Jeffrey's and the $34 cheeseburger

I'm guessing you've never had a $34 cheeseburger. Here's how to fix that.

Start with the Jeffrey's Burger, just your basic patty of marbled beef and fluffy greens on a brioche bun toasted with foie butter for $20. You could stop there and be happy, plowing through that paper bag of shoestring fries on the side. But why would you stop there? Thick slabs of seared bacon and Texas Redneck Cheddar are just $3 each. And because this is Jeffrey's, you can add foie gras for $8.

Twenty plus three plus three plus eight. That's $34 on a bun. But friends, as some of Earth's best-tasting things dance a conga line through your skull, it might just be the Happiest Meal Ever.

It'd be convenient to use that $34 burger as a punch line for Jeffrey's over-the-topulence, but it wouldn't be fair. It's more like another opportunity to make Jeffrey's into whatever you need it to be:

• A place to drink deeply from a panoramic wine program, supplemented in the bar during happy hour by half-price oysters and well-accessorized cheeses and yes, half-price foie gras cheeseburgers.

• An Austin all-star setting for a marriage proposal - and the anniversary dinners that follow.

• A restaurant to impress your parents, her parents or your clients by telling them how Jeffrey Weinberger and Ron and Peggy Weiss helped start the modern fine-dining scene in Austin when they opened the place in 1975.

To put things in perspective, Jeffrey's has been around as long as `Saturday Night Live.' And like that show, the restaurant has phased in and out of the popular consciousness as the cast has changed. The kitchen cast has included Emil Vogely (now at Tarry House), Raymond Tatum (Backstage Steakhouse), David Garrido (Garrido's), Alma Alcocer-Thomas (TNT/Tacos and Tequila) and now Deegan McClung (formerly of Uchi).

The owners' side projects have faded in and out, too. The Jeffrey's that followed President George W. Bush to Washington, D.C., is gone. Their Italian bistro and takeout shop called Cipollina hums quietly across the street from Jeffrey's. Their Shoreline Grill filed for bankruptcy this summer, although it remains open as its debts are reorganized.

But Jeffrey's has endured. After the Shoreline filing in August, Weinberger told the American-Statesman that sales at Jeffrey's and Cipollina were rising, `and we feel like we're going to make it through.'

In four visits since McClung took over in February of last year, I've had 17 dishes at Jeffrey's, many of which have already changed or rotated off a menu constantly in motion. What I've learned is that McClung's time as chef de cuisine at Uchi was not for nothing. The man cooks some killer fish, no 3-D glasses required.

In his kitchen, sea bass ($36) was roasted to the texture of terraced custard, pulling together a symphony of elements: hemispheres of soft-baked grits, a succotash of sweet corn, earthy chanterelle mushrooms and purple-hulled peas laced with the savory fattiness of house-cured guanciale, an Italian-style bacon made from the jowl of the hog. Call it Southern fusion.

On another night, toasted hazelnuts and tender gnocchi brought levels of texture to halibut in a subtle sauce of brown butter and Parmesan ($34). For me, both dishes showed progress compared with a passive plate of milk-poached halibut cheeks from March 2009, just weeks after McClung started.

Jeffrey's regulars will find comfort in the oysters, the fried-and-true ones with honey-habanero aioli on yuca chips. But I'll take the newer and more interesting ones with tomato relish and a little bacon flavor to dance with the hot tidal taste of the oysters. A half-dozen of either kind or a split of three each is $15. The thumbalina salad ($12) survives and thrives, a landslide of its namesake round carrots plus red Romaine, avocado and marcona almonds.

But not everything rang true for me at Jeffrey's.

The dish with the short ribs (they're all the rage), looked like it came from a Dr. Seuss page. With knobs of potato on meat in brown squares, saucy rivers lay 'round them, like old '80s flair. The fat and the lean, I like it a lot. But the cooking-school plating, no I do not.

A rolled pork shank ($27) with a crisp exterior and a moist interior like a tiny suckling pig drew attention for its homeliness. It looked like the head of a bumbling battle droid from the second Star Wars trilogy wearing a pearled bonnet of mustard seeds. And for $45, I wanted a `porcini-rubbed filet mignon on Kennebec potato butter with braised beef debris' to be more than a hyper-pedigreed plate of steak-and-mashers.