We’re planning an early seating around 5:30pm and a later one about 7:30pm. Shoot us an email or click on the button to the right if you’d like a reservation. I’ll have a menu posted shortly.

Ya’ll should drop by. 

Spring is springing in central Texas. Its lovely. Blink and you’ll miss it. In the spirit of a different time latitude when a fall harvest was celebrated before the inevitable long cold winter, we’re going to have a party to enjoy spring before the heat sets in. We also want to celebrate the work we’ve been doing on our farm to table dinner at the bakery. We started in August of 2008 just two nights a week and eventually got open Tuesday – Saturday nights. Starting today we’ll be open Monday nights as well. But, as they say, all work and no play…eaze no good.

Please join us if you’re free this Sunday, April 10th from 4 to 8pm at our space at 2900 Rio Grande. We’re going to have music inside. I’ll play first — with some help from Kevin Witt, Adam Sultan & special guests. Scott Marcus and the Ultimate Losers are next, featuring Terry Lynch and Tim Zeigler among others. We will provide a simple dinner — a selection of mezze, things like braised chickpeas with lamb, baked rice, spring salad, harissa. And…beer. Bring wine, or anything else, you like.

Last, we are starting early in the day so that people can bring their kids. They can play in the garden — we’ll have dinner for them as well. And if you want to bring your guitar or violin (bongoes?) there may just be some music outside as well.

Starting tonight we will be adding Monday evenings to our regular dinner service. As we’ve done darn near nothing to by way of communicating this development, we’re thinking it’s going to be a “soft” opening to say the least. Still, we’ve had a lot of folks inquire about it, and it seems that most Mondays a certain number of folks show up thinking we’re open for dinner – so we’re just going to try it and get started this week. Hope to see at least a few of you in this evening. Betty will be helming the front of the house but I plan to drop by after my Monday evening writing class with Saundra Goldman, so perhaps I’ll see you then.

We have a Groupon expiring this week . Now I must confess that the proceeding statement fills me with no small measure of trepidation and foreboding. Last year we expired the first of these on December 24 (a night we were not even open). I suppose I should have surmised that – people having a tendency toward procrastination – we might see some extra business that week as Groupon holders sought to redeem their vouchers prior to expiration. A kind observer might well have labeled that week a “train wreck” as the the unstoppable force of hopeful last minute Groupon holders collided with the immovable object of our peak holiday season business.

Anyway, I confess that on that fateful week, some number of Groupon holders – faced with a 2+ hour wait for dinner seating – “approached” me about extending the deal. I believe I may responded poorly – possibly something like “YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?!!!” If any of you respondees are reading, I again offer my humble and heartfelt apologies and beg your forgiveness (please don’t Yelp me again). In my defense, I can only plead exhaustion, grouchiness, overwork, an occasionally difficult personality, and the fact that I didn’t really think the thing through very carefully ahead of time.

Live and learn. This time, we’re taking the initiative by the horns (metaphor martini please – mixed, not stirred). Yes I say to you here and now Groupon people of the latter portion of the voucher redemption period – this time we can do better and we shall. By the power vest in me (as co-owner) I hereby extend this Groupon deal and vow to honor your voucher at full value (at least through the end of April). So – you’ve now got an extra night (Mondays) and and extra three weeks. We’re here, and we’re excited to see if we can wind up this promotion a little more gracefully than I may have managed back at the holidays. Please check our website at about 5:30pm most days for an updated menu.

We hosted an event for Saint Stephen’s alumni & their kids this past Sunday evening. It turned out to be a really beautiful evening.

Dear Friends -

Wow.  Back from the farm and If you don’t count the two days I commuted to town and worked, I was out at Rocky Creek for a full 9 days.  By day 8, I was actually reduced to a state of almost full relaxation.  Watched the “super moon” come up over the back forty while carting various children around on the roof of the Tahoe between pit stops to refill my adult beverage.  I do hope Texas’ open container law doesn’t apply to private property, but too late now…  Anyway – I’m excited to be back in town and working on our dinner menu with my brother again.  But just so were clear – ya’ll need to get over here for dinner, because I only do this so we can hang out.  (Remember.  You are here to enrich my work experience – or something like that…)

This week we’re featuring bison short ribs from our dear friends and VFDGs (very frequent dinner guests) Heather & Martin Kohut whose hill country spread, Madroño Ranch (recently labeled Madrano Ranch on our menu – sorry guys) is near Utopia? in the hill country.  Anyway – for those not aware, Martin & Heather write a terrific weekly blog called “Free Range: Food, Nature, Place, and More “, where they tackle the big issues.  You know, things like the meaning of life, March Madness,  Rebecca Black’s viral video (ok I made that one up – if you don’t know what the hullabaloo is about, you can try the Google, but I wouldn’t – and btw Martin, you now have next week’s topic), and usually, the challenges of producing clean sustainable foods.

So we’ve cooked beef short ribs before, but Bison is very lean, and needs to be cooked even more slowly than beef – normally the kind of thing we’d look to do in cooler weather.   But with this warm snap – are we skipping spring this year? – Ben’s planning a riff on a North African or Moroccan “Tajine” style preparation.  “Tajine,” for those who don’t know – I didn’t – is the name of a Moroccan cooking vessel (a kind of clay dish or pot) as well as the name for finished dish – usually a slow cooked vegetable or meat dish featuring dried fruits such as apricots or figs.  Ben slow cooked the bison using “ras el hanout“, a nine spice blend common to North Africa procured from Savory Spice – a new spice store on 6th Street – who’s version of ras el hanout is bright with cinnamon.  Our dish will feature dried apricots and currants in a long grain basmati, along with chili anchos and fresh jalapeno in the sauce giving the dish some heat.  Should be good.

Also this week – look for the return of our chick pea salad appetizer – a very trendy dish I once labeled “chic pea” in another of my infamous misadventures in spelling, until a helpful diner pointed out my shortcomings and set me gently back on the path to right spellingness.  The dish utilizes a light tahini vinaigrette, along with carrot, radishes, scallions, and butter leaf lettuce from three of the fully organic producers that we use – Boggy Creek Farm, Angel Valley Farm, and Johnson’s Backyard Farm.  Hope to see you all this weekend.

bon appetit,

murph

ps – I’m afraid the wisteria may have peaked while I was in hiding at RCF – still looks good though.

Thanks to Ben for standing in the past couple of weeks – I’m climbing back in the saddle this week after several days of struggling with my “motivation” (and a head cold). With any luck, I’ll make it to spring break next week when I plan to take a few well deserved days off out at the ranch. For those of you who’ve been nice enough to butter me up, talking about how missing my writing – I’m working on a longer “news from Texas French Bread” style piece that I’ll send out soon. (But seriously – there are surely easier ways to get free deserts.)

In the mean time, Ben’s been thinking about Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir, Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, which was recently published to rave reviews. Hamilton is the chef-owner of Prune, the much admired New York bistro, and quite a character. (See the review in last Wednesday’s New York Times for more about that.) As it turns out, she also has an MFA in fiction writing and is a gifted writer as well as cook. Ben and I both are looking forward to reading her book. Hamilton’s approach to food is inspiring and rustic, drawing heavily on her time wandering, working and eating her way around Europe. Her cooking is refined but not showy. And more than anything it is personal, based on an unapologetic mix of things she really likes.

And in the spirit of rustic food and sharing things we like, this week we’re offering rabbit rillettes – an earthy appetizer of gently cooked meat transformed into a delicate spread for baguette slices. The rabbit is from Sebastian Bonneau of Countryside Farm, the recipe a riff on Judy Rogers’ (owner of San Francisco’s Zuni Cafe) bright, olive oil infused version of the dish. We’ll serve it with cornichons, olives and caperberries.

Finally, by way of a PS – many many thanks to Austin’s main man in yellow – Mr. Armstrong was back for dinner with a large group of friends last night, and he’s been good enough to promote our dinners pretty regularly over the past few weeks to his 2.8 million twitter followers. If you want to follow along – you can follow @lancearmstrong for Lance and @txfrenchbread for us.

Boggy Creek Farm grows a beautiful variety of succulent spinach during the cold, but not tool cold, months. The current crop has been trickling in for the last couple of weeks (post freeze) and as usual it is gorgeous. I’ve been avoiding offering it on our menu because you need rather a good deal of it in order to make a salad, soup, gratin or saute, and I didn’t want to put it out there only to run out the next day. What to do? We decided to showcase their spinach in an economical fashion — gently wilting it with gulf shrimp, homemade ricotta & lemon zest and serving it with homemade tagliatelle. After picking up spinach from Boggy Wednesday morning, I discovered more beautiful spinach from Springfield Farm in Moulton at the Farmer’s market later that afternoon. So we should have pasta with local spinach for awhile.

We’re also making beet salad again — oven roasted with baby carrots and paired with feta cheese, arugula, walnuts and dill. I’ve noticed that central Texas farmers seem to talk about beets more than some other crops in terms of good years and bad years. You can’t count on them to come in just because you planted some in the soil. You don’t necessarily know what you’re going to get. I don’t know if this was a particularly good or bad year, but they’re here — small but sweet — sourced from several farms but primarily Johnson’s Backyard.

Hope to see many of you later this weekend.

Ben & Murph

click on “dinner” on your left to see the entire menu