Artisan Crafted Air

Heather's mom is in town this weekend, and to celebrate, my parents took us out ot Alexander's Steakhouse. Alexander's is one of the most upscale restaurants I've ever been to; they had a few really expensive steaks ($250), and they had caviar for five hundred bucks. HUH? That's the price of a scooter!

Needless to say, we stuck with the food in the double-digit range. The steaks were really good, and everything else was fantastic and intriguing, honestly. They gave us cotton candy for dessert.

Alexander's gets 4 points on the Pretentio-meter for the following infractions:

1) TABLESIDE PREP - Mom ordered roasted red pepper soup, which came with shrimp. The server poured the soup on the shrimp at the table. This ain't Benihana's, people. If you are gonna show me how you make the food, at least make it interesting. Put it in an onion volcano or flip it into your hat.

2) UNCUT SALAD - This wasn't even a wedge salad, but rather stalks of romaine (maybe?) laid parallel with all the Caesar accoutrements on top. I guess I'm okay with the wedge salad because of the presentation points it earns. This just seemed lazy though.

3) STUPID NOMENCLATURE - "Brown Butter Frozen Air" was an ingredient in one of the desserts. Apparently it's froth. They could have said "Froth" but they said "Frozen Air." "Froth." They could have just said "froth." They didn't.

4) ARTISTRY - There was also "artisan cheese" on the dessert menu. Unless Michaelangelo himself carved the cheese into the shape of a Roman soldier, please don't call it artisan. It's cheese--it came out of a cow's udder and it curdled and now I'm putting it in my mouth and it's getting digested.

Despite these minor minor gripes, the food was great, and service was spectacular. Here's my recommendation: "I recommend it if you can expense it."



I need to start writing about something besides food.

It's Supposed to be a Low Heat

Bert's BBQ in Austin burned down last week, and there's a pretty interesting story concerning how the dispatcher handled the initial 911 call. Apparently, the dispatcher thought the caller was seeing the white smoke of a large amount of meat being cooked at a very low temperature (what I call "God's Beard"):

Dispatch says, "OK, does it smell like the wood? Or does it smell like something else is on fire?"
Caller says, "No, it smells like wood. There's a lot of it. I was just going across the street, and I could smell it. There's, like, all this, you know, bit of a hazy smoke around here."
Dispatch says, "Well, could they be smoking their briskets?"
Caller says, "No, that's not brisket."

"You could tell something was burning," Perez said. "It's not brisket. It's not sausage that is burning."

At the end of Joel's call, the dispatcher finally sends out firefighters to Bert's Bar-B-Q, some 45 minutes after the first call. And that's huge, considering it would have taken firefighters 45 seconds to get there. After all, the fire station is right down the street.

And the end right there is the most ridiculous part. I lived three blocks away from Bert's for a while, and I walked down to MLK Boulevard a couple times a week to get food. The walk from the fire station to Bert's is less than a minute, or close to it; couldn't someone have gone over and looked?

Anyway, it sucks for them, because the restaurant is pretty much charred inside. I went there once, and the manager was really nice...although as I took my food home, I saw one of the workers looking through the dumpster outside for some reason...ew. As for the 'cue itself, I ate the food there in 2005, and I remember the meaty beef rib and the sausage being pretty tasty, while everything else was standard pretty standard for Texas BBQ. I'd say it probably ranks somewhere in the 11-15 range in Austin--nothing memorable, but still pretty good.

I think I'm gonna use the smoker this weekend and make some beef.