The Carillon

At the UT hotel's flagship restaurant, Josh Watkins is ringing some bells

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Wednesday, November 04, 2009

The hardest part about getting to know the Carillon at the University of Texas hotel is breaking through the invisible force field that surrounds the Forty Acres. The assumption is that everything on campus is off-limits unless you have a backpack, an ID card or Longhorns tickets. Or maybe it's the dread of finding nowhere to park, as anybody who's ever been within earshot of the end-zone cannon can relate.

Let's poke some holes in the force field.

* The Carillon is open to the public for breakfast and dinner. Only at lunch is it limited to UT faculty and staff.

* Self-parking in the hotel's parking garage is free for dinner guests with validation from the restaurant.

Yes, the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center is an impenetrable name for a hotel. And yes, its flagship restaurant is named for the bells that toll in that megalith of a power tower at the university's core. But the Carillon is about art, discovery and inspiration in the grand tradition of higher learning. And chef Josh Watkins is the dean.

Lithe and intense, he bows from the waist as he works, his face inches away from the plates, his hands moving like a watchmaker's. The result is food with flavor, balance and a spark of brilliance from a well-curated menu of four cold and four hot appetizers, six main courses and three desserts.

Watkins' reputation followed him to the Carillon. At the Driskill Grill, he was the logical successor when chef David Bull left. And after a brief period as the Driskill's chef, Watkins left for UT last year, lured by what many assumed was a decent paycheck and the prospect of running his own hotel-sized operation, which includes the more casual Gabriel's Cafe and One Twenty 5 Cafe.

But then Watkins dropped off the radar, save for festival and charity cameos. The Carillon was a place nobody seemed to talk about. On Yelp, where a new place like Justine's gathered 47 reviews in its first two months, the Carillon attracted just three in its first year.

Awful quiet out there, I thought. Disquietingly quiet. But after tasting 13 out of 16 dishes at the Carillon, I think it's time to make some noise. To start a band, even. Sell T-shirts.

The dishes start with solid basics — coffee-rubbed New York strip, beef tenderloin, baked chicken, sea bass, pork belly, raw tuna — then build in complexity. The chicken ($22), for example, is cooked with herbed butter under the skin to make it crisp and leave the meat luscious, finished with an assertive Meyer lemon beurre blanc. A side dish of green bean casserole is a perfect little iron pot version of the classic by-the-can dish, with mornay sauce filling in for cream of mushroom. Not a wrong note on this nostalgic plate of elevated comfort food. Even the mashed potatoes get respect, garnished and suffused with microgreens.

Coffee-rubbed steak ($36), sliced into thick medium-rare squares with a light and roasty crust, gets a garnish of candied garlic that I'd eat like Skittles if it came in a vending machine. Mesquite-smoked syrup gives the dish a backyard flavor, if your backyard were the most elegant backyard in your whole gated community. The same skill with beef shines through in decadent tenderloin poached in olive oil ($30) and shred-soft cubes of beef short rib with apricot glaze ($26).

Subtler flavors play out in the brown-butter yogurt underneath perfectly seared mero (Japanese sea bass), served with minced raw cauliflower and a chutney of cherries and pine nuts ($26) for a clever interplay of earthiness and sweetness to brace the silky white fish. Celery lends a dusky note to thin slices of raw yellowtail in a hamachi crudo ($10), a note that's joined by sweet currant, hazelnut and a flash of hot red sauce.

Texture and tartness define a tuna tartare ($10) with Granny Smith apples and toasted almonds, and nuts also bring out the flavor of a single scallop (pricey at $12) crusted with pistachio, a dish that draws equal flavor from chanterelle mushrooms and a dainty herb salad.

There's nothing dainty about the pork belly appetizer ($10), served in three crisp cubes topped with matchsticks of brisk pear and a single fried mint leaf. A diablo sauce underscores the pork with a nice balance of sweetness and heat. Even a simple cauliflower soup ($8) starts with five preparations of red beets and an infusion of lavender.

Our bread was studded with garlic cloves, and a square ramekin of butter glittered with a delicate salt whose exotic origin has slipped my mind. When the house cares that much about the salt it sprinkles on the table butter, something unusual's going on. The most unusual 'something' is this: How can this place be as empty as it was on two different Thursday nights? One night, just two other tables were occupied in a room as long as an infinity mirror, with magisterial arches at intervals amid the golds, browns and, yes, burnt oranges of a well-coordinated room with an industrial-grade kitchen work station in the middle. The effect is somehow warm and isolating at the same time.

One night was so slow the staff didn't seem to know what to do with us. We were given a wine list but not a food menu, and I can't order from one without seeing the other. Long stretches of time passed between orders and bread and wine and food as the staff settled into a rhythm. On another night, service rose to the same stratospheric level as the food. They let us taste two wines before we picked a bottle. Our waitress, our wine steward and chef Watkins himself talked to us about the food at every stage of service. They shared team credit with chef de cuisine Chris Andrews, another Driskill veteran. Then they did something we never expected. As my guest wavered between ordering short ribs or tenderloin, they offered to split the difference: half of each dish on the same plate for no extra charge.

Add something else to that courtesy: The Carillon offers a three-course option that ranks it among the best values for this level of food in the city. 'Attainable fine dining' isn't just an idea here. It's a fact. For $38, we ordered full-portion appetizer-main-and-dessert combinations worth as much as $56 a la carte. If a custard-smooth bread pudding with cherries or a cheesecake with tart huckleberry and the aromatic breath of thyme doesn't suit your three-course agenda, make it two appetizers and a main course. On a second visit we did just that. It's not an insult to say the desserts aren't as engaging as the appetizers. Just an invitation for them to rise to the same level.

I hate that the Carillon is so cloistered. I went to UT, and I'm still put off by the frustrations of navigating the campus, of stepping over that threshold between the civilian and academic landscapes. Whatever you have to go through to be there, the Carillon will pay off with brilliant food from a chef of the first class.

No more hiding in plain sight. Time to ring the bells.

msutter @statesman.com; 912-5902

The Carillon

AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center at the University of Texas, 1900 University Ave. 404-3655, www.meetattexas.com.

Rating (fine dining):

Hours:Breakfast (open to the public): 7 to 10 a.m. Mondays through Fridays and 7 to 11 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Lunch (UT faculty and staff only): 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Dinner (open to the public): 5:30 to 10 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Because it's a UT restaurant, the Carillon will close Dec. 19 for the holiday break and reopen Jan. 4 unless there's 'in-house demand,' a spokeswoman said. Call ahead.

Prices:At dinner, appetizers are $8-$12, main courses are $22-$36 and desserts are $8. Multicourse pricing: $38 for three courses, $45 for four, $60 for six. Breakfast is $10.95 for a continental buffet, $14.95 for the full buffet, and a la carte options run $6-$14.

Payment:All major cards

Alcohol:The wine list is smart and accessible, with good bottles starting as low as $30. Six sparklers, 26 whites, two rosés and 32 reds, with about 15 by the glass for $8-$10. Bottles $30-$122. Beer and cocktails also available.

Parking:Worth mentioning, because the UT campus isn't always a hospitable place for you and your parked car. But self-parking at the AT&T Center parking garage is free for dinner guests with validation from the Carillon. Valet parking is $14.

Wheelchair access:Yes

What the ratings mean:

: Food, service, atmosphere and value suffer flaws on every level.

: Serious room for improvement, with a few bright spots.

: A good overall experience. Clear mission, solid execution.

: Excellent across the board. Perfect in some areas, with only a few small distractions.

: An extraordinary restaurant experience from start to finish.