Texas French Bread brings promise to the table for dinner

Most restaurants don't get a second act.

Almost 30 years after their parents opened the original Texas French Bread near the University of Texas, Murph and Ben Willcott decided to take the Austin institution in a bold new direction.

Judy and Paul Willcott opened the original Texas French Bread near the University of Texas in 1981. In a town populated at the time with greasy burger joints, Tex-Mex and barbecue, the bakery's popular fresh breads and baked goods marked an aspirational shift in the Austin food scene.

Over the next several decades, the store expanded its menu and added eight locations around the city. But the exponential growth proved untenable. Three years ago, the Willcott brothers, who bought the business from their mother in 2007, decided to close two of the remaining three locations to focus on their flagship store on Rio Grande Street.

It was time for Texas French Bread to reinvent itself.

With an eye on broadening the restaurant's offerings, the native Austinites hosted semi-monthly private supper club parties for several years. The popularity of those dinners, which featured local produce and proteins purchased at farmers markets, led the Willcotts' to re-examine the mission of Texas French Bread. Last spring the brothers expanded dinner service to six nights a week.

In a town often obsessed with ideas of "old" and "new" Austin, Texas French Bread represents the city's past and the possibilities of its future.

The bakery in the taupe brick building on the corner of Rio Grande and 29th streets has been in the Texas French Bread family since 1987. In the evening, the bright, airy space with orange window frames and lighted-glass cases dims. With heavy curtains drawn over the restaurant's many windows, the cozy space embraces diners. The red neon "dinner" sign above the door softly illuminates the dining room with the help of candlelight at each table, and the lampposts on the corner of the narrow streets make you feel as if you've just stepped into a bistro in a busy Paris neighborhood. The mix of Jackson Browne and John Coltrane on the stereo plays at a volume loud enough to provide ambience without overwhelming the conversations of an eclectic group of diners populated one recent weeknight with older couples, anxious college daters, local musicians and a world-class athlete.

The menu is small, generally fewer than a dozen items, and changes daily. Several dishes such as pappardelle make regular appearances, their flavors varied by accompanying vegetables or proteins. The bottom of the menu lists the farms and ranches featured on that day's menu. It's not just locavore posturing. The names change at each dinner in synch with what is being served. Last year the Growers Alliance of Central Texas placed Texas French Bread in the top three restaurants that buy directly from the farms or from the farmers at farmers markets.

Savory chicken stock provides the base for a white bean soup ($8) that looks like a Monet painting, mantis green of celery leaf blending subtly with fibrous ecru beans and a slight sheen of olive oil. Rapini piled atop crunchy bruschetta ($11) is tender and fresh, though a bit unwieldy, its bitterness softened by creamy sheep's milk ricotta.

The first iteration of pappardelle ($16) we tried was indicative of the glories and trappings of Texas French Bread's commitment to simple, clean flavors. The long ribbons of handmade pasta were cooked well, as were the chickpeas, offering just enough resistance to the tooth. And the spinach and kale in the pesto were a startling deep emerald green. But the dish severely lacked flavor. Traditional pesto contains bright basil, the crunch of pine nuts and expressive garlic. With none of those flavors or textures present, this pesto arrived like a bland one-note blanket.

Though they were fresh and beautiful to look at, kale and spinach simply do not have the pop and power of basil. I can appreciate a twist with the absence of basil, but the dish still desperately needed more of the acid from lemon that was buried at the bottom of the bowl and would have benefited from saltiness by way of shaved Parmesan. On another visit, the pappardelle redeemed itself with rich, earthy flavors of cremini and porcini mushrooms.

The seasoning problems were even more glaring in the lentils, chard and turnips that came with the hanger steak ($21). We had to cordon the wet, unseasoned vegetables to a corner of the plate to keep them from interfering with the Niman Ranch beef that was cooked to a perfect amaranth medium rare. We could taste no seasoning in the vegetables. I appreciate the desire to let fresh, local produce sing with little obstruction, but that does not mean one should be scared away from salt or pepper. The vegetables definitely needed to be drained longer, as the water threatened to make the plate inedible.