Rise ... and Go

Rise Café & Bakery has been around in the hinterland long enough that I've actually heard of it. Heard good things about it, too, so when I was passing by on the way to visit a friend in one of those sprawling new hospitals out there in Ultra-Loop Land hoping to find a decent taquería, spotting the well-known name on the sign, I decided to give it a try instead. I should have kept looking for tacos.

It's not a big place, about the size of an ordinary Starbucks, but without the outside seating. Located in a strip center on 1604 between 281 and Stone Oak, it suffers from a lack of charisma on the outside, but manages to make up for that once you're in the door. Café tables a-plenty, but not so crowded that you feel the people around you are eavesdropping, or watching your computer screen and judging you.  The counter's in the back, and there's a comfortable-looking group of sofas on one side, in case you want a more comfortable conversation pit than the tables offer. 

The menu is reasonably varied for this type of restaurant; coffee and coffee-based drinks; other hot drinks (and presumably cold, too, though I didn't notice them on the menu board); a nice selection of enticing pastries, a few baked dishes, sandwiches, and a couple of more elaborate things that didn't really interest me for breakfast. I ordered plain ol' coffee, a cranberry-orange scone, and a jalapeño and sausage kolache.

The kolache was an impulse buy, mainly attributable to the fact that, the last three times I've stopped at my favourite Czech bakery in West, up beyond Waco, they've been out of those delicious, soft, creamy-good treats, and I thought maybe the local variety would serve as a substitute. It didn't. These kolaches are made with four or five cocktail sausages, the kind you make faces over at low-budget catered events, wrapped in what tasted like biscuit dough and baked with a single slice of jalapeño on top. These sad creations are heated ever so briefly before being served, enough that they're not cold but not so long as to make them warm. I guess it was just above room temperature. The flavour is what you'd expect, given the unimaginative ingredients.

The scone was much better: a large-ish square, chock full of cranberries and with a definite background taste of orange. The dough was well-made, properly crumbly, and perfectly baked. I know just enough about baking to know that I can't do it myself; someone at Rise can, and I wish they'd take an interest in the kolaches.

The coffee ... well, judging from the success of Starbucks and Seattle's Best, I guess it's to the liking of a lot of people. Or maybe people just think that's what coffee is supposed to taste like, and so they don't dare complain. I find it offensively bitter, acidic, and inordinately strong, meaning that I had to dose it liberally with half-and-half and sweetener to make it palatable. Chaque á son gôut, I suppose, but it sure ain't to my gôut.

Lunching al Fresco Again: Crumpets

The patios at Crumpets

I wrote the other day that La Fogata has the nicest patio in town. I had forgotten about Crumpets'. I had lunch there today, and was reminded of just how nice it was. Not at all the same ambiance of Old Mexico, but relaxing and refreshing none the less.

Crumpets has an undeserved reputation for high prices. I probably shouldn't say anything to undermine that, because one of the things I like best about having lunch there is the thinness of the crowd. The patio areas, where I always sit in fine weather like today's, has about a dozen tables, and today there were only two others occupied. The artificial stream that runs through the grounds was empty today --- their pump was damaged by a fallen tree that was washed into it in the recent heavy rains --- but somehow that didn't detract from the setting at all. It was still like being in the Hill Country, pleasantly quiet and green, instead of in the city.

Service at Crumpets is really, really good. Everything is attended to, every tedious customer request fulfilled expeditiously. I'm sure the wait staff are back there talking about how many baskets of bread we asked for --- the croissants they offer are almost tasty enough to excite a Frenchman --- or how much water we took in, but when they get to the table they are professional, polite, cheerful, thoughtful, informative, prompt and caring; yet not overbearing. This is something I've observed every time I go to the place, which isn't as often as it deserves.

Today I decided on a light lunch: I'm going to the beach next summer, and don't want people trying to roll me back into the ocean, so I need to start now losing some weight. I went for the tortilla soup and a house salad. My lunch partner was miffed, because that's what she was going to order, so just to keep from copying me she ordered the "special" salad, which had, I don't know, shrimp on it? She said they smelled fishy, and was not being ironic, but didn't ask me to try them, so I don't know. It might've been her; maybe she was in a mood. Anyway, she didn't bring it up with our waitress; but I've marked the "food" rating down half a chile pepper just in case it was the shrimp, and not her.

What does that mean?

The tortilla soup was full of big chunks of chicken, and the tortilla strips had an excellent texture to them, neither crisp nor flaccid (both being functions of how long they'd been in the broth). The other ingredients are served on a separate plate, so you can take as much or as little as you please. A little pretentious, maybe, but I liked that touch. 

Serving sizes are adequate for real people, nothing like the overblown things we're getting so used to, now that food is so cheap in this country. The salad, with just the right amount of delicious creamy house dressing, was large enough to cover the entire plate, and the sous-chef who prepares the salad seems almost to remember that nothing in a salad should be bigger than a lady's mouth (one of my pet peeves). When the soup was first brought to me, I was disappointed not to have been given a bowl big enough to swim in, but by the time I was finished I was certainly satisfied with what I'd had. 

Maybe the restaurant's location, just off Harry Wurzbach and almost invisible from the road, is why so few people seem to go there at lunch. Maybe it's not the undeserved reputation for pricey food. Or maybe they just left something off the bill by mistake, because I was out of there for about ten bucks, including tip, and I'd had a goodly amount of excellent food for that money. I don't now recall the prices of other things I've had there before, but I do know that I've never felt cheated after dining there. That's probably why I keep going back when I'm in that part of town.

YaYa Thai & Sushi

I love Thai food. I don't know a thing about it, except that it's really, really tasty stuff. But one of the drawbacks of being enamored with it has always been that there are no Thai restaurants, good or otherwise, close to home for me. The nearest has always been Tong's, on Austin Highway, which isn't terribly far as the crow flies, but navigating the obstacle-course of blue-hair Broadway through Alamo Heights has always sent a slight shiver up my spine. It's not quite as off-putting as having to drive through Houston to get to New Orleans, but it's that same sort of thing.

So I was very excited to find a new Thai place in the restaurant listings on Urbanspoon.com, quite close to home for me: Yaya's, on McCullough, in Olmos Park. We went there tonight to try it out.

The decor is a mix of the elegant and mundane. The interior finishing was very nicely done, the tables and chairs were from the "Asian restaurant decor" page of some industry catalog, and some of the details looked like they'd been bought at a coffee-shop's going-out-of-business sale. The two interior dining rooms were spacious, with a long bar (a sushi bar? I don't know, I didn't look closely) and a few tastefully distributed plants. (There is also a patio out front, which was unused; surprising, given how nice the weather's been.)  On arrival, a gentlemen at the front counter seemed confused: should he seat us? He asked how many we were, took the appropriate number of menus from a stack, came out from the counter ... and stood there, looking for all the world like he had forgotten where he was. He seemed, then, to be communicating telepathically with someone in another room, and finally decided to seat us at the very first table. I wasn't thrilled with that, but didn't complain. I think it might have sent him off the deep end. In any case, the tables are placed far enough apart that the man at the next table, who seemed determined to talk his date to death, didn't bother me too much; I could see him talking, talking, talking, but only now and then could I hear him at all. 

Someone came by with water. Someone else came by with water. Someone paused by our table and asked if we needed more time, which we did. Someone else came and refilled our water. We finally settled on two commonplace Thai dishes --- pad wun sen with chicken, and Thai basil with pork --- plus shrimp fresh-rolls. (I always think it's best to order something you're familiar with the first time you visit a restaurant you expect to go back to; that way, you'll be able to make a direct comparison with what you're used to getting elsewhere.)

What does that mean?

Then someone came by with water.

The shrimp rolls were tasty, but were loosely packed, so that the innards kept coming out when you tried to eat it. The peanut sauce was no better nor worse than any other I've had; I've about decided there's only one manufacturer of this sauce in the whole world, and he supplies every Thai restaurant there is. 

The Thai basil was good, with a soy-based sauce that seems to be a little heavy on salt, or possibly MSG. The vegetables were cooked to perfection, crispy-chewy, and the pork was thoroughly cooked. Served with plain ol' white rice, it made a good meal by itself.

The pad wun sen, which is my favourite Thai dish, disappointed a little. It seems to lack a certain sharpness of flavour. Not that it's under-seasoned: it's not; it just seems that all the flavours of vegetables, chicken, and broth lacked definition. I would say, too, that the noodles were overcooked, but given how quickly rice noodles passes from "done" to "overdone," that seems unduly harsh. 

Fresh rolls and two entrees were about $30 with tax and tip; that, I think, compares very favourably with the other good Thai places I've found in town, and it may be that, for me, the shortcomings of the food are offset by the shortness of the drive to get there. We'll have to see.