One Dish Wonders: The SXSW edition

Six restaurants to escape the pack and pick up a fork: Boiling Pot, Chez Nous, El Sol y La Luna, Iron Works Barbecue, Jaime's Spanish Village and Mekong River

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, March 19, 2009

As much as I like power-stuffing street pizza while thundering with the rest of the South by Southwest herd on Sixth Street, there are times when I fantasize about ducking out, sitting down and using a fork. These six places represent a cross-section of styles, from Texas Cajun to country French to Vietnamese, with some Tex-Mex and barbecue for our out-of-town guests. For the most part, they're open during the day and into a reasonable part of the night during the heart of the SXSW Music Festival, and they're within walking distance of the Sixth Street club-cluster or the Austin Convention Center. And they all share the distinction of having a One Dish Wonder that says, "This is why we're here."

The Boiling Pot

Mini Combo ($9.95), Shiner 100 beer ($3.75)

I'm not about to tackle the science-fair project of opening and eating a whole boiled blue crab, even if they do give me a wooden mallet to whack it with. For weenies like me, this casual Cajun plastic-bib palace offers the Mini Combo: a spice-boiled quarter-pound of shrimp, a quarter-pound of sausage, red potatoes and two half-ears of corn, all dumped out on butcher paper at your table while it's still hot enough to fog your glasses. Even without the crustacean-cracking that goes along with the bigger combos, be prepared to meet your dinner up-close-and-personal. The seven medium-sized shrimp came fully equipped with heads, eyes and long, whiskery antennae, just like when they fell out of the net. And they tasted exactly that fresh after I peeled away the body armor, the tails a light paprika-pink. The sausage came sliced into little discs, each of them angry red, rubbery and spicy-hot. A bottle of jalapeño mustard - one of three sauces, along with creamy horseradish and red cocktail sauce - turned the sausage into something tangy and memorable. The corn and potatoes needed no help from sauces, though, having soaked up the exotic blend of boiling spices that rings with garlic, paprika, cumin and other aromatics. Served with bread and butter, the Mini Combo was thoroughly filling. And the little glass of water with lemon they bring you? Don't drink it. You'll need it for your hands. Bonus: The beer cooler up front is iced down with dozens of foreign and domestic beers, including six varieties of Texas-brewed Shiner.

(700 E. Sixth St. 472-0985, www.theboilingpot.ypguides.net. Open 4 to 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, with lunchtime hours Wednesday and Thursday during SXSW; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday; noon to 10 p.m. Sunday.)

Chez Nous

Menu du Jour ($25.50), glass of house Cotes de Gascogne white wine ($6)

At Sixth and Neches streets, just off the carnival midway of the entertainment district, this tiny twinkling light of a French restaurant offers a three-course fixed dinner menu for $25.50, with an appetizer, main course and dessert. To call it "fixed" is unfair on my part, because the appetizer choices alone included a salad, soup and four kinds of housemade pâté. How could anybody order soup or salad when they could have a pâté made with duck breast, duck confit and pork instead? And what a bright surprise it was to find brie cheese as one of three dessert choices. Cheese for dessert is an Old World thing, and Chez Nous (shay noo) knows how to lay it down: a thin wedge about 6 inches long, served with fanned green apple slices and walnuts. Perfect with a cool, honeydewed glass of the house Cotes de Gascogne white. But speaking of the Old World and other Euro-quirky things, I could have done without the extended version of someone loudly whining the tune to "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" on the sound system, but it eventually segued into a cool Bebel Gilberto groove and stayed there, keeping much more in line with the deft, calm elán of the service staff. The main courses on the Menu du Jour change with regularity, but on a recent night I skipped past hanger steak with anchovy butter and salmon in a port reduction and picked the fresh and firm ruby trout with crabmeat in champagne beurre blanc sauce. Alongside the fish came pommes dauphine (breaded globes of garlic mashed potatoes) and sautéed zucchini, tomato and yellow squash - all of it served with crusty French bread and the grace to let me enjoy it with the unhurried reverie it deserved.

(510 Neches St. 473-2413, www.cheznousaustin.com. Open 11:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 6 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Closed Monday.)

El Sol y la Luna

Chilaquiles rojos ($5), coffee ($2)

We were just going to do five of these One Dish Wonders until I found out that the mighty Sun and Moon had risen again. You can't leave out a place that serves eggs and coffee in the morning and enchiladas and top-shelf margaritas after dark, all tucked into a corner between two of Emo's zillion SXSW music venues. Pried from its 14-year spot on South Congress Avenue in December, this eclectic home of Austin-style Mexican food reopened just two weeks ago. El Sol y La Luna's menu has always read like a Wikipedia entry on Mexican food, from ceviche to caldo to tacos al pastor to enchiladas de mole. And now the place is bigger, yellow-er, blue-er and more formal, but the humble breakfast chilaquiles (chee-lah-KEE-lays) plate hasn't changed a bit. It's simple: strips of fried corn tortilla topped with a smoky, slightly sweet red (or green) salsa blanketed with jack cheese, broiled until it's a mass of crunchy, cheesy indulgence that's more fun than scrambled eggs but not as fussy as nachos. Served with black beans and a big dab of sour cream, it's just the right size for a late breakfast, or with chicken for an extra $2, call it lunch.

(600 E. Sixth St. 444-7770, www.elsolylalunaaustin.com. Open 7 a.m. to midnight Tuesday-Thursday; 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday-Saturday; 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday.)

Iron Works BBQ

Sampler plate ($12.95), St. Arnold's root beer ($1.50)

Is this red corrugated-metal smokehouse the best barbecue in Austin? That question is enough to start an e-mail fight full of words in all capital letters. But I can state this flat-out: Iron Works is the best barbecue place that's parked right next door to the Austin Convention Center. If nothing else, it's a Six Flags Over Barbecue amusement park, with its beat-up wooden icehouse floor, rusty signs, walls scorched by branding irons and autographed menus framed with mug shots of the stars who signed them: Ray Price, Owen Wilson, Kate Hudson. You order by the light of a neon Budweiser sign at the kitchen window, gazing up at a smoke-stained menu. The barbecue sampler plate rounds out the theme-park metaphor with a cartoonishly big beef rib that beats up its plate-mates, which include brisket, Iron Works brand sausage and unremarkable sides of potato salad and green beans. There's nothing wrong with the brisket (which sports a nice black char) or the sausage (two big sections), but the rib's smoky balance of meat and fat and spectacle makes it worth a framed, autographed picture of its own.

(100 Red River St. 478-4855, www.ironworksbbq.com. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Closed Sunday.)

Jaime's Spanish Village

Spanish Village dinner ($12.25), margarita on the rocks ($6)

If you're coming from a city where you can't get decent Mexican food, bless your heart. Right across the street from Stubb's (where, let's face it, you won't be getting in to see Metallica) is Jaime's (HI-maze), adoptive restaurant home to generations of University of Texas fraternity and sorority people. Their photos are collected in collages of "whoo-hoo!" snapshots all over the walls of the low-slung, dimly lighted home of the Spanish Village dinner, itself a collage of Tex-Mex standards. The dinner arrives on two plates: one stacked with a crispy beef taco, guacamole whipped to a smooth green custard and chips with hot queso straight from the Velveeta school of melty yellow cheeses, the other plate defining why generations of Texas kids grew up hearing, "Careful, hot plate." The hot one comes with two fat beef enchiladas and a crumbly tamal, all camouflaged by that same shiny yellow cheese and a thick brown gravy that tastes almost entirely unlike chili. Throw in some rice and refried beans, and this is a picture of you, eating old-school Tex-Mex. And I mean all that as a compliment, a testament even, right down to the margarita on the rocks with enough self-esteem to be more tart than sweet, even around the sorority sisters.

(802 Red River St. 476-5149, www.jaimes-austin.com. Open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Closed Sunday.)