Well, I'm on my third week of jet lag with Vancouver 2 weeks ago, Munich last week and now across the Atlantic to Austin, Texas. I won't bore with details of my meetings but my boss took us out to a pretty decent joint last night.
Congress is the main street in downtown Austin stretchin from the Capitol to the famous "bat bridge" where the street becomes "South Congress". A few years ago we went about 2 km south of the bat bridge to a great Italian restaurant in what looked like a pretty dodgy neighbourhood. Apparently the whole area has been improved and has now a number of new restaurants. South Congress Café is one of them.
The restaurant has a modern and fairly light appearance. Interestingly you cannot book tables but can put your name on a "wait list" for a certain time. We turned up and waited in the bar about a quarter of an hour. There was a choice of about 8 draught beers - good ones.
We were in due course shown to our tables where a "trainee waiter" was serving us. In the UK service has traditionally been poor in restaurants while in the US it is considered essential to serve well even at the risk of being smarmy. One cannot fault US restaurants for investing in training their staff though I imagine it must be pretty embarassing for the trainees. In case you have not been to the US let me explain the method. The trainee waiter (or waitress) is shadowed the entire time by a more senior colleague who is there to prompt the trainee or to do a "diving catch" if something goes wrong. Yesterday, the trainee managed to knock over my beer when taking my order; the senior waitress who was training him dived across the table to try to catch the glass but missed...OK, the firthe second bit is a lie! The training method is probably effective but to an outsider it always looks comic.
OK, back to the interesting stuff....food. The menu had some interesting starters but I succumbed to the 'spicy' fried calamari; this was a bit of a boring choice but tasted very good. I would not have described the squid as spicy but the squid was well fried being crisp on the crust and tender inside.
I chose the 'five spice crusted pork tenderloin' which was served with potato enchiladas and a piece of sweet potato.
(OK, I left my camera behind but this picture from the website looks just like what I ate).
The grilled tenderloin was very good...well spiced and grilled with the right balence of browned on the outside and tender inside. The menu describes the sauce as 'very spicy ranchero burgundy' and it is accurate. My boss who ordered the same dish broke out into a sweat. For me it meant that I stayed with pale ale rather than switching to red wine. The enchiladas seemed to be a tortilla stuffed with potato and some other spice stuff. At $16 it seemed good value in US terms - and an absolute bargain with the US dollar worth less than 50p!
I could not manage a dessert. However my colleagues who ordered other dishes seemed equally pleased at both the taste and prices.
It was a good place to eat out both in terms of food, price and ambience.
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