Simple Pleasures: Blue Dahlia

Blue Dahlia exudes charm, from the battered wooden sign on the sidewalk out front to the enclosed arbor patio at the back. An early entrant into the East 6th renaissance, Blue Dahlia has built a compelling mix of simple, French-inspired dishes, heavily reliant on seasonal local produce. A second location is set to launch in Westlake on June 8, 2012 (just a few days from now) and I think the approach that keeps it so packed on the East Side will work well on the West Side, too.

The small indoor space is dominated by two massive community tables made from giant polished slabs of warm, gnarled wood. Smaller tables are fit close together, and a long counter supports shelves covered in loaves of fresh bread. It's a tight squeeze, but thanks to the focused, attentive, and generally fabulous staff it never feels chaotic; more well-managed bustle.

The menu is varied, with a handful items loosely bucketed into breakfast items, beautiful open faced sandwiches, salads, and a sweet selection of inexpensive dinner entrees.

Everything's good, but the basic rule for me so far: the less ambitious the dish, the more fantastic it is. It's not that these folks don't turn out pretty impressive stuff - it's just that the most inspired flavor comes from the core elements they work with. As an example - the tomato gazpacho, basically a coursely chopped mix of a Johnson's Backyard Garden basket is far more impressive than the cream-based white gazpacho, a more finessed mix of cream and cucumbers that doesn't really come together.

Likewise for the entrees - where Blue Dahlia lets the vegetables speak for themselves, it's a thing of beauty - the ratatouille is tangy and deeply satisfying, but the bed of Israeli cous cous and mixed greens, and the shaved Parmesan on top felt like afterthoughts. In the case of the greens, a pretty distant afterthought - lovely little sprigs of baby romaine wilted into squish against the heat of the vegetables. I would have been happier eating that ratutouille in a simple bowl with a chunk of crusty french bread to mop up the amazing flavor.

The tartines I've tried have been more consistent - goat cheese and tapenande is simple and on point, served on a rustic slate board on slightly spongy, wonderfully dense whole wheat bread with a bright shock of roasted red pepper. The combination of astringent and creamy in that sandwich is brilliant, as it is in the savory chicken salad.

Blue Dahlia is many things. It is beautiful. It is welcoming. It is phenomenally well staffed. Food here is made with love, and made with some of the best ingredients I've seen in a town stuffed with farm-to-market eateries. But for all that I love about Blue Dahlia, it's not a place where food is deeply transformed - there's nothing fussy, nothing genius about it. It's a place to go to enjoy a glass of wine and a slate of artisanal cheese, on a patio that is bearable even in the heat, exactly the breezy neighborhood restaurant you wish would open up down the street from you.

A Houndstooth Cupping

A month or so ago, out of the blue, I got an email from Jodi Bart asking if I wanted to partner up with Houndstooth to host a coffee cupping for Austin Food Blogger Alliance members. It was difficult to respond with appropriate decorum. Did I want to take Cindy Crawford to my middle school prom? HELL YES I WANT TO PARTNER UP WITH HOUNDSTOOTH FOR A CUPPING EVENT.

So I did. And it was unreasonably, awesomely, fantastically, fun.

Sunday night at 6:00, about 20 of us filtered in and took seats around the shop, scanning the room, trying to connect actual faces to twitter profile pics and profile pics to blogs. On the counter, there were apples; as Sean's brother Paul ground coffee for the cupping, we tasted them. At first, they tasted like... apples. And when we tried to describe the tastes to each other, a lot of us found ourselves coming up blank, going back for second tries. Soon, we started to isolate textures, and sweetness, and citrus flavors, and the bitterness of peel. And then we were ready.

The first step in the cupping is fragrance. This is the part where you stick your nose into a juice glass with a couple of tablespoons of fresh ground coffee at the bottom and inhale. It was a little embarrassing to be in public with one's nose quite so deep in a glass, but it was all so intoxicating that I stopped caring by the time I got to the Burundi. There were blueberry and cherry scents, notes of balsa wood, pepper, chili, almonds. And the fragrance shifted, as the coffee sat, even over a few minutes.



We compared notes, and then shifted from fragrance, when the beans were dry, to the more difficult task of aroma, which is what a coffee smells like when it's wet. It's much harder to get a sense for the aromas here, so there's a whole process of "breaking the crust" when going in for the aroma notes, involving a back and forth and book swish of a spoon after the hot water was poured over the grounds. Sean sort of nailed it on this one when he said mostly it'll just smell hot.

At this point, we were all revved up and ready to get tasting, and Sean gave us a good demo there too. To taste, you slurp. Full on, snooty wine style, slurp. It makes a floppy wet sound sound, kind of like an air zerbert. I no longer felt like the fragrance was the embarrassing part of the event. But the reward for the slurp was the tastes that came flooding in from these coffees. The Mad Cap Gishamwana Rwanda started with flash of sharp almost lemon flavor and the sunk into a silky resonating chocolate. The Gatare Burundi, from Handsome in LA, had a smoother flavor, woody and full bodied, without more subtle changes from start to middle to end. We got almonds from the Finca Nueva Armenia Guatemala, butter from the El Gavilan Ecuador, and a big fat blueberry pie from the Peru all from Counter Culture. Standing around each coffee in little clusters, we'd slurp and compare notes - someone said wood, and someone else said wet wood, and someone else connected that with popsicle stick, and as subjective as this process is, a description resonated, and we could all taste it.

Popular vote was a close run between the Burundi and the Rawanda, but the Rawanda eeked out the victory (sorry Maggie), and Paul set about brewing us all cups of it using a few of the shop's Clevers. We sipped, and sighed, and caught up with each other a bit before packing up our cameras and note pads and heading back out into the warm night and home.

We are novices - most of us anyway - and we have a lot more to learn. We focused on 3 of the dimensions in a real cupping - fragrance, aroma, and flavor. There's acidity to consider next time, and body, aftertaste, and balance. And the entire SCAA flavor wheel to master. So thank you once again Sean and Houndstooth for having us, and Jodi, who I think is now officially my coffee addiction enabler. Can't wait until next time.

Looking for more cupping action? Mike Galante and Farmstress Maggie, a couple of my AFBA compatriots already have posts on the event up as well:
http://blog.mikegalante.com/2012/houndstooth-hosts-the-afba/
http://frommaggiesfarm.blogspot.com/2012/05/coffee-cupping-at-houndstooth-austin.html

Head to Head: MightyFine vs P. Terry's

Austin has never suffered for want of burgers and fries. We've had Dirty Martin's since 1926, and places like Dan's, Sandy's and Top Notch followed, serving up mega-greasy, super delicious burgers of unknown provenance.

Now there's a new crop - led by P. Terry's and Mighty Fine - that have taken the I-know-the-guy-that-grew-that-tomato ethos and applied it to the formula that worked so well for the classic burger joints. Tiny menu, cooked to order, fresh made everything.

I can't afford the calories for a full run down of the Austin Burger scene, and I don't want to invite the hate mail that would come from comparing the new guys to classics. But I do have the completely subjective data to support a head-to-head throwdown for the new big dogs in town: P. Terry's and Mighty Fine.

The Place

P Terry's Wm Cannon Location

Mighty Fine is run by the same folks that run Rudy's, and it shows. Mighty Fine is just this side of a warehouse on ambiance. Folding metal chairs line long tables with plastic red-check table cloths. Oddly, it works. Though it's bare-bones, there's something appealing about the function before form approach.

P Terry's couldn't more different. Each of their locations shares an early-60's modern vibe, underscored by exposed wood, clean lines, and high-style architecture. While some details fall through the cracks (the sign on the trash at the Arbor Trails location is in Comic Sans, standing out like a half-empty can of bud light floating in an infinity edge pool) - the place in general holds together beautifully.

Advantage: P. Terry's.

The Burger

Mighty Fine Junior Cheeseburger Yeller

I have eaten many a Mighty Fine burger and each is identical, down to the orientation of the bacon and the size of the tomato slice. They are also delicious. The burger itself is thick and fresh, simply spiced, and each topping they do is right on the money - especially the crisp bacon. I like the Junior size best - the full burger is a lot to handle.

P Terry's Cheeseburger

P Terry's burger? Not so much. While the toppings are great (especially the tomatoes), the meat is thin and cooked to a well-done char. Together with the sometimes compressed spongy bread, there's just not a lot of burger to this burger. In the immortal words of that old lady from my childhood: "Where's the beef"

Advantage: Mighty Fine

The Fries

Mighty Fine Fries

Mighty Fine has the best crinkle cut fries I've ever had. This is not saying much, since most crinkle cut fries come from a a freezer bag and taste like frost bite. These are cut fresh, and they're not bad at all. My main complaint is the crisp - cooked to beautiful color and well salted, they're just a little floppier than I like to see in a fry.

P. Terry's fries are better on good days and worse on bad days. More conventionally cut, these are thin little bundles of joy when they're hot that lose their charm quickly as they cool down. Still, good stuff on both counts.

Advantage: Mighty Fine

The Winner: Mighty Fine. P Terry's has a lot going for it, but you can't eat a pretty little mid-century knock off chair. For the stuff you can eat, fries, burgers, even shakes, it's a clear victory for Mighty Fine.

That said, both have place at the table, and I am happy they both exist. I like that cheap fast food is made with attention to detail and serious consideration of where it's from and how it's raised. And I like that our local places, even in this little wisp of a niche market, still knock the socks off of the national competition.

Mighty Fine:        |      P Terry's: