I Went to Austin Y'all!

I went to Austin this weekend for a wedding and I'm so excited to share about lots of great food that I had. On Friday night we got in too late to make it to the rehearsal dinner, so my family went out to Second Bar and Kitchen. We had a reservation to sit on their heated patio and we were a little bit disappointed with the situation when we first got there. Some patios look very pretty and have plants and are designed to look like part of the restaurant. This one looked more like an empty wooden deck with a table on it. My dad said that he felt like he was sitting in someone's garage. Maybe they make it look nicer in the spring? We almost left, but I'm glad that we stayed because the food was really good!

We started with some items from the "snacks" portion of their menu. We got crispy brussels sprouts with fresno, ginger, mint, cilantro and peanut. I thought that the brussels sprouts had lots of umami, and even with the fresno, they weren't too spicy. Some people say that umami is the fifth taste, besides sweet, sour, salty and bitter. I think it means something that is really savory and flavorful.

We also had blistered shishito peppers with miso aioli. I liked them, but I did get one that was really spicy and then I was scared to have any more for a while!

One of the more unusual items that we had was buffalo fried pickles. The pickles themselves were just deep fried pickle spears. The buffalo part came from the two dipping sauces, a gorgonzola sauce and a hot sauce. The pickles were good, but fell out of the breading, and they came out so hot that my uncle took a bite and really burned his lip. He actually got a blister and it hurt him all the next day! After that, the rest of us knew to wait and let them cool off. They were good, but pretty much anything fried tastes good and kind of the same.

We also had the house charcuterie block which had a mix of meats and cheeses and also came with fig jam and giardiniera, which are spicy Italian pickles. Everything tasted very good on the board, but no one ever told us what the different meats and cheeses were, which made eating it less fun. And I think we were too tired to bother asking.

We also had black truffle pommes frites. They were good but I thought really had no truffle flavor. My aunt said that she got some truffle flavor though, and she had fries from the top, so maybe there was only truffle on that part.

After that we had a bunch of small plates. The hamachi crudo with avocado mousse, mezcal gastrique, spiced pepitas, serano and citrus was excellent. Mezcal is a kind of alcohol, but you couldn't taste it.

The smoked salmon rillettes with cream cheese, capers, arugula, dill, lemon, toasted baguette and everything butter was amazing. It was my favorite dish. It was like a smoked salmon mousse that you could spread on the bread. Everyone loved it.

For entrees, my mom and I got the raw kale salad with carrots, red quinoa, red grapes, red onion, chickpea dressing and dill. I didn't have the grapes or onion on mine. But my mom and I both loved this salad. My mom said that it was one of her favorite salads ever! The dill added a really nice and unusual flavor. I would have thought that dill was too delicate to go well with kale, but that is totally wrong. And the chickpea dressing was really good. We asked about how they made it, so that we can do it at home. It didn't have any garlic in it, which I think made it taste different from hummus. And the consistency was a lot looser.

Kale salad - you can even see the sprigs of dill! The chickpea dressing is in the little cup. It might not look that special, but it really was!

My aunt and uncle shared soba noodles and sprouts, which came with roasted mushrooms, sesame, avocado, and almond. The restaurant split the dish into two separate bowls for them, which was nice. And they said that it was really good. I learned that soba noodles are a Japanese noodle made from buckwheat. And apparently it's very important to wash them after they're cooked or they just get yucky and stuck together. I know that my mom uses buckwheat in banana bread and waffles, but I didn't know that there was a special noodle made from it too. My dad had rainbow trout with pepperonata, yukon potato, walnut cream, parsley, lemon and crouton. He said that it was very good. My brother and sister shared a pomodoro pizza, which was basically just a typical cheese pizza. It had a very thin crust that had a unique nice flavor. We also had a side of black truffle grits. The grits were very creamy and delicious, but it was like the fries and didn't taste at all like truffle. Either they're not using enough truffle on the dishes in the kitchen or they're not getting good ones because usually truffle isn't hard to taste!

I loved Second Bar and Kitchen though and definitely recommend it if you ever visit Austin. But I'd probably sit inside next time!

We had breakfast the next morning at Ciclo restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel. The Four Seasons always does a really good job with kids, and brought us crayons and kids' menus, which was nice even though we usually order off of the adult menu. I had an egg white frittata with chicken sausage, spinach, heirloom tomato and mozzarella, but I didn't get the cheese. I liked the sausage a lot and I loved how they kept the mushroom pieces whole, instead of chopped up.

You can see how the mushrooms are kept in whole slices!

My mom shared a fruit plate with my sister and it looked very pretty. It even had a flower on it. It was nice that they made it look so pretty because I think that the expression is true that you eat with your eyes first!

My brother had oatmeal and grapefruit. He was very happy because the kitchen cut the grapefruit into perfect supremes. He liked it so much that he ordered a second one and ate the whole thing!

For lunch, we had barbecue at Lamberts. There are all different styles of barbecue, that include different ways of cooking the meat and doing the flavoring. Lamberts is known as fancy barbecue, so it's not surprising that I liked it. My mom says that I'm just like the book character Fancy Nancy! We started with biscuits. They were flaky and buttery and very good.

We also had spicy deviled eggs with smoked trout roe, olives and pickles. The eggs themselves weren't spicy, but the olives and pickles around them were very spicy. I thought that the trout roe was really good and that it was funny to have eggs on top of eggs!

The trout roe are the bright orange circles on top. They're like tobiko but bigger.

We also had gulf shrimp and crab campechana, which came in a big glass and had chopped up shrimp and pieces of crab meat mixed together with spicy cocktail sauce and avocado. It came with the saltines on the side. It wasn't my favorite, but I still liked it, and my mom liked it so much that she ordered a second one. I thought that it looked very pretty in the tall glass, almost like a shrimp ice cream sundae!

One thing that I had never had before was crispy wild boar ribs. I loved them because they were crispy and chewy and easy to eat. My dad didn't like them as much, I think because he likes bigger ribs with more meat. My brother said that the way that they were stacked looked like rib Jenga!

My dad and uncle had barbecue plates with brown sugar and coffee rubbed brisket, pulled pork, and a jalepeno hotlink. The brisket was everybody's favorite. I didn't even try the sausage because my dad said that it was way too spicy and it would make me cry!

I had a smoked chicken cobb salad with ranch dressing. I really liked the chicken. It tasted smoky and flavorful, but was dry, and not covered in barbecue sauce, which I liked more. The ranch dressing was cooling, and I needed it after the brisket!

Lamberts was a great restaurant for families to go to. And going out for barbecue in Texas was fun!

My dad and brother surprised us by getting cupcakes from Hey Cupcake!. I tried the double dose, which was chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream frosting, and the sweetberry, which was strawberry cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting. I liked the sweetberry because it was pink, but they both tasted very good. The cake was moist and the frostings were flavorful. I think I would have liked a teeny bit more frosting though. My brother had the tuxedo cupcake, which was chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting and my parents shared a carrot cake one. They were all good!

Can you tell which one is the sweetberry?

I loved all the food that we tried in Austin. But the very very VERY best part about being there, was being a FLOWER GIRL for one our closest family friends, Madeline. Maddie was a flower girl in my mom and dad's wedding and she and I share the same middle name, which is Rose, and it was so special to walk down the aisle sprinkling rose petals at her wedding!!!!! She also loves to bake, just like I do, and made the wedding cake and groom's cake herself! She even let me and my sister help her and Eric cut the cake, and being in their wedding was one of the most special nights of my life!

I thought that the cake looked very beautiful and it was actually funfetti flavor!