Pre-holiday Eats

So now Christmas is past, and my relatives have returned to their homes. Exercise? Take down decorations? Nah! Time to get a little caught up on food posts!

Two weeks before Christmas, I had lunch with a friend at Ichiban, a place I hadn't been to in years. My friend has a newborn, so we avoided the lunch rush, and were able to get one of the traditional tables where you remove your shoes and sit on the floor, as there was a lot more room for the baby carrier. Ichiban has combo of Japanese and Korean foods, along with a sushi bar. We both got bento boxes, and my friend got some extra sashimi that she couldn't eat while pregnant, which she said were decent, but not outstanding. For just under $10, you get plenty of food with the bento. It starts with the miso soup and a salad. I got the bento with the Korean spicy pork bul gogi, which didn't really taste spicy, and it did have the feel of something that was cooked earlier in the day. Accompanying the pork were several pieces of nicely fried tempura vegetables, 4 pieces of a California roll, 2 pieces of sushi, 2 dumplings, and rice. The tempura was probably the best thing on the plate. The rest of it wasn't bad, it just wasn't memorable in any sense, except for the amount of food and the price.

What does intrigue me about Ichiban is their online menu. Their website is incredibly rough, claims to be a temporary site, but what's fascinating about it to me is you can text your lunch order to them, and they'll deliver within a 5 mile radius. It tells you how to order by item code; my pork bul gogi would have been "LB3". And if I wanted 2 of them, plus another dish, text: 2LB3, LK11. I've never seen this style of ordering, but something tells me this is common throughout Japan.

The week before Christmas, while out running errands, I stopped at the new Soup Peddler to go outlet at South Lamar and Manchaca in the new *Austinville* enclave. Cute buildings, I thought one one be for the soup and the other for Juicebox, but no, the larger building houses both food establishments, and the smaller one is the loo. They had been open about a week when I visited. It was one of those blustery December days, which was unfortunately a bit exacerbated by the wind tunnel that's created between the two buildings. They've got a chalkboard up with your choices....and what, you ask is a Bouktouf? Well, I don't really know either. As a restauranteur, wouldn't you want to have a menu that explains what things are to the customer? Especially for those customers who aren't familiar with your product? Vegan chili or Frito pie? Does that mean you can either have your chili in soup form or frito pie form? This form of menu, with little to no explanation, leaves me lacking.

And disappointingly, what was also lacking was flavor from my caldo de pollo soup. It did have a nice grease slick on top. Large chunks of potato and carrot, some chicken, but there wasn't much to the broth. If you go digging into Soup Peddler's website, the caldo apparently has cumin, cayenne, cilantro, jalapeno and lime juice as it's flavorings. I got exactly zero of that. The other problem I experienced is that if the person in front of you orders two smoothies, there was only one person making things. So I had to wait several minutes to get a Styrofoam cup of soup handed to me. This was during lunch hour, and hopefully by now, they've worked out the kinks in that one, as there were others standing around waiting. (I took the soup home and poured it into a bowl for it's picture....see the oil on top?) The young woman working the register was perky, and when asked, did explain that bouktouf is an Algerian soup with squash and lemon.

The week of Christmas, another friend and I had dinner at Tandoori Bistro, a new Indian restaurant, housed in an old Mexican one (JoJo's?), next to the La Quinta Hotel at IH-35 and Oltorf (SE corner). I had heard (on Yelp?) that the woman who owns the place does a lot of Indian catering and needed a larger commercial kitchen, so she decided to open the restaurant. They specialize in Punjabi and Gujarati cuisine, both provinces in the northwest, bordering Pakistan. The place has been there about a month, and still has the feel of the previous occupant. It's a pretty large space, and it wasn't that busy on a Tuesday night. There are 3 large flat screen tv's on the walls and I think a neon beer sign, giving the place a little bit of a sports bar feel.

Arriving just before 7 pm, we took advantage of their half-price appetizers (5 - 7pm), and got the bataka vada, or fried potato fritters. The waitress also brought papadums with two sauces, mint and tamarind chutnies, both different from what I have had in the past. The tamarind was more watery, and didn't really have the distinctive sweet and twangy taste that I love. The potato fritters were a bit dried out, and I guess not surprisingly, since they are potatoes, a bit devoid of taste.  Our waitress was very friendly, and when asked for main dish recommendations, she happily pointed out a couple items, and even saying she had recently returned from a several year stint as a vegetarian, and was enjoying the lamb dishes. I picked the lamb biryani and my friend the chicken tikka masala. 

Essentially biryani is sauteed or stir fried basmati rice with various spices, vegetables, and meat/paneer. This was a decent sized portion, but just didn't have a deep flavor base. The lamb, cut into small cubes, was right on the border between tender and a bit chewy. I had a couple little bites of the tikka, which I thought was way too sweet, and almost had a canned flavor.... canned tomatoes, maybe? So kind of underwhelmed, unfortunately.

My family is from New Mexico, so our traditional Christmas Eve dinner is tamales, pinto beans and pecan pie. I got tamales from a co-worker who made them (quite good, especially when steamed, not done in the microwave), and made the beans with a ham hock, and the pie with Dai Due (should be http://daidueaustin.net/, but currently doesn't seem to be working) leaf lard in the crust. Christmas morning, we had croissants and morning buns from La Patisserie (along with bacon and fruit salad), and we went to Trace at the new W Hotel for dinner, which I will post later.