Labor Day Weekend Redux

Though it wasn't nearly as ridiculously bloggable as our festivities last Labor Day weekend, when we ventured into the backend of Tuscany to eat at the table of arguably the most famous butcher in the world, this Labor Day weekend was entirely sweet and all-American.

If you count eating what turned out to be copious amounts of Vietnamese food all-American.

Our Labor Day weekend started a little early.  Friday lunch found us visiting a brand spankin' new Vietnamese restaurant here in Austin.  Thanh Nhi is on the north side of town, part of the two or three mile stretch of North Lamar that's packed with Vietnamese and Mexican and Pakistani joints. 

We overordered - there were several items of interest on the menu that we hadn't seen before, like these $3.00 "grilled pork paste" spring rolls.

Neither of us has ever seen spring rolls like this on a Vietnamese menu.  I asked the young waitress where they were from, and she answered "Vietnam."  Yes, well... where, more specifically?  "Chinatown."

I asked if it was the Chinatown in HCMC, and she said "I really don't know."  So, does this look familiar to anyone?

Inside, we found a small slab of delicious, peppery grilled pork sausage, a leaf of lettuce wrapped around shredded carrot and sliced cucumber, and a long cigar of fried spring roll skin.  The textures were great - cold, hot, crunchy, snappy, meaty.

I ordered a bowl of the Phnom Penh - style noodles, which turned out to be sunk in the bottom of a bowl of rich pork broth, topped with lettuces, thin slices of pork, and a fried bready item with a small shrimp pressed in the center.

As usual, I drank almost all of the broth and left most of the noodles and about half of the meat.  I need to figure out a way to get double the broth so I can bring everything home for another meal.  This particular noodle soup was good, though a little on the bland side.

Husbear ordered what's fast becoming his regular, or at least his yardstick, the pho tai.  That's pho, beef noodle soup, with raw brisket added so it cooks in the soup.  It seems like most places here in the States are afraid to add totally raw meat, and this place was no exception.  They did add a raw egg yolk, though.

I won't talk about the pho, since I think Husbear is planning a rundown of Austin pho restaurants at some point.

In a final act of silliness, we ordered a banh mi.  We've been trying to find a good one since we came back to find, to our deep chagrin, that Ba Le morphed into some kind of extremely brightly painted Mexican seafood restaurant while we were in Italy.

We'll have to keep looking, though I may try some of the other sandwiches on offer at Thanh Nhi.  This is their banh mi with shredded pork skin, which was seriously porky.  We were sad to note that there was no lard or aioli or any kind of sauce on their sandwich, and that their pickles weren't actually pickled.  Huh.

I do think we'll be back to Thanh Nhi, though.  Huge menu of noodle soups and crazy fried rice dishes, along with a glimpse of a downright beautiful bowl of bun going by to a table of middle-aged Vietnamese men, is enough to re-attract us.

Then, well, we went pants-shopping.  I had no luck.  Gawd, shopping for pants is not fun... though I did discover that I dropped two sizes during our time overseas.  FIST-PUMP!

Though if we continue to eat like this, I don't know how long that will last.  (Ha.  No, I've been doing aerobics!  I KNOW.  Peppy and crazy and jumping around.)

Dinner?  Vivo.  Puffy tacos and delicious, though expensive margaritas.  Our Canon SD800 actually took a couple of passable pictures, given the extra low-light conditions in there.  The bartender actually comped our first two margaritas!

Husbear says he's never been wowed by the food at Vivo, though I am a big fan of their puffy tacos, especially the ones filled with guacamole.  Hot, fried, soft and crispy, with cool, creamy middle?  They're delicious.  But it's the salsa that's the real standout - it may be the best in Austin, though we're pretty sure they've toned down the spice level.  It's a crazy dark brew of smoky chilies with a hefty garlic punch.  Positively addictive.

After dinner, we drove over to Asti, where some friends were having dinner, and totally crashed their party.  (Don't worry, we were invited.)  Some day, we'll bring the camera to that restaurant and do a review - they're one of the more tasty places in Austin.

The next morning, Labor Day Saturday, found us on 290 heading towards Houston.  It's still a little strange to me that the fastest way from Austin to Houston is via a limited-access highway with a 70 mph speed limit, but hey, it's Texas.

We were driving there to see my brother.  He lives in Chicago, but was flying down for the weekend to see his girlfriend, who has just started at Rice.

On the way, we sampled a very strange fusion... a boudin kolache!

Yup - a Chzech pastry stuffed with Cajun rice sausage!  This should have been better, but at least it kept us from gnawing our arms off before we got to Houston.

We met my lil' bro and his lady friend at Madras, a South Indian restaurant that's part of a small chain here in Texas.  Their food was... OK, but the conversation was great.

Our first cultural stop after our bellies were full of dosai and uttapam was the Houston Museum of Natural Science, because we're all geeks who like to geek out, and if you've had your head under a rock recently you might not know that LUCY is on tour!  (Um... I didn't know either.  She's not as much of a rock star as I'd like to think.)

First, though, we admired the huge sundial outside that tracks not only the time of day, but the month.  Stupid thing doesn't even adjust for Daylight Savings Time, though. 

Lucy's our first ancestor to walk upright.  We arrived expecting protestors from perhaps some ID-ers and an anti-Darwinist or two, but not a peep.  We were even able to get tickets for an entry time just an hour and a half after we arrived.

While we waited for our entry time, we checked out a couple of exhibits at the museum.  They have an absolutely stellar gem and mineral area, where we were impressed by quite a few of the natural formations, as well as some spectacularly glimmery jewelry.

This huge sample of pyrite (fool's gold) looks like some sort of 80's bachelor pad sculpture.

This turtle is made of something I've forgotten.  Oops. 

The jewelry area is impressive.  Most of the pieces were fashioned by a Houston jeweller, though this particular piece is from Beverly Hills.  That's a 215 carat emerald, btw.

After this exhibit, it was time to see Lucy.  Actually, we were a little surprised to see that the exhibit does not focus on Lucy herself, but spends a lot of time on the country of her discovery - Ethiopia.  We learned an awful lot about that country, enough that I spent some time today searching on Kayak for tickets to Addis Ababa (I really want to see the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela!), but overall it seemed like the exhibit spent very little time on the origins of man. 

We then drove downtown to check out Houston's oldest bar, La Carafe, where we had wine and talked about Illinois vs. Texas politics, and then, still not being hungry, we drove out to the Galleria.  This is Houston's premier mall, counting an indoor ice rink among its blandishments.  We wandered a very small area before deciding to head back downtown to a restaurant Husbear was jumping at the bit to revisit - Dolce Vita Pizzeria Enoteca. 

An hour and a half wait.  Yup.  At least we got seats at the bar, where we were able to order an awesome, dry, strawberrylicious rosato from the Salentine Peninsula along with three really nice appetizers.  Tops among these was their fennel served with bagna cauda - the fennel was just as good as the stuff we could find in Florence, and their bagna cauda was quite yummy, though the flavor of roasted garlic predominated.

When we were finally seated, we agreed on three pizzas and got a bottle of a 2003 (la gola?) morellino di scansano, still one of our most favorite Italian wines.

We were dismayed when the pizzas arrived at the table and we saw that they had been pre-cut for our mass-market convenience!  Dammit!  When we were here last summer, they were proud not to cut their pizzas, like an acutal Italian pizzeria, but I guess stupid people incapable of cutting their own food complained, and the policy has been changed.  I think it caused the pizzas, cooked in an exptremely high-heat woodburning oven, to dry out faster than normal.

The margharita was very good, a solid rendition with a nice tart tomato sauce.  The calabrese was surprisingly yummy - we normally aren't sausage-on-pizza fans, but this one was nicely spicy and savory pork goodness.  The bottom pizza, a festival of taleggio topped with pears and arugula, was refreshing, but would have been better with less industrial-appearing arugula and perhaps a bit more taleggio.

We did leave happy, and we would go back were we to return to Houston.  Though there are so many great restaurants there, it's hard to repeat...

It was so wonderful to see my little brother, guys.

The drive back to Austin sort of sucked.  We got home at 2 on the dot.  Next day, we had to treat ourselves to more Vietnamese, right?  Le Soleil, here we come...

We didn't make it in time to order off of their lunch menu, so I'll blame the fact that we insanely over-ordered on the fact that we didn't know our way around the menu.  Right.

Well, one of the things we ordered was off of the appetizer side of the menu and was called "grilled pork with rice noodle."  Turned out that the dish covered four plates, and was actually roll-your-own spring rolls!  This was really tasty, but we didn't care nearly as much for the banh xeo.  This rice-flour crepe was larger and greasier and puffier and contained twice as many bean sprouts as the ones we enjoyed in HCMC. 

The rest of Sunday was spent shopping at the newish outlets in Round Rock, because my husband is very very very nice and doesn't mind shopping for jeans with me.  In fact, he's good at it.  So ha. 

Actual Labor Day, we grilled.  We had to, I think it's a law in Texas.  We packed up lots of food and ran by Central Market to pick up all sorts of ingredients and drove waaaaaay up to Husbear's cousin's house.  They live in the same complex we used to live in, and when we lived there we had no idea just how far out of town it is!  Lucky we like Kyle and Jessica.

Unfortunately, Jessica wasn't there - she was still on her way back from Louisiana, where she'd been visiting her family - so she didn't get to partake of Husbear's grilling insanity.

Not only did Husbear grill duck legs for the first time ever, he also grilled foil packets of plums and figs along with romaine hearts for a grilled salad.  And he made Israeli couscous for a starch.

It made for a seriously high-falutin' grill fest of deliciousness.  Grilled duck is a great idea - Husbear marinated it first for about an hour in chicken broth, wine, and lemon.  The grilled stewed fruit was finished witha little butter and cinnamon, and the amazingly awesome grilled romaine was topped with a raspberry/apple cider vinegar/mustard vinaigrette, toasted pistachios, and fresh raspberries.  Wow.  No, double wow.

Well, jeez.  That post turned out quite a bit longer than I was thinking!  Sorry.  I guess it was kind of a long weekend.  Get it?  Long weekend?  Eh, I'm tired of writing.

I do promise I'll get back to posts about Southeast Asia soon - honestly, I was getting a little burned out.

Thanh Nhi: 9200 N. Lamar #104, Austin, (512) 834.1376.  Open 7 days, 9-9 (full restaurant 10-9).

Vivo: 2015 Manor (It's Maynor, non-Austinites!), Austin, (512) 482.0300.  Open 7 days, closed Sunday lunch.

Dolce Vita Pizzeria Enoteca: 500 Westheimer, Houston, (713) 520.8222.  Open Tuesday - Sunday dinner only.

Le Soleil: 9616 N. Lamar, Austin, (512) 821.0396.

Comments

[Crystal]

I, too love Vivo's puffy tacos! Another place that does great fried tortillas is Zocalo Cafe, on West Lynn. It's not quite fabulous, but the crispy tacos and flautas are so crunchy-good. Why did I not realize you live in Austin, too? :)

[Girlie]

Crystal, I've been wanting to give Zocalo a try! They opened while we were in Italy, but I've been hearing great things about them.

We haven't been back in Austin very long - just a couple of months. It's certainly a great town!

[Joolie]

I look forward to the Austin pho rundown. I liked the pho at the north 888, but they changed ownership and we had to switch our Vietnamese loyalties to Tam Deli. Which I love, but pho just isn't their specialty.

Next time you go to Houston, consider taking 71 so you can stop at Hruska's Chevron in Ellinger for their excellent kolaches and their terrible kitschy merchandise.

[Girlie]

Joolie, I never did get to the north 888 while they were there, but I've been pretty unimpressed with their southern cousin. Tam is definitely yummy, though we've never been crazy for their sandwiches.

I think Husbear's favorite pho so far is the pho at Pho Saigon on N. Lamar, behind where Ba Le used to be. I'll start getting after him to work on his roundup! Thanks for commenting!

[Vivian]

The pictured spring roll is a traditional Vietnamese fare. It's made from rice flour I believe, and the "skin" is steamed.

[Girlie]

Vivian, we've had a number of traditional Vietnamese spring rolls, and we've never seen one like this on the menu. These weren't steamed - the rice flour pancake on the outside is run through water, quickly, until it softens.

The thing that was so strange about this one was the inclusion of the fried dough cigar... definitely different than the run-of-the-mill noodles and meats and herbs!