First Impressions: Justine's and Tarka Indian Kitchen

On the East Side, a French bistro is born. Plus: Former Clay Pit owners open launch a fast-casual concept.

Somewhere between the reporting of a new restaurant's opening and the full-contact review that comes after a polite grace period lies the land of First Impressions . We'll save the ratings for later, but these are places that show promise the minute they flip the sign to read, 'Yes, we're open.'

Justine's

4710 E. Fifth St. 385-2900, www.justines1937.com. Hours: 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. (dinner until 1:30 a.m.) daily except Tuesday (closed).

It's hardly news anymore that East Austin has become hot property for restaurant people. The last year has seen the opening of the Good Knight, the East Side Show Room, Buenos Aires Cafe East and the Shuck Shack.

Add Justine's to that list, dated Sept. 3, named after Justine Gilcrease, who owns the French brasserie with her husband, Pierre Pelegrin.

In a ramshackle 1937 house next to the staging yard for a fleet of ice-cream trucks in an industrial area, the couple made room for a dining room with red walls, a black vaulted ceiling, the original wood flooring, a full-service bar and a modest kitchen, doing much of the two-year extreme makeover themselves.

'I never used a table saw before, but now I'm pretty good at it,' said Gilcrease, who studied photography at San Francisco's Academy of Art. Pelegrin's been in Austin since he moved here from France two decades ago, long enough to have played bass in 8 1/2 Souvenirs, long enough to have worked at Chez Nous, where his brother once served as a chef, and long enough to have met Gilcrease while his band was on tour in her native California. They've been together five years, and the birth of Justine's comes just a few months before their first baby is due.

Justine's has been overwhelmed since it opened, Gilcrease said. Some credit has to go to the Web site, justines1937.com, that in the early days opened with a grainy black-and-white film of three women in a bathtub (not as racy as it sounds), a film Gilcrease made in art school. The site has been toned down, but the risque business added to the word-of-mouth that comes with the hyperconnected foodie community here.

The food gets the rest of the credit. Working with the owners, chef Josh Lopez has put together a succinct menu of French bistro classics, including escargot in butter sauce ($6.50), salade ni?oise ($10), steak frites ($16.50), duck confit ($15) and coquilles St. Jacques ($15).

His charcuterie plate ($12), made from meats that Lopez cures and cuts in-house, is an explosion of texture and flavor: a ramekin of creamy, salty and garlic-rich duck liver mousse, a cylindrical rillette of rough-shredded pork with herbs and aromatic spices and two slices of rabbit terrine, a mosaic of peppercorns and tender meat. It's served with cornichons, olives and sliced baguette.

Steak tartare ($14) at Justine's is a tower of fragrant shreds of raw meat shot through with capers, onion, fresh ground pepper and Worcestershire, crowned with a raw quail egg. It's luscious, it's dense, it's a lesson in the savory taste called umami. And it will not make you wish it were cooked. That same plate comes with fries that are hot, crisp and flecked with green herb.

The dish has been a hit, to everyone's surprise except Gilcrease's: 'Everybody told me, "No one's going to order steak tartare in Texas." And I said that's ridiculous. There's such great meat here.'

And there's such great potential at Justine's. The wine list is short, smart and affordable. The place has soul: Pelegrin plays vinyl records throughout the night, heavy on the blues he chased to America with his friend Oliver Calmant, who now helps tend the bar.

In just a few short week's, Justine's has given itself a lot to live up to.

— Mike Sutter

Tarka Indian Kitchen

5207 Brodie Lane . 892-2008, www.tarkaindiankitchen.com. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

Fast-casual is a popular restaurant concept these days, and Tarka Indian Kitchen is the newest eatery in Austin where customers order food at a counter and sit down to wait for a staff person to bring out their orders.

Sure, several kinds of masala and curry are available on the well-thought-out menu and the food doesn't take long to arrive, but other Indian standards such as saag, tandoori chicken, vindaloo and kebabs also fight for attention. And the fast service doesn't mean Tarka — which means the sizzling sound of sauteed ingredients — isn't serving some of the best Indian food in town.

General manager Rajina Pradhan , who opened the popular downtown Indian restaurant Clay Pit a decade ago but sold it last year, says she and her husband have teamed up with the Clay Pit's new owners to open what they hope to be the first of many fast-casual Indian restaurants under the Tarka name.

Wine and beer are available, but at lunch on opening day last week , my dining companion Chaya Rao, an Indian chef instructor in Austin, and I had Limca, a delicious Indian lemon-lime soda distributed by Coca-Cola. After devouring vegetable kebabs ($7.75), chicken tikka masala ($7.75), a side order of garlic naan ($2) and Madras soup ($2 for a cup), we decided that, unlike many fast-casual concepts around town, the food at Tarka doesn't taste like the cooks cut corners to get the dishes out faster. Rao went so far as to say that it's the best Indian food she's had in Austin.

Parents will be delighted to see a kid's menu, including chicken fingers with masala fries, basmati rice with chicken or vegetables and a mild tikka masala curry over rice.

It will take several trips to try everything we wanted on the menu, from the samosas, chaat and curried mussels to specials, including pan-seared tilapia, that are served only after 5 p.m.

— Addie Broyles