine, uhmm Ben’s going to upstate New York for a week. I went to Balmorea for one evening. It was a nice evening, but sheeesh. I’m not sure about all this, and I am definitely next in line for vacation.

But, enough with the whining. Stephanie and I are planning the dinner menu this week, as we don’t expect Ben back until late Thursday night. I shopped at Boggy Creek this morning – what a wonderful place. I got beautiful squash, four different eggplant varieties, Mexican heirloom garlic, beautiful cream (shell) peas, some young fresh arugula, and a boatload of gorgeous new potatoes. They had some purslane and amaranth greens which do well in hot dry conditions, but these were a bit more exotic than I had time to plan for (especially with Ben unavailable) and I decided to take what I had and get back to it.

Checking out, I listened to Carol Ann reflect on how challenging the weather has been for them this summer and the limitations this has placed on their summer offerings with only half my brain – I was thinking how beautiful everything was and about the bounty I had hauled in.

And that lasted until I stopped in Central Market to pick up a few items that we just can’t get locally. I needed some greens to put with the steak, a few green beans, and some radicchio among other things. The green beans had been available locally until about a month ago. Same with the chard. But now the green beans are only available from Canada, and the chard from California. Still, it didn’t really seem like cheating (not that much…) – I mean we just had that stuff here a week or two back. And what the heck – as long as I was buying stuff coming from California anyway – why not spinach and some dandelion greens – I like spinach way better than chard.

By the time I got to the check out stand, I had a big cart full of dark green leafy stuff – all if it trucked or flown in from far away, composed entirely of things that stopped growing here back about May when we jumped into triple digit temperatures and stopped getting any rain. I was face to face with the dilemma that we discuss every week, but that I don’t usually have to deal with so directly. Now I was looking at it in all its color coded pageantry. Exactly how local are we going to insist on being? Especially in mid-August when so much of the leafy green stuff has long since given up the ghost and headed for cooler climes, as all of us would do given then the time and the money.

Long winded way of saying – we’re serving spinach and dandelion greens with the tenderloin this week. Next week Ben’s back – it may be purslane and amaranth greens.

Come eat!

Murph

Hi Friends,

Well.  I’m so proud to be able to say – on this, the first weekend of our second year of cooking this crazy dinner that comes straight from the farm to you, by way of our kitchen – July was our busiest month to date by a factor of almost 20%.  Frankly, I’m just amazed.  People are traveling to cooler climes as fast as they can get out of town.  The economic news hasn’t exactly been all May sunshine and pony rides.  But we’re been building up steam here and getting busier it seems every week.  If it’s this good in July – we can’t wait until the fall.  What can we say – thanks so much for your support.

DINNER THIS WEEKEND

OK – It’s August, and with the weather pattern staying hot and hot.  On the bright side, we getting a bunch of cool stuff in for dinner regardless:  Squash blossoms continue to be quite popular.  Stuffed with local chevre from Water Oak Farm in Bryan, and sautéed in Ben’s special top-secret blossom batter made with Perrier.   Hey it’s got warm goat cheese and it gets sauteed in olive oil – how bad can it be?

Cool cool cool.  Chilled cucumber soup – I know, it sounds kind of funky, but it’s really, really good.  The cucumbers are an Armenian variety grown locally at Boggy Creek Farm in east Austin.  The ceviche which made it to last Saturday’s menu, but didn’t actually set up in time for service, is really finally ready now.  It’s made with gulf black drum, red onions from Boggy Creek, and lots of fresh herbs.  Also we’re going to keep the gulf shrimp salad on the menu – this week we’re going to add a little avocado.

A couple of thoughts on main courses as well – we’ve found a great source for tomatoes even this late in the summer. They’re coming in from McCall Creek Farm in Blanco.  They are beautiful red and ripe.  This makes a certain amount of sense to me, as I drove through there on my way to meet JC (uhmm, that’s JC who’s art currently hangs in the bakery, not JC we all grew up hearing about on Sundays) in Balmorea last Monday, and I have to say – the further west I got, the cooler it seemed (especially at night) and the greener everything was.  They’ve clearly been getting a lot more rain west of us than we have here in town.  Anyway – we’re putting their wonderful tomatoes with some fresh fettucini that Stephanie is making as I write

(that’s Steph, giving me the business – oh hell, that’s not Steph, that’s Nigella Lawson – wonder how in the world that could have happened???)

Oh well – the pasta is also going to get roasted garlic and big handfuls of fresh herbs.  Should be great.  Finally – those of you who we’re in last Saturday may remember we had a brined pork chop from Burgundy Farms on the menu.  It rocked – it’s back – we can only get a few this week, so ask Hall Sheriff if you want one because it won’t be visible on the menu (it’s only visible to those of you who read my emails and are really committed.  For the rest of you – read my emails, no new pork chops).

JUDY IS BACK (AND SO ARE HER TARTS)

Judy is back from (a month in) Maine (yes were jealous – wouldn’t you be?)  She spent this afternoon making her world famous bittersweet Scharffen Berger chocolate tart, plus a really nice lemon tart as well.  We’ve tried our best in her absence, but just couldn’t get it right – maybe it’s just that none of us love sugar as much as she does – who can know… (This means you CW)

TANGO DANCING W/ GLOVER GILL ON TUESDAYS VERY SOON

Great news.  Our friend Claudio – an avid member of the local tango dancing community – approached Glover Gill about doing a regular evening of tango dancing here at TFB.  We met with Glover – he’s aweseome – and he thinks he can make Kara’s grandmother’s old piano sing.  The gameplan to start doing Tuesday nights here at the end of the month, or at the latest, in early September.  I think you can actually get a lesson at the events – if you need one (how hard can it be, long, long, short, short, long – hell anybody can do that) – but I know you can get dinner.  Dancing should start about 8pm.  We’re staffing up and we’ll be open 5 nights a week this fall.

Check the DINNER MENU on our site for a more complete listing of our plans this week.  And seriously – we’re so excited this is working – I’m litterally knocking on wood and pinching myself every 5 minutes – thanks to all of you.

Come Eat,

Murph