Austin Restaurant Week: Brunch at Cru

It's that time of year again where the prix fixe menus come out and my eating-at-home willpower all but disappears.  Yes, it's Austin Restaurant Week.  This time around, the beneficiary is Meals on Wheels and More.  The past two ARWs we went to Urban: An American Grill and McCormick & Schmick's for brunch.  Since these were both successful endeavors, we decided to try brunch again and we weren't disappointed.

This time it was a bit trickier with Ramona, but after asking twitter whether or not it was a good idea to bring a baby to a wine bar, I received the helpful tip to call the restaurant and ask.  Cru said that they totally encourage families to eat there, so Colby, Dustin, Ramona, and I made our way to the Domain.  We had a reservation for which we were almost 15 minutes late, but they seated us anyway.  It was such a nice day that we decided to eat outside.

Ramona had no preference between indoors and out.

Part of my motivation for brunch was to have my first alcoholic beverage in nearly 10 months.  I've always been a lightweight and taking a year-long hiatus from the booze didn't really help that.  Colby, Dustin, and I all ordered mimosas, which seemed on the strong side.  So strong, in fact, that I made it about 1/3 of the way through mine before I quit and gave it to Colby.  I could feel the Asian Glow coming on and I really didn't need to get drunk at brunch.

Party time!

The prix fixe menu included the cocktail, an entree, and a dessert.  I got the croque madame, Colby got the steak and eggs, and Dustin got the eggs benedict for our entrees.   The steak and eggs were excellent.  I had to fight Colby to get a bite.  My default argument for anything now is "I was in labor for 23 hours and she weight 8 lbs 9 oz".

The croque madam consisted of a croissant with smoked ham, gruyere cheese, and a bechemel sauce all topped with an egg.  Unfortunately the bechemel sauce had separated a bit, but considering the strong flavors of the gruyere and ham, it didn't really matter.  And adding an egg with a runny yolk to pretty much anything makes it more delicious.

Dustin got the eggs benedict, which he said that he liked.  Colby took the picture, which is why only part of it is pictured.

For the dessert course, Dustin and I both got berries and cream, which was served in a cookie-like tart shell.  I really really liked this.  The creme was actually a citrus mousse and it paired nicely with the blackberry, raspberry, and blueberry sauce.

Colby, being the chocolate-fan, ordered the molten lava cake with raspberry coulis and creme anglais.  He said that he liked it too.

Ends and odds

So... it's been busy.  I'm like a good solid day's worth of work away from being able to say that I have a 99.9% complete first draft of my paper.  There's still one problem that I won't be able to solve, but I think it'll be good enough to call a First Draft to send to my committee.    I've also had other things going on, but suffice it to say, I owe Community Supported Home Cooking about four posts now and I owe Lewis a post as well.  I'm hoping that I'll get to those over the weekend.

Anywho, last Sunday we went to Urban an American Grill for brunch as part of Austin Restaurant Week.  It was really good.  I'm pretty sure that adding brunch to Restaurant Week was one of their most brilliant ideas yet.  Who doesn't love brunch!? *Anywho* Colby got a bloody mary, Branch Ranch steak with fries, and strawberry shortcake bread pudding.  I got a tulip (cava+cranberry juice), salmon eggs benedict, and a trio of sorbets (olive oil, mint, and grapefruit).  I didn't have my phone on me at that point because it was dead, but everything was pretty and delicious.  My favorite part was definitely dessert.  The mint sorbet was alright, but the grapefruit sorbet was phenomenal.  It was really delicate and delicious.  The best part, though, was definitely the olive oil sorbet.  We went on the first day of ARW, so apparently the sorbet hadn't properly set yet, but that wasn't a problem.  It had a really velvety mouth feel and a creamy, balanced flavor.  I'd love to try it again when it's properly set.  The only reason I know any of this was because the chef came out to talk to us, which was totally cool.  We'll definitely head back there at some point to try other parts of the menu.

There's still another weekend for restaurant week and it's a really great way to try different restaurants that are prohibitively expensive.  Bonus!  Some of the participating restaurants donate part of their proceeds to charity.  You can find these restaurants here and a list of ALL participating restaurants here.  The last restaurant week, we went to Sullivan's Steak House and the one before, we found ourselves at Fogo de Chao.  They were both really tasty, but no longer an option for us... which brings me to why I really decided to post.

I just made pasta and meatballs for my weekly meal sharing project.  I had some grassfed ground beef in the freezer, as well as some ground pork.  The recipe I use is criminally easy and makes the most delicious meatballs I've ever had.  The only problem is that I have no idea where the pork originated.  I bought it from Central Market awhile back, but I honestly haven't put a lot of effort into sourcing where they get their meat.  This has become a priority for me after reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I'm not about to go vegan, but Colby and I have made the decision to enter into the realm of "ethical omnivorism".  For us, this means that we're going to be getting our meats from local farms that have higher standards than just claiming to be "all natural".  And this also means that we're likely done with chicken.

Right now, we have about 3 lbs of frozen chicken breasts, a half a pack of jalapeno sausage, and a brick of tempeh in the freezer.  I'll let you guess which one we bought most recently.  I am vehemently opposed to throwing away food, so we're getting through it, but we're done buying any more meat products that we haven't first properly researched and sourced.  The end goal is to stop eating food that has anything to do with factory farms, but we're doing this one step at a time and our first step is to stop eating animals that were abused, tortured, or generally mistreated on their way to a terrible slaughter.  I have so many more thoughts about this, but I'm sure I'll explore this topic in later posts.