It looked like Wade might be getting laid off toward the end of 2015,
so we decided to take a week in Austin to see if that might be a place
we want to relocate and/or retire. We didn't take a lot of pictures, and
like usual, they are mainly of food.
The first night, we picked a small Mexican (strangely not Tex-Mex) place
and split a couple of quesadillas: one is a duck confit quesadilla, and
the other is a crispy pork belly quesadilla.
Our big meal was at a place called Barley Swine that Kimberly found.
A lovely commingly of foodie tastes, farm-to-table or home-canned freshness,
but a laid-back atmosphere.
Here's the kitchen, with some of the canned goods.
This was the crab with Trinidad peppers...
...and octopus (in a gel) with watermelon and crunchy nut clusters.
A butternut squash and pecan miso for the soup course...
...and red snapper with radish and pinto miso for the fish course.
Some bread and homemade pickles as a palate cleanser.
Wagyu beef with avocado.
This is a strip of cured squash encrusted in a half-dozen different seeds.
Excellent textures, and this one paired with a beer.
A shishito pepper with a sweet glaze.
Pig skin and shrimp (tastes 1000x better than the name).
A duck breast slice over boshi and potato.
Apple, lemongrass, and butterkin.
This is a Thai lime cannoli at top, a homemade candy bar on the left,
and a fig-wrapped Ste. Maure cheese on the right. Unusually but amazingly
paired with a Duchesse de Bourgogne Flanders Red Ale. Marvelous.
They then remove the top plate to reveal hidden in the dish: a homemade
toffee and two other sweet bites.
The check if you want to read about the wine pairings.
The Sunday before we left we decided to check out the UU church. Great
speaker, and a band with piano, organ, drums, bass, guitar, and jazz trombone.
The topic of the day was Samson and Delilah, so they played "Black
Magic Woman", "Evil Woman", and "Witchy Woman".
Very cool.
