Monday, March 2 2009
Keeping Austin Weird
Whew, that's certainly a relief! Actual sign on Congress Avenue store.
Gadzooks, what a funny sort of week it's been. We flew from blowing snow and icy roads at 0ºC to absurdly warm sunshine at 35ºC. Locals assured me that it was unusually warm for Texas at this time of year, and I hope that's true because if it's not, they'll be able to melt lead on the sidewalks by August.
The local slogan is 'Keep Austin Weird', but don't let that faze you: they're not actually serious about their weirdness. It's a sop to the rest of Texas to the anomaly that Austin represents on the body politic. It's a little slice of liberal values (ha ha, remember when them were fightin' words? What a difference an election makes!) in the heart of a very conservative state that has remained fiercely independent of any sort of government oversight or intervention since it was established from bits of this and that, including Mexico.
Like a lot of state or provincial capital cities, Austin is heavy on entertainment and services and light on industry and manufacturing. As a consequence, the city has many fantastic restaurants and establishments of pleasure and excess, some of whom I was fortunate enough to visit. My long-suffering spouse deserved a break from my constant absence (lack of presence?) so I cashed some frequent flyer miles and brought her with me a day early, so we could spend some time looking around.
The first day we spent wandering up and down South Congress street (the real Austin, as the graffiti reminded me) noshing and shopping for nick-nacks and gew-gaws. Congress is a cool and artsy shopping district of galleries, specialty clothing and local crafts. The last time I was in Austin I stayed in the Austin Motel, right in the middle of the cool area–I highly recommend it as an example of a rapidly vanishing class of lodging establishments, the comfortable and enjoyable roadside motel.
Always trust food from a truck. Would a truck lie to you?
It being late afternoon, we were all come over esurient, and decided to partake of a bit of Tex-Mex fare. We wound up at Torchy's Taco Truck, in the Trailer Park eatery just over from Congress. It's a grounded panel van on a seemingly vacant lot with some trees and picnic tables and a gigantic, never-ending (but fast-moving) line of folks who can't get enough of the incredibly good/slightly goofy food.
A short break to explain to folks living in civilisation, where one can get authentic tacos, tortas, and other Mexican delicacies. Places like Canada are bereft of this deliciousness, and most folks have only ever been exposed to chain store Mexican food and goop out of packages and cans masquerading as 'Mexican'. When confronted with the real thing, we lose our minds and gorge.
And we did: Baja shrimp, a trailer park special and a democrat–three tacos with all the good trimmin's, the first with plump prawns, the second with deep-fried chicken (sooo good!) and the third with barbecued pork and sauce. While we ate I counted at least 80 people coming in or picking up to-go orders. Looks like they're going to be around for a while.
Everything's bigger in Texas
South Congress is also the location of Allen's Boots, where I felt I had a meeting with destiny. I've longed (perhaps atavistically, reaching back to my childhood games of invading ungulate herder and displaced aboriginals) for a nice pair of cow-person footwear. Fortunately for my wallet (the nice alligator pair I had my eye on were a thousand dollars–eeek!) cow folk have little tiny feet, and there were no 12 EEE's to be found, although I was assured that the day they caught an alligator the size of a PT boat I'd be the first on the list for footwear.
Stevie Ray was pretty tall for a guitarist. Nice hat, though.
I did wind up with a pair of Stetson hats. No, not the cowboy sort: one is a straw affair, perfect for beaches and plains, and the other is a pretty darn nice felt fedora, suited to cooler weather, and both were very cheap compared to reptilian footwear. After years of scolding from my doctor about sunblock, I've finally become a hat guy, but with my enormously megalocephalic noggin it's a rare thing to find a hat that fits me, and even rarer to find one that actually looks good on me (according to my wife: I'm not allowed an opinion on these things or I wind up wearing a hat that looks like an angry haystack is attacking my skull).
No, you don't have to be a sissy, but it doesn't hurt anything.
After many hours of walking it was time for a break and a restorative. We wound up at Cissi's Wine Bar. It's a nice joint, very modern inside, with an attached delicatessen and some very nice snack items, cheeses and antipasti-type stuff. The missus had a glass of sparkling rosé and I had a Puligny Montrachet (Burgundy, red in this case). The bubbly was fabulous–crisp and juicy, and my wine was a grand bargain, but they served it way too warm! I got an askance look when I asked for it to be decanted to a beaker and chilled for ten minutes. I'll never understand why someone will go to all the trouble of finding a great red wine and then serve it at 75 degrees–it can only taste of alcohol and flabby tannins at that point.Still, full points for a nice little spot to people watch and get off your dogs for a few moments.
Mmm, doesn't that look appealing?
After that it was time to prep for the conference. In addition to my lecture on Operations Excellence, I was doing my party trick of component tasting, where I match a red and a white wine to solutions of distilled water and acid, tannin, oak, alcohol and sugar. It's pretty enlightening to see exactly how these different elements come to make up the balance (or, in the case of the wines I deliberately chose) the imbalance of a wine's flavour profile. I had to run out to Austin Homebrew to pick up some oak chips. I knew my pal Forrest was otherwise occupied so I slid in, trying to be anonymous. No such luck, I was spotted and recognised! Not that it's a burden. As usual, the crew at Austin are enthusiastic, engaged and otherwise switched on about making beer and wine. I felt bad about not spending much time with them (thus the attempted sneak) but this conference was about Wine On Premise stores–I'll make it up to them in Ohio in a couple of months.
Friends from foreign lands!
I had arranged to hook up with some of my Austin friends. I don't know what's in the water in Texas, but it sure makes for hospitable, fun people. Chester and Julie-Beth couldn't make it this go-round, busy with their families, but I hope I get to see them next trip. I was lucky enough to round up Adam and Jen. Adam's a local but Jen made the trip in from Houston that day. We went out to Iron City for barbecue. You've got to like a joint that's set up in an old foundry/smithy and hasn't seen the need for a décor update. And they don't need it either: the barbecue (a religious foodstuff in Texas) was great, tender, smoky, rich and so mouth-watering they should issue a permit to sell the stuff to the uninitiated.
After eating approximately half a herd of cattle, swine and a flock of chickens worth of smokey goodness we repaired to The Ginger Man pub. It has a great beer list, with plenty of happy, hoppy, sudsy ales and lagers to delight a fellow like me. Unfortunately it was crowded, and there were few seats available. What there was, was Chris Colby, my editor from Winemaker Magazine. I was stunned: what were the odds of seeing him there. Then I recalled just how much he likes his beer, and thought the odds were pretty much even of spotting him in Austin's premiere beer-bar on any night of the week. Good to see you again, Chris, see you in Napa in a month or so.
Okay, their wine section is bigger than my supermarket. What am I doing wrong?
We repaired back to the hotel and whiled away the evening with gossip and stories and fortunately a pile of random beers I had obtained earlier that day from Whole Paycheque, er, Whole Foods. I always get that confused. It's the first time I've ever spent an extended period shopping in a WF (I had to go there to buy the distilled water and lingered a bit) and I have two observations: first, any food store that lets you buy a beer of the shelf and drink it while you shop has my vote for brilliant marketing idea of the year, and second, Whole Foods is not a grocery store. My American friends who shop there often remark about how expensive it is, and how while the quality is good, nothing comes cheap. This is because there's no ingredients at whole foods: just a teeny little produce section (with lots of bagged and prepped veggies and salads) and an enormous number of beautiful and tempting prepared and portioned meals and finished goods like entrees, soups, vegetable dishes, starches and whatnot.
Whole Foods is a forty thousand square foot delicatessen. No wonder it gets pricey–you're paying to have someone else cook your dinner! Still, I'd love to have one in my neighbourhood. I'd probably eat 90% of my away-from-home meals there, although a lot of them would be chips and salsa, if they let me drink beer every time I shopped.
Eleven thumbs up and sixteen stars. Nom!
The next day was prep and meetings, but we managed a very nice brunch at Curra's Mexican grill. The food is fabulous–again, we're poor, pale, deprived gringo-folk, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that their food is beyond a lot of places I've eaten that charge ten times as much. The huge line-ups to get in (which, fortunately, moved very fast) attested to this, as well as the grin and happy tummy rubbings from folks on the way out of the place. Try the Conchinita, which is a plate with Puerco Pibil on it. Nom!
After seeing some more folks, we decided to hit Ginger Man one more time to see if we could squeeze in. Luckily it was a quiet night, and we snagged a corner with lots of couches and comfy chairs. In addition to Jim, Shannon, Steve, Grant, Dan and his missus we ran into Edward from Austin Homebrew, a happy circumstance indeed. Edward mentioned he was in that night because Charlie Papazian had twittered him to say he would be dropping in.
The grand old man. Charlie is nice too.
If that name doesn't ring a bell, shame on you. Charlie was right at the tip of the wedge of the consumer-made beverage industry. Almost thirty years ago he wrote a book called 'The Joy of Home Brewing' and it helped kick off a revolution in home beer making. He founded the American Homebrew Association and Zymurgy magazine and today he's still involved in the industry, hobby and lifestyle. As he once said, 'Beer is my business, and I'm late for work.'
I haven't sat down with him for thirteen years (oh, I'm old now) since the 'Flavor Reigns' microbrewer's conference in Seattle. It was great to catch up on old times and mutual acquaintances, and share some new stories. Here's to you Charlie, long may you reign.
Shannon from Hawaii. His diligence is only exceeded by his sobriety. Har!
After that Sunday was serious time: my lecture went pretty well, talking about inventory management, premise through-put and operational efficiency in processing. I try to keep it lively, and from the questions and responses I got from folks, I've got a good feeling that they'll take away some ideas to apply in their own shops. After the component tasting (some surprised looks there–most folks don't know just how much sugar is in Yellowtail Shiraz. It should be a dessert wine, except it's too horrible to drink with anything).
Finally we broke up and some of us reformed for dinner at Cantina Laredo. I had the specialty grill, which was a sizzling fajita-type deal with a braised pork shank that fell apart into a light mole sauce that made me want to cry with the happy, a barbecued beef rib that was tender and sweet without being gooey or overcooked, chicken and steak strips and a whole grilled quail that had been marinated in orange juice and cumin. Oh my dog, the food was phenomenal and the quail is on my to-cook list first thing. Throw in tableside guacamole and Margaritas strong enough to raise the dead, and it's my idea of a great joint.
And now, back home. Between going to Mexico for the wedding three weeks ago and this trip, the cats are going to think we've abandoned them. They've probably bonded fully to our cat-sitter by now, and will hiss at us as interlopers.
I'll make it up to them somehow, until the next time.
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