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Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The Woodland makes a mean burger
My search for the best hamburger in Austin continued Tuesday night, as a friend and I finally headed over to The Woodland, the latest addition to the South Congress culinary landscape.
A friend had raved about the burger at Michael Terrazas’ new restaurant, a yuppified diner that opened just a week before Christmas last year. With the success Terrazas has had with the delicious high-end Starlite, we were fairly certain we would find the dining experience to be a positive one.
The stylish restaurant, with its concrete floors, faux tree “planted” in the center of the restaurant, and DIY-inspired wall tiling, has a certain ReadyMade Magazine feel to it. Sure, we could never make a space look the way Terrazas and company have, but you get the feeling that one of your really stylish and crafty friends could.
The mood at the restaurant maintains a nice energy that does not cross the line into loud and obnoxious, as South Congress Cafe tends to do. There is a line of booths in the “front” of the restaurant, which is actually the left side of the U-shaped dining area, with ample seating available along the bar, as well. We were offered a table in the “back” of the restaurant, which is actually the north side of the establishment. This part of the restaurant lacks a bit of the charm, and the signature paneled wall, and the way the tables are set up makes the space less inviting than the other part of the restaurant.
From our table we got a view of the line, where we saw the cooks working on our dinner. Having a visible line in a restaurant does not bother me, and in fact you can see some lines at work in some of the best restaurants, but when the only tables that have a view of the line are the handful in the “side” or “back” of a restaurant, it ends up feeling like you are seeing the back of a hospital gown. If you want to showcase the line, do it so it’s not only visible to those who have been given a table in the area of the restaurant that already lacks significant ambiance. Were a person to take a date to The Woodland and be stuck in that part of the restaurant, it would probably be a bit of a bummer, especially considering how cool the other area of the restaurant is.
Enough nitpicking.
We started with an arugula and fennel salad that was delicious, although the fennel probably should have been cut a little finer, but who can argue when you have cranberries and goat cheese in your salad? The pork empanadas followed, and though they were cooked well, and the pork held a nice savory flavor, the empanadas themselves left a bit to be desired. They were soft and flaky, but we could not shake the impression that the empanada tasted a lot like certain frozen pizza rolls we had when we were kids. Fortunately the accompanying sauce saved them from being a complete non-event.
Salads and appetizers are all well and good, but we had come for the burger, and on that point we were not let down in the least. We built our own, which just meant adding bacon and bleu cheese to the Wood Classic, and ordered it medium. The burger actually came out of the kitchen medium-rare, but after our first bite, we realized that although it was not how we had ordered it, it was just what we wanted. The Angus beef was juicy and cooked to perfection, if you like medium rare. The bacon was cooked just to the point of being crisp, and the vegetables could not have been fresher. The juices of the meat moistened the bun nicely but did not make it sloppy. French fries, crisp on the outside, but a little too mushy on the inside, accompanied the burger, but our attention was primarily fixated to the burger, one we easily put in the Top 5 in town.
Dessert was a bit of an afterthought following such a delicious piece of meat, but we bashed on regardless and had homemade chocolate cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The cake was dense and relatively moist, nothing to write home about, but good enough to pique our interest in their selection of homemade pies in the future.
The Woodland offers a nice selection of sandwiches and salads ($6-$9), as well as several main dishes, mostly of the comfort food variety, such as homemade meatloaf ($11) and a Berkshire porterhouse pork chop ($13). Because of some permit issues, the restaurant is not selling beer or wine right now, but if you ask for it, they will be happy to give you a free glass of the house red or white, or even a cold glass of complimentary pilsner.
We’re happy to have this new addition to the SoCo neighborhood, and we intend to go back soon to sample some more of the menu. But that burger’s going to be pretty hard to get away from.
Though the restaurant does not serve lunch, they do serve weekend brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m, and intend to open up for late-night diners in the coming months.
The Woodland
1716 S. Congress Ave. [map]
441-6800
Hours
Dinner: 5 to 11 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday
Brunch: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday
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