The Souvenir Menu – Thanksgiving Wine
When it comes to Thanksgiving, I get very nostalgic about food. Nothing I serve comes from trendy food magazines or celebrity chef shows. I don’t like star anise in my cranberries or tarragon on my carrots. I don’t like garlic in my mashed potatoes, and my stuffing is good old-fashioned southern cornbread just like my [...]
The Souvenir Menu – F&D Foreign and Domestic Food and Drink
Story has it that the Chefs from Lyon France considered themselves better than the rest because in their estimation, anyone could make great food from the greatest of ingredients while they could make even a pig’s ear taste great. Because of some of his uncommon menu items, and his training under some very great Chefs [...]
The Souvenir Menu – North by Northwest
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had about six meals at North by Northwest. I’ve had a couple of brunches, a couple of dinners, one lunch and some drinks and appetizers. This frequency wasn’t due to a lack of creativity; but mainly because the folks here tend to do something a bit uncommon; they [...]
The Souvenir Menu – Cipollina
For Clarksville residents in central Austin, great food within walking distance has been the norm for decades. Jeffrey’s, long considered one of the best restaurants in the state has been at 12th and West Lynn since 1975. For Austin Restaurant Week recently I visited Jeffrey’s sister restaurant, Cipollina, about a half a block away. Though [...]
The Souvenir Menu – Chianti Classico
Years ago before I had made any real effort to know much about wine, I identified a Chianti in a blind wine tasting game simply because I thought it was awful. There was no pondering the aroma, no washing the wine over the tongue to catch the flavors. I just said “gosh I hate this…..I [...]
The Souvenir Menu – Thai Cuisine
The majority of the restaurants that you find in the Souvenir Menu are the tried and true; places I really like and been to many times. Sometimes it’s not an old place, but one that I’ve visited so often that it makes the cut. ‘Thai Cuisine’ is a modern, casual restaurant in a small shopping [...]
Review: ‘Machete’ serves relentless, bloody action
Certainly, “Machete” is the best feature-length extension of a fake movie trailer in Hollywood history. Fans who saw the trailer in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 “Grindhouse” double-feature continually asked Rodriguez to turn the make-believe ad featuring Danny Trejo into a real blood-and-guts vengeance flick. Rodriguez has complied, maintaining a fair amount of the [...]
The Souvenir Menu: “The Athenian Bar & Grill”
Once upon a time I thought I hated Greek food, I don’t like eggplant, so Massouka was out, growing up in Texas, I was not really used to the taste of lamb, dolmades were just, well different, and the desserts were too sweet. A Greek friend of mine thought this was outrageous. How could I [...]
Marsalis jazz score a treat in “Louis”
A faux black-and-white silent film that will gain immeasurably from its road show presentations, “Louis” is more of a novelty than a satisfying cinematic experience. But jazz aficionados certainly will appreciate its evocation of early 20th century New Orleans, and those lucky enough to live in certain cities will have the opportunity to hear its [...]
The Souvenir Menu – A movie, cooking demo and good food
Imagine being in a theatre watching a movie where the actors are eating a great looking pizza, slices so beautiful that you can smell them. That happened to me over the weekend at a screening of ‘Eat, Prey, Love’, but people were actually eating fragrant freshly made Pizzas Margherita while Julia Roberts was indulging in [...]
