Zoot Tasting Menu: Our 1 year anniversary!

Hey Readers! Hope this posting finds you well. I have some happy news to report, Han and I recently celebrated our 1 year anniversary, and as a present to ourselves, we purchased a Canon EOS Rebel T1i. It takes beautiful food photography shots (a.k.a. food porn) and best of all, we get to feel like real food bloggers, not just the only ones walking around events with our dinky point-and-shoot.

Anyways, we decided to break out the new camera with a trip out to Zoot at their new(-

ish) location way out west on Bee Caves near the lake. We caught a Living Social deal a few months back. $27 gets you your choice of the Chef's Tasting Menu or the Farmer's (vegetarian) Tasting Menu. We opted to go for one of each so that we could try a little bit of everything. Let me tell you guys, as good as the Chef's Tasting Menu was, I think any ferocious meat eater would also be hard pressed to say that the Farmer's Menu didn't also stand up pound-for-pound.

The first course was a Boudin sausage salad for the Chef's and Melon Salad with goat cheese for the Farmer's. The sausage salad was pretty good as you'd imagine, but the melon salad was definitely the more interesting dish. The cantaloupe was sliced thin like fat linguine noodles, and topped with cubes of watermelon, almonds, goat cheese, cayenne pepper, and a soy ginger dressing.

The next appetizer was a ham and fig salad for the chef's menu, and butternut squash soup for the farmer's menu. One of my favorite parts about going to nice r

estaurants is discovering really great food pairings that I never would have guessed. In this case, in the salad, it was figs and goat cheese. You've probably heard me say before that Han hates anything coming from an animal that goes "baa" but even she liked this one.

The next course was a soy/miso salmon and a mushroom risotto (left). Both dishes were

excellent. Consequently, these two dishes were not only our two favorites, but also the two that turned out the best in pictures, so they are the ones shown.

The final courses (before dessert) was a grilled NY strip steak for the chef's and these curried lentils and fried potato things for the farmer's. Now I meant what I said earlier about the veggie tasting menu being a close call even for meat eaters, and this was no different. For many meat eaters, steak is like the holy grail. I haven't been eating a ton of meat as of late, but I really thought this battle would be no contest. In the end, it really was tough to decided. I really think one of the best parts of being in a relationship (especially with someone else who loves food as much as I do) is that you don't HAVE to decide between two dishes.

The final course was the flourless chocolate cake. I'm not a big wine guy myself. I enjoy drinking it, but it's hard for me in most cases to say that a specific pairing really made that much of a difference in a dish. In this case however, the dessert wine that was paired with the cake made a huge difference. The tartness and bubbliness of the sparkling dessert wine made the cake taste like an entirely different dessert.

Well I don't think anyone really needed me to say something like "Zoot is indeed a great restaurant and you should definitely check it out." I'm just really glad we got the opportunity to celebrate in style. Til next time folks!

Zoot

Hey everyone. We're back. The hurricane madness seems to have passed. Luckily all friends and family are safe and unharmed, and no one we know even had any major property damage. In the meantime, we're having a blast hanging out with our refugee friends.

Anyways, this is a bit of old news, but I definitely wanted to write about our dinner at Zoot, before I forget. So, from what we understand, there is kind of a "big three" of Austin fine dining, and they are Uchi, Fonda San Miguel, and Zoot. We are planning on visiting all three in the upcoming months.

Overall, let me just say that Han and I have been to a modestly decent number of fine dining restaurants in Houston, and wow, Zoot pretty much blows all of them away.

Actually, let me clarify that a little first. I consider myself to be a "foodie" but by no means a food connoisseur. I love trying new and interesting dishes, and I always appreciate innovation over the same things over again, but I'm also not one to require the latest culture fusion dishes with trendy designer ingredients. Atmosphere is very important to me, and I like dining at upscale places, but I also feel really uncomfortable if the restaurant is stuffy or elitist.

Zoot is pretty much the perfect balance of everything. The restaurant itself is cozy and set inside of a house, kind of like Just Dinner in Houston. The interior was white table cloth and very classy, but comfortable enough that you'd still be ok wearing jeans.

But the reason this place was such a home run was the food. Some times when I've gone to expensive restaurants for dinner, I feel like I'm paying the extra money because whoever created the dish was more creative than someone else. The food at Zoot was like the work of a master artist, where the technique and craftsmanship were every bit as good as the creativity of the recipe. Every single bite we had was perfectly seasoned, perfectly textured, and perfectly prepared.

Zoot is famous for its Chef's Tasting Menu and its Farmer's Tasting Menu, but we kind of opted to build our own. We started out with a take on tomato basil soup with grilled cheese. The soup was savory, creamy, and flavorful, and the (minature) grilled cheese sandwich was perfectly buttered and lightly textured.

And then it was off to the second appetizer, foie gras, which I had for the very first time. Now, those of you who know me know that I try to be a good person. I recycle, I drive a hybrid, I donate to charity, and I love animals. But God help me, I feel awful saying this, but foie gras is DELICIOUS. (Veal is too, btw.) The foie gras is one of the specialties of Zoot, and it's not cheap, but I can definitely say it's worth the money. Unbelievably tender and fatty, it's hard not to just wolf it down in one bite.

Next came the entrees. I had the seared duck breast and Han had the roasted escolar. Like I said earlier, every single bite we had was both perfect and uniform. All we had to do was sit back and enjoy it. I apologize because the pictures of our dishes didn't turn out but they wouldn't have done justice anyways.

Lastly we finished it off with a french press of coffee and a salt toffee ice cream sandwich. Absolutely amazing. The mixture of sweet and salty made you pause when you tasted it because it was such an odd combination, but once you were done processing it, all you wanted to do was eat more.

Zoot
509 Hearn St
www.zootrestaurant.com