THE MAIN COURSE

Taste

Austin wine bar serves creative, sophisticated fare

By Dale Rice
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, August 21, 2008

Taste is the new Austin.

The restaurant and wine bar, located on the first floor of the CSC building a block east of City Hall, represents the culinary and cultural growth of the city in general and downtown in particular.

It's a sleek, modern space inside, with sidewalk tables on West Cesar Chavez Street that add to the cosmopolitan feel. Diners and imbibers on a recent weeknight were relatively young — most appeared in their 30s — and hip and fashionable. It was a crowd ready-made for a television commercial or magazine ad extolling the future of downtown living.

At the same time, the menu underscores the changes that have taken place in the restaurant kitchens of the city, with fare that is creative and skillfully executed. All it would take is a couple of tiny touches, such as an amuse bouche to begin the meal or a complimentary chocolate truffle to end it, to make Taste a four-star establishment.

One of the starters from executive chef William McGrory IV, the smoked ostrich ($6 for the small size) featured four fingers of buffalo mozzarella wrapped in thin slices of ostrich (similar to the way prosciutto is typically cut) with a small mound of micro greens and tomato vinaigrette. It was beautiful and delicious.

The chef's daily cheese plate ($8 for the small size) brought two contrasting cheeses, a Jersey cow's milk cheese served with golden raisin-almond tapenade and a creamy blue cheese over a light film of candied walnut butter. They were a lovely accompaniment to wine, another special aspect of Taste.

This business, launched by two brothers and their wives, Kristi and Reagan Mayces and Ryan and Tanya Mayces, is three elements rolled into one: restaurant, wine bar and wine retail shop, with a wine-preservation system that allows patrons to sample dozens of wines or order them in smaller-than-full-glass portions.

"Half glasses are important to us," says Kristi Mayces. "People want to branch out, but they don't want to commit to a full glass or a bottle. So this gives them the opportunity to try something and make a decision whether to purchase a bottle."

Mayces emphasizes that all bottles in the restaurant/shop are priced at retail levels, rather than the typical restaurant mark-up. In fact, she says, Taste has a price-match guarantee with any wine shop in town, including Spec's.

Consequently, when a diner chooses one of the 450 bottles available to open there, the restaurant adds a $10 service charge per bottle (equivalent to a corkage fee in restaurants that allow diners to bring their own wine with them) to cover the overhead involved with serving wine.

The nice thing about that half-glass system is that it allows you to have a white with the starters and then move on to a red with the main course, such as the veal chop ($30) or buffalo strip loin ($28).

The 16-ounce veal chop was served with calypso beans (a plump, tasty variety), baby leeks and wood-ear mushrooms, while the buffalo was accompanied by house bacon risotto, trumpet royale mushrooms and a fig reduction sauce. Both meats were tender and flavorful, and strong flavors ruled on each plate.

For dessert, the fig tartlet ($8) topped with olive oil ice cream was lovely. The vanilla-black pepper panna cotta ($7) was an unusual item. The panna cotta formed the base and was covered with a thin layer of plum gelee and garnished with candied pistachios, delivering multiple tastes with each bite.

Multiple tastes — from the kitchen and the bottle ? are a highlight of the new Taste. It's a restaurant that is continuing to move Austin cuisine in a sophisticated, appealing direction.

drice@statesman.com; 445-3859