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I agree, but the dumpling soup (which is actually dumplings in soup) there isn't the same as soup dumplings that I believe dangerpirate is referring to which is actually dumplings with meat and soup in them not unlike and more rustic version of grant achatz's black truffle explosion. haha. Watch out there, though, there's been two robberies in that complex over the last month and car hijacking at hong kong 4 market. The whole community up around there I've heard is getting really nervous. ← yes, those soup dumplings from san dong are just pork dumplings in a beef-based soup. we should probably start calling "soup dumplings" xiaolongbao to end any confusion. In related matters, i just read this call for a Dumpling Revolution on Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2150499/fr/rss/

lai lai's suuuuuucks. my entire childhood was spent in houston looking for halfway decent soup dumplings. i never found them. if you do please let me know as they don't even try here in austin.

it's open to the public. my friend made reservations for us last month.

I want to say the bison cut was the tenderloin. I could be wrong though. I was pretty wasted by the 3rd course b/c i think i had 5 glasses of wine by then. It took me a long time to research the wines and the food artisans that spoke for towards the end of the meal because at some point i just forgot to pay attention. Thank goodness my friends remembered most of it. Anyways, I've had bison before, but never as bbq. this was very smokey and it was very very lean. It was a bit overdone for my tastes, but I could taste a bit of sweetness to it that beef lacks but overall very similar to beef. It was not gamey or heavy at all which i think most people would expect. I personally prefer more fat on my meat if i'm going to go that route, so i don't know if i would choose it over beef. i love me some charred fat on a grilled rib eye. the lamb were ribs. those were mighty tasty, and fatty.

A friend treated me to a wonderful meal at Boggy Creek Farm hosted by Outstanding in the Field. Jim Denevan, founder of Outstanding in the Field, and his team tour the country sourcing ingredients from local farms and food artisans and cook next to the soil that grew the ingredients in your dinner. After a tour of Boggy Creek Farm (in gorgeous weather), we sat down to a menu designed and prepared by Terry Conlan from Lake Austin Spa & Resort. We had the pleasure of dining next to Carol Ann of Boggy Creek Farm and got to hear her stories of the history of her home, the farm, the great chicken massacre from a neighborhood pit bull (and a dachsund!), and her thoughts on the future of organic farming and produce. Between courses, the actual farmers, winemaker, and food artisans that provided the ingredients gave a brief presentation on their respective businesses and the products they make. It was a great showcase of what the Texas Hill Country has to offer. Here are a few photos. An entire photo set can be found here. Jim Denevan and his fake cowboy hat The tour bus Larry Butler and Carol Ann Sayle give us a tour of Boggy Creek Farm the dinner table Chenin Blanc from Fall Creek Vineyards Beet Napoleon Pure Luck Dairy chevre Berdoll Pecan Farm pecans Stonewall, Texas jams Watermelon Gazpacho Texas watermelon Boggy Creek Farm cucumbers and peppers Tecolote Farm peppers and garlic Bella Vista Ranch olive oil Wine: Fall Creek Vineyards Chenin Blanc Shrimp Totopos Local organice blue corn tortillas Texas Gulf shrimp Hairston Farm tomatoes Sgt. Pepper's habanero salsa Texas cabbage Wine: Fall Creek Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc Salad Amador Farms lettuce Pederson Farm bacon Pure Luck Dairyblue cheese Boggy Creek Farm okra Lamb's Texas cornmeal Hairston Farm tomatoes Wine: Fall Creek Vineyards Chardonnay Squash Casserole and Blackeyed Peas Boggy Creek Farm summer squash Gonzales, Texas oyster mushrooms Falfurrias Creamery butter Full Quiver Farm raw cheddar McKenzie homegrown blackeyed peas Tecolote Farm peppers Hairston Farm shallots Bella Vista Ranch olive oil BBQ (this is Texas after all) Loncito's Texas lamb Thunder Head bison* Broken Arrow Ranch venison sausage New Canaan blackberry preserves Stubb's barbecue sauce Tecolote Farm garlic Wine: Fall Creek Vineyards Granite Reserve *The menu said Thunder Head Bison, but I think they meant Thunder Heart Bison Pear Crisp Lightsey Farms pears Berdoll Pecan Farm pecans Falfurrias butter Amy's Mexican Vanilla ice cream Wine: Fall Creek Vineyards Twin Springs Sweet White

i second missamy for club deville. they make good dirty gin martinis. the bar at chinatown (above musashino) makes excellent martinis as well. i don't know of any place that doesn't offer the fruity drinks. i've been to the 1920s bar several times with a friend that frequents it. it is considered a 'gay friendly' bar and it seems they pride themselves on being a martini bar with extensive concoctions. i've never been disappointed. guero's has the best margaritas in town i think. not sweet, which is how i like them. if you want to get hammered, go monday night to Jorge's on Hancock and Burnet. they have $3 happy hour margaritas that will punch you in the face. for some reason the frozen are stronger than the rocks... they are like rocket fuel and will do you in.

i also usually just stir fry greens with garlic and a pinch of salt. my mom will stir fry vegetables with some dried shrimp for some extra flavor. my aunt stir fries bok choy and other veggies with a small piece broken off of a ham boullion cube (let it dissolve when you add the touch of water to steam fry). it's really good... but really it's just he msg. no need to add salt if you do that. very very tasty. water/swamp spinach (kong xin tsai) stir fried with fermented tofu is a classid dish.

kent, did you notice if any of the restaurants in the center were open yet? i went back repeatedly for a while with no changes, except for that sweet cafe shop. i haven't been there in a few weeks now. i'm anxious for that noodle house to open. i hope a full on chinese bakery will find its way in that center. the grocery market itself i think is rather disorganized. i'm not sure i'd go there to do any of my regular shopping as i don't really buy any products or ingredients that aren't already available at the smaller MT market right by my house. their seafood counter looks great and is always bustling on the weekend but i saw several diseased tilapia (looked like fin rot) in the live tanks once on a weekday, which was disappointing. i hope they clean up their tanks.

i've read/heard people say the pancake is more traditional. but i'm not sure where they got that information. i prefer... both!

i took my mom to italy once and she is the type of chinese mom that can only eat non-chinese food for 1 day. so we ate at a lot of chinese restaurants in rome, florence, venice. i also ate at one in a small town once when i was studying abroad. they were all terrible. then again, we didn't know where to go.

we have a handful of fine dining restaurants but nothing really in comparison to houston or dallas though. some off the top of my head: driskill grill uchi wink aquarelle jeffrey's hudson's on the bend the quality of the food at some of these places is questionable, for instance i've heard mixed reviews about aquarelle and jeffrey's, but the prices definitely reflect what you'd consider fine dining then we have a lot of more casual "fine" dining restaurants with less creative menus but still a bit pricey like: capitol brasserie cafe josie fonda san miguel chez nous sam paio's some tapas bars, wine bars and cuban and south american restaurants are becoming very popular. lots of wine bar type places are popping up in random neighborhoods. i think you should be able to find a good place to settle in. but i'd say the general consensus is austinites are eaters, not diners, as it should be .

my guess is it's pretty accurate. my mom is from taiwan and i grew up eating the steamed ground pork patty with salted fish instead of salted egg, but i've seen versions with the salted egg, that's how my uncle in taiwan makes it. and my mom loves fresh bamboo with mayonnaise. we couldn't really get fresh bamboo in the states when i was a kid, so we ate steamed broccoli with mayonnaise instead. i don't know about blood clams but one of my favorite dishes in taiwan is the marinated clams served cold. probably something similar to what you describe above. the baked prawns dish sounds fancy. and chinese will pretty much stew/braise anything in a soy based sauce.

street signs are in Chinese (and english) in the "chinatown" area on Bellaire.

Yup, I call it "catchup with chunks". That's why I usually order the anti-salsa, a side of jalapeno ranch. ← I've been having trouble finding good salsa at any Mexican restaurant in this town, not just the chains. Either it is flavorless, too chunky, or just down-right store-bought. How can it be that a place like East Side Cafe has better salsa than most Mexican food places? So weird. ← I prefer fresh salsas, where it's not obvious anything's been cooked or previously canned. I agree that Chuy's is like tomato sauce. Have you ever noticed there are chunks of carrot in their red salsa sometimes? I think it really is just a can of tomato soup (with carrots) MissAmy,these are the salsas I like in Austin, maybe you can try some time: Taqueria Arandas #3 (my absolute favorite. i'd imagine the other locations are similar if not exactly the same) Taqueria Los Jalisciences Las Cazuelas Pappasito's I actually really like Texas French Bread's salsa but it comes in those teensy little cups, it's ridiculous. Jorge's (but sometimes too salty)

not really in austin, but i really enjoy Cafe 290 out in Manor. they have tasty pies and typical "yellow food"... meaning chicken fried steak, chicken and dumplings, fried this and mashed that, everything is covered in gravy and comes with a big basket of delicious cornbread. it's all to die for, literally. a great appetizer to share with friends is their Chicken Fried Universe, which is pretty much what it sounds like but disguised as healthy because it's all fried veggies.

T.C.'s Lounge is this dive blues bar on the east side. They have some of the best fried catfish I have ever tasted. The options are fried catfish or fried chicken wings for $6. It comes in a styrofoam takeout container and with a horrendous side salad, toast, and what looks like to me, ore-ida fries. But man is that catfish good. Also their beer is so so cold, I don't know how they get it so cold. No liquor, but they sell setups so you can bring your own. T.C.'s is the only old school blues bar left in Austin. You will also meet/see some of the most interesting people and see some of the craziest stuff on the dancefloor, in all of Austin. It's a guaranteed good time. Try to go out there one night and hear some blues and support them and savor their yummy catfish.

yum! love dumplings! check out my pleat-folding method here: http://www.holyshitake.com/archives/2004/0..._dumplings.html

here here, i would like to see pics as well there should be a thread just of photos of funky looking food.

I dug a little deeper tonight and found that under the crust top, the fermented tofu was moist and in a red liquid. I took the bull by the horns and tasted it - it's something like very aged cheese that has gone past its prime - I've eaten that before with no ill effects. By tomorrow I should know whether I've survived this. The block are in large pieces,compared to the fermented tofu I've had before. There's a kind of gelatinous coating on it that I didn't eat. I don't expect to die, but still, I wonder if this is the way it is designed to be, or is this just beyond its prime. Has anyone actually eaten this before? --PHAGE ← i think maybe it's ok to eat. the dried top layer kind of freaks me out, but as long as you don't see any mold growing, i think it should be ok. try to scrape out and dispose of that top dried layer thoroughly though.

if it's dried out i probably wouldn't eat it. not only has it been exposed to air, but it probably isn't very creamy, which wouldn't be very good to eat.

i don't think that is tofu. looks like Kao Fu to me, which is wheat gluten.

i don't know any formal differences but i would say from my experience taiwanese food is not as elaborate as other chinese cuisines. cooking methods and ingredients are usually simpler and integrates other influences like japanese and korean as mentioned before. it's also innovatively rustic where resources were scarce... like using corn or taro as the starch source for congee when rice wasn't available. lots of soups made from bones and leftover vegetables. it's not as spicy as sichuan cuisine, but definitely spicier than some northern cuisines like shanghai mentioned earlier. when i think of taiwanese food i think of street food, snack foods, small side dishes like pickled veggies, fried peanuts and anchovies, thousand year old egg or a block of tofu with some soy and chile sauce poured on top. also the "bien dang" or taiwanese bento boxes you can get at convenience stores like 7-11s which are usually a simple fried pork chop, pickled vegetables and a soy-braised egg. i kind of think of it as the "fast food" of chinese food.

Where can you get better Italian food for less? Even the large chains, with their Americanized cream-sauce-on-everything and giganitc portions aren't cheaper than Mandolas. Places like Vinny's may be cheaper, but the food certainly isn't better. Really good Italian places like Andiamo and Asti may be better, but the prices certainly reflect that. I'm genuinely asking where you are finding Italian food that is cheaper and better than Mandola's. I'm really, really curious. ← I was specifically thinking of lunch at La Traviata, Enoteca and Siena. Also their gelato prices are outrageous, although their pistachio flavor is pretty good. But i'm partial to Gelato's dark chocolate gelato. I also would group Mandola's with the Americanized Italian restaurants. It's owned by Carrabba's.

Don't forget Banh Mi. Make sure to go to Givral's in Houston for those.

i'm not into it. besides the decor being horrendous, i find some of their food a bit bland. the pizza isn't bad though, but i'm a sucker for thin crust. i've yet to try any of their pasta dishes. i also think it's a little overpriced when you can get better for less at other places in town.