Possible Pancake Perfection??

Who is that devilishly handsome bald guy?

Have you ever taken a walk through downtown Austin? Have you ever passed up the opportunity to eat at a food cart while doing so? If you have, you may have missed out on the best food you have never eaten. The trip we take down Tasty Lane this time is a good example. This week dear friends, we will discuss Crepes Mille. I love a good crepe. I believe that crepes are what pancakes probably tasted like in the Garden of Eden. Crepes Mille is the definition of a perfect crepe. They are tender, light and mild in flavor. In short, these crepes are good enough for a crepe snob, like myself. Also I would like to mention right off the bat that all of the fillings and meats are cooked to perfection.

Panang Curry

Beginning with the French side of things, we'll talk about the chicken burgundy and creamy cremini. The chicken burgundy contains a mix of white and dark chicken in a red wine and gorgonzola cream sauce. This wonderful crepe is the epitome of proper French flavor. It is well balanced, mild, creamy, and wonderfully delicious. Neither the red wine nor the gorgonzola overpowers the base flavor. To be perfectly honest, everything in this dish plays nicely together, like you wish your children would. The creamy cremini is pretty much the same idea. It is a cream sauce of cremini mushrooms and fried onions over a crepe stuffed with wilted spinach. The dish is served with a lemon wedge on the side and when you squeeze that little yellow beauty on your food, the entire dish just sings. The spinach in this crepe was perfectly wilted, not raw and not overdone to the point of having the consistency of wet plastic wrap.

Chicken Burgundy

Onward and upward to southeast Asia! The panang curry crepe is stuffed with your choice of chicken or shrimp and garnished with shredded carrots. It is then topped with a panang curry that has to be one of the best I have had in Austin. The curry is perfectly balanced, just enough spice to make you take notice, not enough to send you fleeing to the nearest bucket of water. The obvious attention to detail requisite in a phenomenal dish is there as well. The creamy, mildly sweet and beautiful flavor of coconut milk sings through the other spices and mellows the flavor perfectly. Another Asian crepe they serve is the Beef Bulgogi. Tender bbq beef bulgogi is wrapped in a crepe with just enough spice to get your attention, but not burn your tongue off, and drizzled with a mild spicy sauce. The bulgogi crepe is ridiculous, to be perfectly blatant. Like just about every other item on the menu, this is worth trying.

Sticky Rice and Mango

 No wonderful meal is complete without dessert, mind you, so we had to try some of the sweet crepes offered at Crepes Mille. I had the sticky rice with mango. Sticky rice is one of those foods I will fall to my knees and beg for a serving whenever I see it; mango is another. The crepe comes topped with powdered sugar, chocolate sauce, sliced almonds and just a hint of corn flakes for texture, which work surprisingly well together. The filling is beautiful sticky rice and a slice of fresh, ripe, sweet mango. This is another dish that is a perfect symphony of flavor. We also tried the Caramelized Pear. Warm caramelized pears, stuffed into fresh crepe and drizzled with a warm caramel sauce with whipped cream on the side. The flavors are simple and clean, and chances are you can imagine exactly what it tastes like. In fact you probably are right now. Be careful not to drool into your keyboard. Hopefully this will be motivation enough for you to get out to South Congress and try 'em out.
Everything we have had here was fantastic, just a little slice of heaven on a beautiful French pancake. You are looking at spending about $6.00 to $8.00 per item, but the portions are large and very satisfying. One is enough for a normal human, two for me usually. One caveat, they only take cash, so be sure to stop at the ATM before you head out, friends. Emphatically and without reservation - Anthony Bourdain, please don't sue me for that - I can say that this is a place to try as soon as you possibly can. All in all, Crepes Mille is an excellent way to kick off an evening of music and entertainment in Austin's legendary downtown scene.

  AFJ rating:

5 Points out of 5

Crepes Mille Website
Google Maps Location

1318 S. Congress Ave.

Austin, TX 78704
(512) 919-2416

Check the website for Hours of operation

Swad

Swad

This week's review takes us to one of my new favorite places for Indian food- Swad Restaurant. Swad is located on the north end of town, in the area of Lamar Blvd and Rundberg Lane. They serve up some the best vegetarian and vegan food in town. What, no meat, you ask. That's right, no meat whatsoever and you will not miss it. Like a couple of other places in town Swad serves food that is commonly associated with the street food sold in India, as opposed to the more traditional restaurant fare that most of us may be acquainted with. The result is food that is not only delicious, but that is rather easy on the wallet as well. Here is some of what we have sampled thus far at Swad-

Samosas, the gold standard of just about any Indian/Pakistani restaurant are their samosas. Samosas consist of a pastry filled with (in most cases anyway) spiced potatoes, onions, and peas. The filling can be either spicy or mild and is wrapped inside of the pastry and then deep fried in vegetable oil until golden brown. The result is a crunchy exterior and spicy, flavorful and soft interior. How does Swad measure up to this standard? Their Samosas are some of the best in town and come served with a sweet and spicy tamarind mint chutney. I usually recommend this to dish anyone not familiar with Indian food. All of the ingredients are familiar to most of us, but the flavor profile is just exotic enough to provide a new experience.

Next we tried the aloo tiki. One important thing to know here is that the word aloo is the word for potato. So any dish that uses this word will contain potatoes. In the case of aloo tiki, you are served two potato patties smothered in a curry (curry is the word for gravy) made with tomato and garbanzo beans and finished off with parsley. The overall flavor reminds me a bit of chili with the garbanzos substituting for the usual pintos or red beans. This dish also comes served with a sweet chutney and fresh onions on the side.

Finally, we tried the Mysore Dosa. A dosa is a type of crepe made with rice and lentil flour. The dosa itself is huge, it has to be a good 12 inches across when folded. This particular crepe is also spiced with ginger. The result is a very tart and aromatic crepe, which complements the spiced potatoes perfectly. The potatoes are mixed with sauteed onion and spiced with turmeric and other spices. Also included is a cup of sambhar, a type of traditional vegetable soup made with lentils and a tomato broth. It is a bit on the spicy side so be careful if you have a sensitive tongue.

Swad is certainly one of the better Indian/Pakistani restaurants in town and comes highly recommended.


AFJ rating: 4 Lone Star Points

Website 
Map
Address:
9515 N. Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78753
512-997-7923

What Brew Is Right For You?

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

The above words were spoken by the famous American statesman and founding father, Benjamin Franklin. Aside from being the face on the U.S. one hundred dollar bill, Ben was one of the great thinkers of his day. His is probably most famous for his research into electricity, but he was also a noted writer and diplomat, without his efforts in Paris the French may never have entered the revolution.  I would say that makes his above statement true, who am I to argue with such an experienced and knowledgeable man?

I love beer, its a big part of the reason I have a bit of a belly. I love to brew, because what better to do than spend time with friends while making, talking about and drinking beer? Beer can be daunting to the uninitiated, and understandably so. When you walk into a real, well stocked, beer aisle how do you know what to choose? What is the difference between a pilsner, a hefeweizen, a porter, a stout and a pale ale? Is there any difference? In this article I will seek to clear up some of the mysteries of the wonderful world of beer.

Malted Grains

First and foremost, to get things straight, let's discuss the main types of beer. In the same manner as wine, beer can be broken into large categories which contain many and varied sub-categories. The two categories of beer, the umbrellas under which all varietals fall, are ale and lager. The main difference in the two is the yeast used to ferment them. Ale yeasts live and feed at temperatures between 60 and 75 Fahrenheit, whereas lagering  yeasts prefer cooler temperatures, around 48 to 58 Fahrenheit. Another difference is the flavor created by the malted grains that are used to make the beers. Ales, as a rule of thumb, have a thicker mouth feel, more like drinking bread. You can usually taste the malted grain used in ales. Lagers, on the other hand, tend to be much lighter in body and crisp in flavor, I'm not being snarky when I say that lagers tend to have a body closer to water than ales do.

Now, why don't we discuss a few varietals of each, so that you'll have an idea what you're looking at next time you go to your local purveyor of brewed goods. Personally I like almost all varieties of ale, it's just my preference, but I'll focus on two: Pale Ale and Porter. As far as lagers go we'll cover pilsner, my personal favorite lager.

Pale Ale

Hops

Pale ales are renowned for being light colored and slightly lighter bodied than most other ales. Another distinguishing feature of pale ale is that it should have a very hop forward taste. Hops, if you are unaware, are a flower cluster that act as a preservative, a perfuming, and a flavoring agent in the beer. The hop is typically that bitter, but in a good way bitter, flavor that you taste in your beer, the nice counter balance to all that malty heavy sweetness from the grains. In a good pale ale the hop is the first thing you taste and smell, personally I am fond of the Citra variety, which has sort of a grapefruit flavor. My favorite aroma hop is Amarillo; I don't know how to describe its aroma other than just beautiful. You may occasionally see an India Pale Ale, this is a type of pale ale with extra hops added to the beer, creating a much more apparent and "punchy" hop flavor. India Pale Ale originated in England, not Bombay as you might think. Brewers discovered that their beer wasn't keeping well on the long journeys from English ports to its destinations in India and the other far flung corners of the empire. As a solution to this problem they used extra hops, an excellent preservative as stated above, to make the beer keep longer. This created the wonderful, hoppy ale we know today.I find these beers go great with a hot day and a nice, strong cheese.

Porter

Porters and stouts are heavy, dark ales, black in color and rich in flavor. While porters use hops, they are less hoppy than a pale and the flavor profile tends towards the rich, malty flavor from the dark grains used to brew. Often you will get a very oaky flavor from a porter, as often they are aged in oak casks. Porter takes its name from being served often in pubs down by the waterfront, where the local dock workers, or porters, would come in and order the dark concoction at the end of a long day of work. These pubs were sometimes knows as porter houses,  yes that's where the steak got its name from. I like Porter when its cold out and I have a big cut of meat, or a nice piece of dark chocolate, something heavy to go with its weighty character.

Pilsner

As stated above, lagers have a lighter, less bready quality to them. They are great for drinking ice cold after you've been working in the hot sun all day. A good pilsner, which in my experience means one from Germany, is simple and clean in flavor, a little sweet, a little hops and it doesn't make you feel full and heavy like a rib sticking ale does. You may wonder why I specifically mentioned German pilsner above, it's because Germany, for me, has the best lagers of any country. I plan to cover regional and national brewing in different posts, so without getting too in depth I would like to take about Germany purity laws, no not the ones enacted at Nuremberg, beer purity laws. The country of Germany has laws on the books stating that beer can only be made of water, hops and barley, and nothing else added by man. This means they usually depend on wild yeasts for fermentation, or they did until the laws were relaxed and they all started using yeast that was not "naturally occuring." Why is this a big deal? It aids in the simple, clean flavor of the beer, giving the drinker a well balanced, beer flavored beer (thanks Dennis Leary). As stated, I like pilsners when it's hot and I've been working outside like after mowing the lawn. I find that Pilsners tend to pair well with lighter food, I like mine with some shrimp or even a salad.

I hope you have found this post educational and enlightening. Next time you go to the store walk by all the major label American beers, which you should have been doing already, and go to the more exotic micro-brews and imports. I implore you, you will not regret the expansion of your beer drinking palate and your tongue will say thank you when it realizes you are not putting Budweiser on it!

Sláinte

Dave