Kent Wang

Another trip to Lola's. I had the beef tips that were the special of the night. Very good. Every main course there is of uniformly high quality. More Soul Food Wednesdays at Ben's Longbranch. Meat loaf, collard greens, black-eyed peas, peach cobbler. Meat loaf was very good, fatty and juicy. Yes, I'm gushing about meat loaf. I rarely ever eat meat loaf, and especially not at restaurants, but this was well worth it. Collard greens can come with a lot of pork, if you ask nicely. Peach cobbler was good.

With Reggie's and Lola's closed that day (their hours are rather unpredictable), I resorted to Gene's again. Fried three-seafood (shrimp, oyster, catfish) plate was $15. Quality was OK, but I could have gotten better by spending that $15 at El Chile. These prices are unreasonable and I don't like supporting them by giving them my money. Their seafood gumbo is one of the worst I've had. No vegetables. Yes, no trinity or okra and stingy amounts of shrimp and sausage. The Quality Seafood gumbo has more shrimp (and more tender, too) -- plus four other kinds of seafood! But a gumbo without the trinity is not a gumbo, and a supposed New Orleans-style restaurant cannot call itself that with such a gumbo.

I think that 219 West is one of the better happy hour values. Shrimp ceviche was too sweet. Beef carpaccio was too salty. Mushroom fondue is not actually a fondue but a ramekin of melted cheese, mushrooms and ground beef -- though this was quite tasty. Not the best food, but the bill was dirt cheap.

The downtown farmers market has a new goat cheese vendor, "Maid in the Shade", that sells fresh goat cheese curds. So fresh that they squeak.

By the way, I feel that Casino El Camino is one of the restaurants that best captures the Austin vibe, from the dive-bar like scene to the wacky faux-Aztec patio.

The quest for the Best does serve a practical purpose: if a tourist arrives in Philly and wants to experience what a proper cheesesteak is like then he will only want the Best. Of course, it can get quite out of hand as you've all mentioned.

I don't think Austin is prepared for your voracious appetite, Ling! Stubb's is a famous music venue that also serves barbecue. Go for the music, not the food. When it comes to barbecue and tex-mex in Texas, everyone's got an opinion. What's great about both Sam's and Lola's is the interesting character of the staff. Of course, the food can certainly stand on its own but both of these places are also terrific experiences.

See Menu graphic design thread. A good way to incorporate "fluff" copy while still allowing the reader to quickly scan is to have three sections for each menu item, a title (Steak tartare), short description (Chopped raw beef) and fluff (Super fancy beef from a cow named Daisy). This cocktail menu from Chambar (PDF) in Vancouver uses the three-section strategy, though a bit differently than how a food menu would.

Having read over the eGullet Culinary Institute sessions on egg, I am still uncertain what makes a good egg. I have access to a number of different vendors at the local farmers markets, so let's limit this discussion to farmers eggs and not even consider supermarket eggs -- even if they're fancy organic, free-range, etc. Is diet the most important thing? A few of the vendors I've asked say that their hens eat mostly bugs but they do give them some feed. Is a diet with lower percentage of feed better? Some vendors only sell a few dozen eggs a week while others produce many times that, a few are even egg-only vendors. Will a smaller producer tend to have better eggs? The eGCI lesson has this to say about color: If one considers only farmers, who are not as likely to manipulate their diet solely to add color as an egg factory might, is darker yolk color a good indicator of quality?

From the Gumbo, Jambalaya, Etouffee, Creole thread, fifi wrote: I bought a pack of frozen crawfish that was labeled as "with fat", and the fat was not packed separately. It was produced in China and the packing date was 14 months ago. When I opened it up it had a terrible formaldehyde smell and I could not bear to eat it. I went back to the retailer, a local outfit, but they claim that frozen crawfish over a year old was perfectly normal and that they have had not any complaints. They even put the same product in the soups that they sell all day -- and which I'm quite fond of. I eventually coaxed a refund from them, but I have a few questions: Is frozen crawfish over a year old suspect? Did I just happen to get a bad pack? Should crawfish be packed with fat separately, as fifi writes above? Is there an article somewhere that can back this up? Any other tips for buying frozen crawfish tails?

Wouldn't happen to be one of the winemakers we happen to have on this forum?

I've seen these at several restaurants in Austin. They come in red, white and blue. Where do they come from? Ace Mart or Sysco? Any restaurant that gets these candle holders suggests to me that they aren't very creative. At a cheap restaurant, that's fine, but at a place that's obviously spent a lot of money on hiring an interior designer these candle holders look terribly out of place.

Mick Vann of the Austin Chronicle has reviewed Shanghai: "Shanghai Restaurant is our new favorite for dim sum in town. If the name sounds familiar, it's because the Yim family helped introduce Austin to dim sum at the original Shanghai (1980-'96, at the corner of Koenig and Guadalupe) and at Marco Polo before they sold it five years ago." Looks like he found some good non-dim sum items: "Crabmeat and fish-maw soup ($5.95/$8.95) Ma-po dofu ($7.95, soft tofu with pork) Salt-and-pepper scallops ($12.95)"

Czech Stop in West. My favorite thing about this place is just how fresh the bread is. The fillings and sausages are OK, though a bit commercial, about you would expect.

Hewitt is due north of Austin. Luling and Lockhart are south and south-east, so would be out of your way, though Lockhart is only 30 miles away. You could also take a detour from Hewitt to Austin by going to Taylor for Louie Mueller's which I think is slightly better than any of the Lockhart places. Taylor is northeast of Austin, so you would go about 20 miles out of the way to do it. But if you just want to stay in Austin, Sam's BBQ is the place to go, and it's open very late. I'd say the Sam's is in my top ten, while Mueller's and Lockhart are in my top five. Definitely do Lola's before Hoover's.

The kombucha thread reminds that when my mother was in medical school, towards the end of the Cultural Revolution when they opened up the universities again, tea was rationed. So her and dorm-mates would collect together their sugar -- which was also rationed, though not as strictly -- and make kombucha. My mother had forgotten all about it until I took her to a farmers market in Austin and saw that Americans were now drinking it as a health supplement. She thought it amusing that people in a land of plenty would resort to drinking kombucha.

I wonder how much some of these bottles cost to produce. The Milagro and the Pusser's Trafalgar look quite expensive. Just a guess, but maybe $5 each?

I'm curious about this as well. Here in Texas, Spec's has Bols, Dekuyper, Hiram Walker and Gaetano. Which of these would be the best?

There is a relevant Buddhist story about the difference between heaven and hell. Here is one retelling. I first read it in a book which had two great illustrations of the story, but, alas, I wasn't able to find these images with a quick Google search.

Is vermouth more commonly consumed by itself in Spain than it is in the US? Was it a Spanish brand? It seems like there are no more than a dozen vermouth brands available here.

Alcohol sales go up, and sales of everything else go up as well. Everybody wins!

In Chinese cuisine, food is served "family style", i.e. dishes are shared by all. Sometimes when picking up a piece of, say fish, from a serving dish the piece does not break off and one needs the assistance of another pair of chopsticks to help separate the piece. In such cases, whoever is sitting nearest is expected to lend a hand, and sometimes with particularly tricky situations a three-way assist is required. Another common case is flipping a fish, which usually requires two people. Westerners may find this practice distasteful but I think it strengthens relationships -- like a team-building exercise, if you will. I wonder if it may also considered uncouth in very formal dining situations in China.

Are there macro producers of charcuterie in Spain like Boar's Head in the US? I imagine in a culture that is more educated about charcuterie, and a land filled with superb charcutiers, a macro brand would have difficulty gaining market share like Boar's Head has done in America.

These two are held at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. Photo by peellden. From Wikipedia: "The "Jade Cabbage", a piece of jade carved into the shape of a head of cabbage, with an insect attached. The fame attached to this piece is due to the masterful utilisation of natural colour variations in the jade to recreate colour variations in the cabbage." Photo by Asiir. From Wikipedia: "The "meat-shaped stone", a piece of agate, the strata of which are cleverly used to create a likeness of a piece of pork cooked in soy sauce." I think both of these pieces reveal much about the place food has in Chinese culture. Can you imagine seeing anything like this in ancient Greek or Egyptian art?

Can anyone describes what the resulting tuna is like? How does it compare to water-poached? From lots of experience confiting duck, you might want to try using a jar with high sides instead of a pan.