Austin360 blogs > Dale's Table
Castle Hill to close
Castle Hill Cafe, the restaurant that became famous as Austin’s affordable fine-dining spot, is closing at the end of this month after more than two decades in business because it has become too expensive to operate a fine-dining venue.
“It’s too hard, to be honest, way too hard for us,” owner Cathe Dailey said Thursday. With food and gas prices soaring, it seems like each day brings another cost increase in one or more items, she said.
Plus, the downtown dining scene has changed dramatically in recent years.
“The demographic has changed so much around us,” Dailey said. “Eighteen years ago when we moved into this building, we were considered on the edge of town. Now downtown is surrounding us with condominiums.”
Those new residents, motivated by DWI laws that encourage people to avoid drinking and driving, “are looking for neighborhood restaurants they can call their own,” she said.
So Daily is closing Castle Hill on June 28 and taking at least a month for a major makeover of the place before reopening the space at 1101 W. Fifth St. as Corazon, an interior Mexican restaurant with a full-service bar and lounge.
“It’s been the greatest ride,” Dailey said. “I’m not horribly sentimenal about it. It’s another side of the coin for me. We sort of returning to our roots as a place that’s more afforadable, more available to more people.”
See more details in the story in Friday’s American-Statesman Business section.
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Salmonella still causing illnesses
A half-dozen new cases of salmonella linked to tomatoes were reported by the New York City Health Department today, bringing the total number of Big Apple cases to seven. An agency official said she wouldn’t be surprised to see more cases reported in coming days, Bloomberg.com reported. According to the Food & Drug Administration, salmonella linked to tomatoes has been confirmed in nearly 280 cases in 28 states and Washington, D.C., with the most — nearly 70 — in Texas.
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Multiple tomato hits
Texas French Bread is a perfect example of the multiple ways in which restaurants are affected by the problem of a potential salmonella contamination of tomatoes.
Today, the restaurant posted signs on its menu bulletin board notifying customers that fresh tomatoes were taken off the sandwiches and that no salsa or pasta salad, both made with fresh, raw tomatoes, were available.
That just shows how pervasive raw tomatoes are in today’s restaurant business.
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Tomato precaution
Many restaurants are continuing to take the precaution of removing uncooked Roma and large tomatoes from their menus while state and federal agencies investigate an outbreak of salmonella linked to tomatoes.
“We have taken all but the cherry tomatoes off the menu until we can get certification that they are safe,” Chez Zee owner Sharon Watkins reported this morning.
That’s what Eastside Cafe owners Dorsey Barger and Elaine Martin, for example, did when they learned of the concern about salmonella linked to tomatoes in a nine-state region that includes Texas.
According to the state health department, consumers should avoid eating raw Roma or full-sized tomatoes until investigators pinpoint the source of the contamination. Homegrown tomatoes or ones that are still attached to a vine are safe to eat, officials said, because they are not implicated in this outbreak.
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The passing of a great vintner
Robert Mondavi, the vintner who helped propel California to its status as one of the world’s great wine-producing regions, died today, according to a spokesman for the winery. He was 94.
A few years ago, I interviewed Mondavi when he was the honored winemaker at the Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival. When I asked him whether he thought the rules of wine drinking — red with this, white with that — could be intimidating, he replied that all the old guidelines should be thrown out and replaced with a single protocol:
“Drink what you like, and like what you drink.”
Of all the recommendations I’ve heard in the years I’ve been writing about food and wine, that was the wisest.
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Chicago overturns ban on foie gras
The Chicago City Council today repealed its 2-year-old ban on foie gras. According to the Chicago Tribune Web site, the council voted 37-6 to overturn the measure, which opponents contended made Chicago a laughingstock.
The first major American city to ban foie gras, Chicago became an important symbol for the anti-foie-gras movement. Now, restaurants in this city that is one of the United States’ leading culinary centers will be able to serve the fatty duck liver again without fear of legal consequences.
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Black bean paste and noodles
BEIJING — Kang, our young Chinese friend, had done his research. He was joining us for lunch and a multihour visit to the Temple of Heaven, an exquisitely beautiful site that played an important role for hundreds of years as the place where the emperor prayed annually for good harvests.
Kang, a student at Beijing University, had read about Zha Jiang Mian, a famous noodle house that is more than 100 years old and is not far from the east gate of the temple. So we headed there for a lunch of noodles. The bowl of noodles arrived with julienned vegetables on top and a small bowl of black bean-and-pork sauce on the side. We followed Kang’s lead and dumped the black bean paste over the noodles, took a few noodles to swab the inside of the sauce bowl and then mixed the noodles and the savory, slightly sour sauce. It was delicious.
This place would definitely be on my list for a repeat visit if I had more time in Beijing.
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The colonel leaped the arches
BEIJING — After crisscrossing Beijing for two weeks, one thing that still amazes me is the number of KFC outlets in this city. They outnumber McDonald’s significantly, which was another surprise. The explanation is simple, according to several Beijing residents: KFC came first, and the Chinese prefer chicken over beef. But that doesn’t mean it’s a strictly fried chicken kind of thing. The chicken burgers at KFC are extremely popular, the residents told me. I can’t vouch for that, though; I haven’t dined at a KFC here to observe the frequency of various orders.
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Wide and thin noodles
BEIJING — Noodles took center stage at dinner at a restaurant featuring the cuisine of Xinjiang, a province that borders Tibet. One dish featured short, thin noodles — less than an inch long and a quarter-inch wide — with onions in a lightly sweet, tomato-based sauce. Another, for which the restaurant is widely known, brought one dish of chicken, potatoes and bell peppers cooked in a very spicy sauce. Two additional bowls held noodles that were nearly 2 inches wide and 8 to 10 inches long. When you’ve eaten enough of the chicken and vegetables to make room for the noodles, you slide them off the bowl and into the sauce. It’s a delicious dish, but it’s also a bit of a challenge to handle large, slippery noodles with chopsticks. But I managed — without decorating my shirt with spots of sauce.
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Spicy, spicy, spicy
BEIJING — Even seemingly innocuous fare packed a wallop at Three Guyzhou Men, a beautiful, classy restaurant featuring Guyzhou fare, one of the cuisines of Southern China. The egg fried rice, surely a foil amidst all the heat, turned out to have finely chopped red chiles. The lamb with mint leaves had dozens of red chiles the size of my little finger, and the minced beef with cilantro had another form of red chile. A divine fried eggplant, cut into rectangular pieces the size of french fries, was covered with a searing mix of ground pork and peppers.
We ate. We sweated. We ate some more. The one thing I longed for was a bottle of cold water, which we tried but failed to order. So, there I was — like the Brazilian diplomat and the professor dining with me — drinking a glass of hot water (typical in many Chinese restaurants) to relieve the heat.
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Sophisticated vegetarian fare
BEIJING — The most dramatic flair that I’ve ever experienced in dining occurred at Pure Lotus, a world-class restaurant in the Lido Hotel. The artistry there was truly amazing.
The meal, following our waiter’s suggestions, included an unusually shaped wooden bowl filled with ice and topped with fresh organic vegetables (red and green bell pepper, cucumber, a very bitter form of celery, daikon, broccoli and cauliflower florets, and lily bulb, with two dipping sauces and a garnish of green branches nearly 24 inches tall; mushroom dumplings that had been so artfully sealed the pattern looked like leaves; asparagus and white “sprouts” (which looked like white asparagus, but had a different taste and texture); cheese fondue made without wine or garlic (this restaurant uses no scallions, onions or garlic because they are too pungent); and delicious crispy “fish” made from some form of tofu and formed to look exactly like a fried fish surrounded by crisp rice noodles.
After dessert of small pastry balls in a ginger soup, we received the complimentary finale brought to all tables: a bowl (garnished with an iris stalk) that contained dry ice that covered the table in a white cloud. In the middle of the bowl (in yet another smaller bowl) were four baby mangos (with the skin split for easy peeling) that were fabulous.
All in all, it was an amazing show with fare to match.
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Table full of tastes
BEIJING - At Source, a sophisticated restaurant located a few yards inside one of the city’s traditional hutongs (old-style neighborhoods of narrow alleys and grey brick walls), the tasting menu brought a feast for the palate in a lovely setting with high-quality service.
Dishes on our set menu (other options with less seafood were available) included peanuts, pickled vegetables, shrimp with coriander, noodles in chile oil, cold fish, Szechuan sausage, broccoli with green tea (a fantastic melding of flavors), mushrooms and chicken in bamboo, shrimp balls, fish soup with soft tofu, kung pao shrimp (made with shrimp, peanuts, onions and hard, dried chiles), fried rice, noodles, fruit and a honey pastry.
When asked about spice levels when we ordered, I suggested “little,” as opposed to medium or hot. Many of the dishes (we were repeatedly assured they were the little-spice versions) turned out to have a medium-high heat on my scale (the wonderful fish and tofu soup produced a sweat within moments, for example). I’m glad we didn’t decide to be adventurous and opt for hot.
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Can’t always trust the pictures
BEIJING — Wanting to grab a quick lunch before heading to two of the city’s main temples, we stopped in the first small, modest restaurant we saw. The menu contained 8-by-10 photos of the dishes with a translation.
The shredded pork, served on a bed of slivered green onions, looked just like the photo. And it was delicious. The chicken in lettuce cups, however, produced an entirely different dish. Rather than crisp chicken mixed with pine nuts and presented in fresh lettuce leaves, this insipid, somewhat slimy chicken mixture was floating on cooked lettuce leaves.
Oh, well, one out of two was’t bad, I guess. Throw in the good rice and a cold beer, and you could almost forgive them for the lapse.
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Dinner of dumplings
BEIJING — What do you do when lunch was so filling that you really don’t want to consume another multidish meal? Follow the lead of many students at Beijing University and stop by a dumpling restaurant for dinner. The steamed dumplings, the size of a dinner roll, offered several fillings encased in a relatively thick dough, including two types of meat, spinach and rice. One of each was a perfect dinner.
Of course, disaster can strike, too, when you do what the students do. They mix soy sauce, vinegar, minced garlic and red chile oil together to create their own dipping sauce. Great idea. Until the chopsticks pierce the dumpling as you’re lifting it toward your mouth (apparently just a little too much pressure was exerted), prompting a piece to break off and drop into the sauce. As fast as you can say “splat,” your shirt is dotted with sauce. Good thing there was nothing important to attend following the meal.
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Regional differences
BEIJING — The regional differences in Chinese cuisine are striking. Lunch at a restaurant just across from the main gate to the summer palace brought fare from Northwestern China: highly spiced lamb on skewers; buckwheat noodles cooked with sprouts and a tiny amount of pork, and a hot pot of mushrooms cooked with red pepper and garlic. There must have been at least 10 kinds of mushrooms, none that I could identify, chopped up in that delicious dish, which was kept warm with a flame underneath. For dessert, the translation was milk skin roll with toffee. It was basically a couple dozen pastries made of dough surrounding some form of milk fat. They were deep-fried, dusted with black sesame seeds and then heated in aluminum foil with caramel. The waiter pulled them apart individually at the table and heaped them on a plate for serving. Think caramel-covered doughnut here. I’m going to have to climb those six flights of stairs an extra time today to make up for that.
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A day of dining contrasts
BEIJING — What a day of contrasts at the table. Lunch, a few yards from one of the most famous streets of antique shops in Beijing in a relatively upscale restaurant, introduced me to the concept of choosing the meal from an array of plates with the raw ingredients under plastic covers. Those ingredients tell only a part of the story, though.
The beef cooked with chiles had about 10 times the amount of sliced red and green jalapeños (or the equivalent) that had been in the small dish under the cover. It turned out another dish of julienned pork, with dried fish and vegetables, came with pancakes (which were nowhere in sight at the ordering) and the staff filled and rolled them at the table. They were fabulous. When asked by a hostess who spoke English on the way to the table if we would like rice or dumplings, we chose the latter. That produced a dish of about 40 egg-and-leek filled dumplings — enough to feed six or eight people rather than just the two of us — with an amazing dish of garlic sauce for dipping.
For dinner, we headed out for a relatively small meal at a dive in the working-class neighborhood. There, I had the best kung pao chicken I’ve ever tasted. Tiny morsels of chicken, with even smaller pieces of cucumber, were cooked with a few peanuts in a sweet-spicy sauce. The Napa cabbage, cooked with spicy red peppers and large chunks of bacon fat, also was delicious. Can’t wait to go back there to try some other dishes I saw.
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First bite in Beijing
BEIJING — A few hours after arriving, and after a stroll around the beautiful campus of Beijing University, it was time for dinner — my first meal in China. We headed to a Cantonese restaurant just outside the southwest gate of the university, where we dined on thinly sliced beef ribs stir-fried with red and green bell peppers and onions and a heavenly dish of baby bok choy cooked with bacon fat and spices in a light sauce.
Then it was back to the apartment in a working class neighborhood a few minutes drive from the university and time to again climb to the top floor of the six-story walk-up. With that kind of exercise, I won’t have to worry about gaining weight on this trip — the usual consequence of vacations in Italy or France.
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New wings for Round Rock
Buffalo Wings & Rings, a fast-growing national franchise chain, is opening Wednesday in Round Rock. It will be the 32nd location in the United States and the second in the Austin area (one opened in New Braunfels March 11).
The menu includes chicken wings soaked in savory sauces, fries, burgers, chicken and pulled pork sandwiches and salads.
The restaurant is located at 1901 Town Centre Drive, Suite 150 (in the Round Rock Town Centre at the corner of Gattis School Road and A.W. Grimes Boulevard). To celebrate the opening, owner Brian Kling this week contributed $500 to the Round Rock Area Serving Center, a local nonprofit agency and food pantry.
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Apple Annies to move
After more than two decades in the same West Sixth Street location, Apple Annies Cafe is closing Tuesday and will reopen in September in larger quarters on Congress Avenue. During the relocation, Apple Annies Bakery, Catering, and Delivery, including online ordering, will continue to operate and offer free delivery service throughout downtown Austin.
Apple Annies, which has been located in the Chase Bank Tower at 221 W. Sixth St. since 1984, will be moving to 319 Congress Ave., where it will have increased seating, an expanded menu and longer hours, including nights and weekends.
It’s great to see that the cafe, a longtime reliable lunch spot with a somewhat limited menu, will remain downtown and expand both its hours and its fare.
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New restaurant for Josh Watkins
Josh Watkins today concluded an agreement with New York restaurateur Michael Polombo to launch a new restaurant at the base of the Austin 360 tower at Third and Neches streets. Seating 35 diners, the upscale restaurant will serve meals seven days a week. Watkins and Polombo hope to open it the second week of July.
“I’m very excited,” Watkins said Tuesday after concluding the agreement with Polombo. He said he will continue to emphasize his “new American style” of cuisine and is looking forward to doing that in a more modern environment than the historic hotel dining room that had been his home base.
Watkins resigned last week from the Driskill Hotel, where he was executive chef of the Driskill Grill. Successor to David Bull, Watkins had maintained the restaurant’s cutting-edge cuisine and its five-star rating. Polombo is a partner in the New York restaurant Bin 71.
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Driskill loses top chef
Josh Watkins, the young, talented chef who took over when David Bull left the Driskill Hotel, has resigned from his position. Watkins, who retained the Driskill Grill’s five-star rating and its position as one of the city’s top restaurants, declined to discuss specific plans but said he wants to remain in Austin.
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Oh no! Their vegetarian Mediterranean salad is possibly the best salad I have ever had. Instead of converting to yet ANOTHER Mexican restaurant (with Z Tejas literally right around the corner, that doesn’t seem wise), I wish they would look at other
... read the full comment by Jenny | Comment on Castle Hill to close Read Castle Hill to close
This is terrible news. To me, the cuisine, decor and service at Castle Hill made it the quintessential Austin restaurant. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is going to miss it a great deal.
... read the full comment by Dave Wilson | Comment on Castle Hill to close Read Castle Hill to close
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