Saturday marked the closing ceremonies for my GourmandeMom Olympics - i.e., the one new food venue, or cocktail, or food or cocktail offering every day. Good thing. I could not eat or drink any more like this. Even with the every day workouts. And the son was coming home anyway the next day, and it would be back to Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, take-out from Westwood's Court 7 Grill, and an occasional foray into Giada's new cookbook.
(unintentional....odd but interesting lens/film choice by Hipstamatic (Salvador 84 Lens, DreamCanvas Film) outside of Lenoir, white-washed wood art and chairs)
I closed out the week of living large Saturday night, with a 9 p.m. dinner reservation at Lenoir Restaurant. Verjus in Paris - that little jewel box of a restaurant I keep talking about - is virtually all windows. Lenoir in Austin has not a single window to the outside in the restaurant - at least at night. Yet they are very similar.
Both are captivating: in tone, decor, and mood. As well as in terms of the food and the wine and the waitstaff and the owners. Food: exquisite tiny portions. Wine: a wine list that even a VP of Sales for a wine importer/distributor can love (she was seated right next to us). Decor: white/atonal. Plays of light and shadow making for a quasi-romantic, but not icky, ambiance. And common to both is a he-and-she partner team of chef owners, dedicated to the point of obssession to using the best of local produce and creating genuine connections with their community.
Our seats were at the long communal table that figures prominently in the middle of the small space. Square white blocks, open/hollow, are the seats. The purse, the phone, the accoutrements (like the white wrap/scarf I left and the server tracked me down in the car to return it to me after we left), all go in the hollow space. We sat across from each other, Melissa and I, such that to my left was the husband of the husband-wife duo seated next to us, and to Melissa's right was the wife of this globe-trotting couple. The picture on the web site shows it all, but cannot quite capture the moody glow about the place. The Austin Chronicle mentions the decor of whitewashed wood art and identifies the designer as Chris McCray.
Those lights above the table up close seem like simple residential foyer-type brass fixtures. But in different shapes and sizes, clustered together, at varying heights, over a long wood table with a beautiful wood grain - it works.
The Communal Table.
Last time I had this type of eating experience was at Cafe Pasqual's in Santa Fe. For breakfast. But the experience of a communal table is no doubt way more fun at night, especially when your dining companion/neighbors have finished off their time there with a lot of interesting wines and are rather friendly and outgoing.
And so it began...
As I was talking to Melissa about issues and concerns about the shortness of my dress, and almost regretting the choice given the type of seating, the woman next to Melissa tells me they were noting how cute my dress was when I walked in, so not to worry. This is a good start. We start talking. We hear what they had to eat and drink. And as we learn pretty quickly she is a wine importer, I really want to know what they had to drink. They had a glass of this and that and a bottle of something else. She let us have a sip of the red wine that they were finishing up. Yep, right from her own glass. I love these people. And we ordered a bottle.
Never, ever in a million years would I have entertained the thought to order this wine. It was not French. It was not Spanish. It was not even from anywhere in South America. It was Austrian: the "st. laurent sattler, burgenland, austria 2009."
And we polished it off well before the last course, which was frightening - especially as we both had the passing thought, I think, which we did not share with the other - that maybe we needed another one (bottle)....? But we managed ok, thankfully, without the Round 2. We managed mostly because our wine guru for the evening left for us a portion of an exquisite additional beverage that was poured for her and her husband at the way end of their meal. It was a gift, the server announced, from a certain sommelier across town (at a well-known culinary establishment), who heard she was dining there at Lenoir. Yea...that stuff apparently really happens to some people. I'm just so glad for the wine recommendation. And the communal table.
How Lenoir works. There are categories: Field, Sea, Land, and Dream (dessert). You pick up to 3 for the prix-fixe meal. An extra dish will be $10, but for those first 3, any three, the price is $35 total. This, my friends, is a bargain for this caliber of food.
Even better: they do not serve bread with the meal. It will interfere with the enjoyment and complete focus on the actual meal. Yes! You may ask for it, however, so I am told. The French way here is indeed the best way. The food is too delicate. You have to be all prepped and ready to really enjoy it. Why would you waste your palate and your appetite with just bread, regardless of how lovely the bread might be?
From the "Field" category I ordered a bean salad ("summer beans / smoked mushroom / tomato water / pasilla"). Light, summery. But the star of the night though, and for everyone around as well who ordered it and was raving about it, was from the "Sea" category: a fish curry (fish curry / watermelon / chili fry / preserved soy beans / dried corn). I think I heard someone day that the fish was drum. Pictures do not help here. You just have to eat it to believe it. There was the intense spice of the chili, the coolness of the watermelon, and drippings of a sort mixing together the remains of watermelon into the chili flavor. Bread would have been welcome here. To make sure not a drop was wasted. But bread also would have been far too heavy a substance to work into that mix.
I also had, from the "Land" category, "roasted pork loin / smoked shrimp / okra / coconut sticky rice." And much like at Verjus, I just sat back (figuratively, because otherwise I would have fallen backward off the square block), and relished the moment of staring, marveling, sighing, at the lovely food. The portions are indeed small, be forewarned, but that works just fine, especially with the grouping of 3.
It would be tempting to order 3 servings of the fish curry next time.
Lenoir has monthly wine dinners. Saturday August 5, the same night we were there, and my closing ceremonies night, was a Riesling night, described as "an evening of communal dining, starting in our backyard at 5:30 with a little music and light nosh before we head inside for a perfect meal of grilled fish, roasted chickens, pear strudel and lots of bright, crisp riesling representing different regions." Sign up here for Lenoir's Newsletter.
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