First Look: Salt Traders in Zilker is Open!

I generally shy away from new restaurants the first couple of months they are open for obvious reasons. But Mad Betty strongly suggested the just-opened Salt Traders next to Zilker Park for our Friday night happy hour, as she has loved their original location in Round Rock. Yet another brainchild of owner/chef Jack Allen, Salt Traders is all about coastal life. And proves to be very sea worthy.

They took an old steak house on the east frontage road of Mopac at Bee Caves in that tree-lined office park with the IHOP and transformed it. (The southwest side of Zilker, past the Botanical Gardens.) Lots of windows, full of light, lots of light-colored wood accents. The bar at the front is three-sided, and the television was mounted on the interior header so as not to be a distraction to those in the dining area (genius!).

You can sort of see the bottom edge of the television from where were sitting but I was thrilled it wasn't mounted on the outside of that header piece.

Salt Traders sources sustainable seafood from around the American coastlines, with a keen eye on the Gulf Coast. For the non-seafood eaters, there are burger, steak, and chicken offerings, but clearly the stars of the menu are the fruits of the sea.

We got there just before 5 pm on Friday, which might have been their second official full day of business, and we were lucky to snag a table when we did.  Fortunately were were seated on the far wall, opposite the door but we could soon see people starting to pile up around the entrance.  We took advantage of their lovely happy hour specials.

The Grapefruit Rita and Dripping Springs Vodka Lemonade.

Chowda Fries. OH MY! Basically clam chowder poured over fries. YES, more please! 

Snapper collar with slaw and tartar sauce. You do have to pick at it a little, but the flesh falls right off and was very tasty. 

These mussels were done with fennel and tomato and had a luxurious broth that we wanted to drink.

Hush puppies were dense but not at all greasy.

This key lime tartlet was the one miss for me. Very little key lime flavor, the crust was over-toasted and completely fell apart as a fork got near it. I did provide constructive feedback to our waitress who said she would notify the kitchen. A friend of mine went the night before we did and had the coconut cheesecake mousse, which she said was excellent. But for this to be the only miss at a restaurant during opening week, I'll take it!

Given Jack Allen's experience in the restaurant world (aka Captain of the Ship), it's no real surprise that Salt Traders has started out on the top of their game from the get go. Service from the wait staff was excellent and apart from the key lime tart, all of the food was great and are items I will order again. They are open daily from 11 am - 10 pm, and won't even need the excess traffic from Austin City Limits music festival the next two weekends, as I think they'll be packed as it is.

A very welcome addition to the area, and I imagine Salt Traders will stay afloat for a long time.

Liberty Kitchen

I was invited to come and check out the relatively new Liberty Kitchen, so I grabbed my friend Linda of Girl Eats World because we're good at eating off each other's plates and she always makes me laugh! We had a great time learning more about Liberty Kitchen, at 507 Pressler Street, with the entrances to the parking garage and restaurant both on the West 5th Street side. They have expanded to Austin from Houston, where they are part of the FEED TX Restaurant Group. I was not monetarily compensated for a blog post, and all opinions are my own.

I immediately loved the light-filled dining room, and we had good natural light for pictures during most of the meal! The border around the ceiling spells out "The stars at night, are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas" and the design was created using custom designed rulers!

To the left is a private dining room that can seat up to 24 guests, so if you have a need for a private function, keep this in mind.

And at first glance the wall paper looks like your standard damask print, but when you get up close to it....a great representation of Texas, and this wasn't even a custom paper! (Bats instead of butterflies would have been perfect for Austin.) ;)

While looking at the drink menu, I was immediately intrigued by the first cocktail, but when I mentioned to our waiter that I was more of a vodka person than gin, he volunteered the switch, so this is the Lillie Langtry with vodka, fresh lemon juice, hibiscus syrup. And super-refreshing on a warm evening it was!

Our parade of food began with the campechana with shrimp, crab, sweet tomato sauce and a fried oyster on top.

Next was deviled eggs done four ways. From the bottom: smoked salmon, fried oyster, crab and pimiento cheese, spicy fried chicken, served with a side of bacon jam. Pure decadence!

Roasted oysters, done two ways: pork belly +  bacon with apple cider butter and salt + pepper with butter. Loved the light acidity of the cider butter, and it went very well with the savory bacon.

Queso with roast chiles and chips; we are picky about our queso in Austin, and I'd say this certainly passed with flying colors!

Raw oysters from different waters. Raw ones aren't my most favorite, and there was plenty of other food, so I passed on these, but Linda was quite happy with them.

Technically these are called gorilla-style street fish tacos with the daily catch from the Gulf, cilantro slaw, spicy crema, and grilled lime. They are only offered on Tuesdays (#tacotuesday) as part of their daily specials; not sure what make them "gorilla-style" but they were fresh and tasty and one of my favorites all night.

Mac and cheese... in the hubbub of three dishes arriving at once, I may have neglected to get a picture of JUST the mac and cheese, but I am sure you can identify it in this shot below. Linda is modeling the side of bacon jam, which we both absolutely fell in love with! The also sell it by the pint for $24, which is a wise investment.

The Heisenburg-er -- a burger "club" with all the trimmings: jalapenos, pickles, avocado, deviled eggs, cheese, bacon and bacon jam... the name is a nod to Breaking Bad. This sandwich was HUGE, and what you see pictured here is the half-order! There's no much stuff packed on here, it was decidedly a fork and knife experience.

Happy to say we did not eat all of this food! We'd eat some and then move on to the next thing. But still, by the time dessert rolled around, we were getting pretty stuffed. This is the bread pudding with cajeta (caramel sauce), and it's a huge serving, and pretty darn delicious.

Liberty Kitchen also makes cake shakes: with your choice of cake blended with frozen custard, so this was red velvet cake with vanilla

So as you can see, we had more than our fair share of food, and to reiterate, we DID NOT eat it all! Also happy to report that at an office health screening the following morning, my cholesterol was only 156. We really enjoyed our experience at Liberty Kitchen -- good company, good waitstaff, and good food! They are open seven days a week, and even open at 8 am on the weekends for brunch. As you can tell from what we ate, they are a mix of seafood, southern comfort, a touch of Tex-Mex, and burgers all rolled into one -- something for everyone!

Satellite Bistro

It's only been in the past month or so that I have heard of Satellite Bistro and Bar in Circle C, and then I heard of it a few times by different people in succession. So my curiosity was

piqued, and I was even more surprised to discover it's been open since around 2006.

While in suburbia, Satellite was designed by noted local architect Michael Hsu, and it's very much his aesthetic. Stone work, modern lines, big windows, reminds me of Olivia (which yes, he also designed). We were seated on the patio, which has nice big ceiling fans and just enough landscaping to help you forget you're in a strip mall. However the volume on the speakers was really loud, and the music was reminiscent of your iPod on "shuffle"... when we sat down, it was the Gregorian Monks and that chanting song from the 1990s, and throughout our time there, it ranged from country to contemporary. Not exactly congruous. All the while, a 1950s chanteuse performed live inside.

It's an eclectic menu to say the least, with dishes representing the flavors of Italy and the Mediterranean, Tex Mex, pan-Asian, and seafood.... From their website, I learned the owners are a pair of Greek brothers, hence the Med and seafood influences, I would guess. It took me a long time to decide what I wanted to, especially because I wasn't starving, having come from another event. It probably didn't help that our college-aged (?) waitress came by twice for orders, though all of us were sitting there pouring over the menu both times. She was nice, and was trying to do her job, but our table of food people made eyes at each other when she mispronounced the day's risotto special (it came out like "reyz-ottow" instead of "rih-soh-toe") and none of us could understand the method of how the daily specials vegetables were cooked. Yeah, we're kinda food snobs.

We started off with the calamari, which had a nice thick crust on them, but a few rings were a touch greasy; the marinara with it was bland, but the red pepper remoulade had a nice punch. 

The eater who ordered this Mediterranean Shrimp Linguine ate too many calamari and could only eat half her main dish!

This is the Champagne Gorgonzola Salad with shrimp, which well-liked by the eater.

And the Gourmet Bistro Burger with a delicious smoked tomato jam; I tried the jam, but not the burger, and the jam was great. The yuca chips were decent, though you have to be a fan of the starchy tuber to appreciate them.  Didn't hear any complaints about the burger.

And for me, crab cakes. Oh but wait. Where were they? It was another waiter/runner who brought the food to the table, not our initial waitress. He said "they're coming," and disappeared. I urged my table mates to start eating....and waited. So a couple minutes later, our waitress comes by and apologizes, by saying the crab cakes were being made again, because they were "too dark." Okay...

So they did arrive a few minutes later, a lovely golden brown color. And while they were very crispy, coated with Panko breadcrumbs, and I think deep fried given their evenness of color, they really didn't have much flavor to them. Yes, it's mostly crab inside, not filler, but bland. Salt? Pepper? Garlic? Chives? Something, please!! The dish's saving grace, apart from the presentation? The jalapeno aioli.

We considered dessert, but when a dessert and corresponding drinks menu doesn't contain any prices, I am concerned! So we passed. Overall, the food was fine, though certainly not exceptional. And this correlates (unfortunately) with what I had heard from others about Satellite -- it's a mixed bag. Glad I had great company to make the meal more enjoyable!

Quality Seafood

You've probably passed it hundreds of times. In a fairly non-descript building on Airport Blvd., next to a furniture store (I think), just a stone's throw from IH-35 lies Quality Seafood. It's both a market and a restaurant, which has been operating in Austin since 1938, and from it's current location at 5621 Airport Blvd. since 1970 (there's a comprehensive write up on their history on their website).

I had been a number of years ago to buy tubes and tentacles to make fried calamari, but I had never eaten there, though I had always heard it was good. I was on the phone mid-week a friend, making plans for Saturday dinner. She wanted to eat some seafood, and neither of us wanted to spend a huge amount of money. We decided upon QS, and then invited some other friends to join us. They were already seated when I arrived around 6:15 pm. The place was pretty hoppin', as it was Saturday, and there were also a lot of families with kids.

When you enter the building, the fresh seafood counter and register to order food is to your left; a bar is in the middle of the room, and restaurant seating to the right. You go to the left and order, get your number, have a seat, and they bring out your food.

My friends had the raw oysters as a starter, which they sucked down quickly with no complaints. Look at the oyster in the 7 o'clock position -- it's huge! Raw oysters aren't really my thing, but they looked good. (And there were no follow up reports of either of them getting sick, always a good thing when raw is involved.)

Another friend started with a bowl of crawfish etouffee, which I tried. It had a nice flavor to it, and what appeared to be good amounts of crawdads in it. She was originally going to get the gumbo until I cautioned her against it: a blogger friend, Farmstress Maggie of From Maggie's Farm had been to QS the week prior to me, and had posted on Facebook how she thought they were using Krab (faux-crab) in their gumbo, given it's stringy texture. Seems odd that a place like that would use it, but Maggie is a true Louisiana girl who knows her gumbo! No regrets with the etouffee though.

I had a blackened catfish po-boy, and since I opted for the dinner plate, I got two sides for just $2 additional dollars ($10.99 for the whole plate), so I had the dinner salad and hush puppies. The puppies were delish! Dense and corny, without a trace of grease. I will say this about the fried stuff -- the friends who got the raw oysters also got fried oysters, fried shrimp, and fried okra, none of which was greasy. (I had a bite of the okra, which was really good.) The dinner salad wasn't much to speak of besides fresh lettuce. The catfish was really good, a nice thick piece, good spiciness from the blackening seasoning. The bread though, was weak. A bit too soft for the heft of the sandwich, and it fell apart easily. Tasted very good, but a firmer hoagie roll would have been more to my liking.

Again, as it was a Saturday night, there were lots of families with kids, a large group gathering for a birthday, and people just hanging at the bar. I sat facing the wall, so the whole time I got to enjoy the very colorful, cartoonish murals of ocean life that makes up the primary decor. I really got a kick of the murals, and now regret not taking a picture. The restrooms are down a long hallway, and half the corridor is adorned in the vibrant art. 

Definitely a fun and tasty place. But they have a *serious* side too -- their motto (and seen around town on bumper stickers): "Selling our sole, six days a week." It's fresh sole, and that's what matters. Quality Seafood lives up to it's name.

Perlas

I've only been to Perla's once before, a couple of years ago, during Austin Restaurant Week, so they had prix fixe menus with three set courses (previous post on it is here). I went for lunch with a friend earlier this week; we had the full menu available to us, and we took the opportunity to split all of our dishes. 

Arriving for a late lunch around 1:30 pm, there was hardly anyone in the restaurant. They have erected a huge tent over their front patio, and given that they used clear plastic panels, it looked quite nice (no, I didn't take a picture, sorry!), and even though it was slightly colder outside, the temp was comfortable as we walked through.

We told the waitress we were going to share everything, and she did not ask if we wanted them all together or spaced out. And after what seemed like a bit of a lengthy time, given the lack of patrons at that hour, all three dishes came at once. PEI mussels steamed in Fireman's #4 Blonde Ale, with fennel sausage and tomatoes. Mussels were good, sausage was a great addition, but the broth had no zip to it, no real depth of flavor. With a good bowl of mussels, you should really just want to drink up the broth, and in this case, it mostly sat there. The accompanying ciabatta garlic toast was quite tasty.

Beer battered fish and chips with hand cut fries was unfortunately, an epic fail. Everything was soggy, not well-fried at all. And now looking at the picture, it appears that the pieces of cod were sitting on a cooling rack for quite some time, getting grid impressions in them. I like that the russet potatoes had their skins on, but they too, were on the limp side. Our waitress had come back to check on us early on, when we were still both eating the mussels, and then she was rather scarce. One of the other expediters/bussers cleared our table, and when our waitress finally reappeared, we told her the fish was under-fried. She apologized, and said she'd inform the kitchen. When she came back, she did tell us they would take it off the bill. I will still maintain that the best fish and chips I've had in town is at the Bits and Druthers trailer. (My post on them here.)

Our third dish was a pan-roasted crab cake with caramelized endive and sauce gribiche (not pictured, as it was in a pitcher on the side). The crab cake by itself was excellent -- almost all crab, very little if any filler. Well cooked, so it was nice and crispy on both sides. The endive was an interesting addition, but it didn't do a whole lot for me. And what, might you be asking is a sauce gribiche? I had to look it up, and my culinary school graduate dining companion wasn't familiar either. It's a mayonnaise-based sauce with chopped up hard-boiled egg in it, and often capers, cucumber, and some green herbs like tarragon or chervil. Neither of us particularly cared for the flavor profile of this one, and I am not entirely sure what the flavors were. Quite sure there weren't capers, but perhaps it was chervil....it was something I clearly can't identify. The tartar from the fish and chips was a little better match for the crab cake, I think.

Not really needing dessert, we were going to pass entirely until we saw a pear tart tatin and butterscotch pot de creme on the dessert menu; we opted for the later, which had fleur de sel in the dish on the side, and lovely coconut-oaty tuille cookies. Underneath all the cream was the thick and creamy  (and rich) butterscotch, and when dipped in a teeeny bit of salt, it was delicious!

Our waitress was very friendly, though absent for various periods. Clearly she pegged us as "ladies of leisure," as the dessert also took a very long time to come out. (Were they harvesting the sea salt?) While there were some hits, like the crab cake and the dessert, we both left a bit disappointed in the food. I also wonder if the chefs and management are concentrating too much on the new Elizabeth Street Cafe, which is owned and operated by the same group (Lambert's too)? Despite the misses that we encountered, I don't think it will do much damage to Perla's...they're in just about the hottest location in town, in the middle of the SoCo strip. Visitors and locals alike will pay Perla's prices, and will continue to think they're getting outstanding food, but I'd say the luster of off the pearl.