Warm fresh made bread, a garlicky pesto sauce that hit the spot, and a lot of fresh, soft mozzarella.

new interior

I had the vegetarian chickpea chili.  It tasted really healthy, maybe like something my Mom would make. It was substantial but needed a little more flavor or more cheese on it.  If I made this at home I would be delighted by it, but I’m American and I like to eat something a little more unhealthy tasting when I go out to eat.  It was served with some bread, which again was good by eating-at-home standards,  but for eating-out standards, it needed a tad more salt baked into the dough, rather than salt just sprinkled on the outside after it was baked – it was a little bland.  But still good.  So far this place has 3 out of 5 stars on Yelp since it re-opened.  I would give it another try and hope it stays open this time, because it is a nice place to have a relaxing lunch.

I checked out the Jalopy this week for the first time and think it will become one of my new favorite lunch spots.  Located on the corner of 15th and San Antonio, the Jalopy is a cute little food cart under a big shade tree with plenty of seating.  There were several vegetarian entrees – I had the vegan Thai wrap, which was comprised of some shredded veggies with a spicy peanut sauce in a fresh-made wrap.  The Jalopy makes all of their own bread, and that was my favorite part of the meal. My friend had the caprese sandwich, which looked really good (she said it was good too).  They were each $6 – a pretty good price for downtown and a large sandwich.  The owner was really nice to us, our sandwiches were made right away, and they have three more vegetarian sandwiches for us to tryout. I will be back!

Casa Colombia is located on East 7th Street, not too far past 35.  The atmosphere was relaxed and unassuming, with minimal decorations on the wall. I thought the waiters were all really friendly even though we came in close to closing time (the close at 7 on Sundays), and we didn’t wait long for our food.

To start I had the abarrajado, described at sweet fried plantains stuffed with mozzarella cheese.  At $3.50, I thought it was a good price for an appetizer.  It was huge! The pic is just of half of it!

For dinner, I had a cheese arepa (a corn meal patty filled with cheese) and the vegetable plate ($7.99), which was an assortment of veggies cooked in criollo sauce, served with black beans, rice, and plantains.  The vegetables were really good, and the rice was cooked to perfection (rice I could just eat by itself).  The purpose of “restaurant review Friday” is to highlight either a restaurant that uses local ingredients or is in some way sustainable, and/or a restaurant that serves good vegetarian food.  This falls into the latter of those categories, and this was one of the best vegetarian dishes I’ve had in a long time.  I guess a similar vegetarian dish I’ve eaten a lot of recently that I could compare this to would be vegetable tacos or fajitas, but it was nice to have something other than tortillas  as my “bread” ( the arepa), the plantains were something different, and rather than sometimes greasy rice and re-fried beans, the white rice and black beans were a nice change.  Plus the veggies weren’t just grilled, as they often are with veggie tacos or fajitas, they were simmered in a tomato based sauce first.  Really good!

Not only was the food amazing though, Jack Allen’s Kitchen uses  local ingredients whenever possible.  (You can read more about that here.)  I thought the menu was very unique with a lot of choices, and the prices were very reasonable.

To start, we were given complimentary homemade pimento cheese spread with crackers, a very nice touch.

Then we ordered the blue crab gratin, described as crab baked with artichoke hearts, spinach, Parmesan and grilled ciabatta.  It was very good although one of the more expensive appetizers ($10.99).

My husband had the Country Club Fancy Chicken Salad, described as being composed of grilled achiote chicken, figs, pears, candied walnuts, crumbled bleu cheese and champagne vinaigrette ($11.99).  It was a really fresh, large salad and I especially liked the use of figs.

I had the veggie and portobello South Texas Taco Platter ($9.99), which was also delicious.  The tacos seemed homemade, the portobello was really well cooked (not rubbery at all), and the salsa and rice were tasty.

Finally, we had an amazing dessert that I can’t remember the name of, but it was some kind of chocolate cookie pie with nuts.  Not too sweet and really good!

The service was excellent, the place was really clean and efficient, and it had a great atmosphere that would be great for a romantic date or going with a family.  And with wonderful LOCAL food at reasonable prices, I will be going back again for sure!

Barley Swine was similar to Odd Duck’s food offerings in many ways.  As with the Odd Duck, local ingredients are the focus, and plates are rather small – you’re encouraged to get 2-3 plates per person in order to be full at the end of a meal.  An obvious dissimilarity between the two though is that Barley Swine is a sit-down restaurant, while Odd Duck was a trailer with cute outdoor seating and BOB.  Barley Swine was cozy inside and a nice low-key place to go with friends.  You’re seated at cocktail tables or long 6 person tables, so if you go with a date you may end up sitting at a 6 person table next to a stranger, but that makes it easier to see what other people in the restaurant are ordering.

We each had a beer, and I don’t know much about beer but whatever I had was from Austin and came in a cute glass. The waitress was extremely knowledgeable about beers, and very friendly and prompt overall.

For dinner, I had a shrimp dish that, unfortunately isn’t on the on-line menu now and I can’t remember what all was in it.  It was very fancy but, as I expected, was rather small.  I think it was about $10. Here’s a poor quality picture:

I also had the spiced goat cake, which came with some delicious cauliflower, for $12.  The goat cake was interesting and this plate was more substantial.  Here a picture of that dish (in the background are Carsi’s chickpea fritters):

Since Carsi’s a vegetarian and I wanted to try the max number of plates (I knew she would share with me) I ordered non-vegetarian plates although normally I would be drawn to the vegetarian dishes here.  Carsi’s fritters were tasty but I wasn’t blown away. They cost $8.  She also had the beet salad, which although this is a bad picture of it, was the best of the four dishes in my opinion:

This dish had tasty little roasted beets, fresh cheese curds, salted pistachio, grilled fennel, and some greens that I think had been baked because they were very crisp and delicious.  It was a really nice flavor combination and was worth the $8.

I appreciate that Barley Swine uses local ingredients, and I appreciate that they serve unique and interesting dishes, so I will probably go back there with my husband sometime soon.  It’s just that after being spoiled by the Odd Duck trailer, which had pretty similar-type dishes but at a noticeably lower price (and the lower price makes sense as a trailer isn’t going to have the same type of over-head costs as a sit-down restaurant), it seemed slightly over-priced.  But everything we had was good and it was fun to try something new and know we were eating local food.  For a special night out, give it a try!

After our wait for a table, things went pretty smoothly with the wait staff, which was impressive considering how recently the cafe opened. Ushered to our table, I had the weird feeling I was in the old building that Bouldin Creek Coffee house used to be in.  Turns out I was right, although they’ve spruced the place up so much that the formerly quaint/dilapidated coffee house  was hardly recognizable at  all.  They’ve really decorated it well and I would go back just because it’s so pretty.  But on to the vegetarian food!

As you can see from their menu, there’s some vegetarian choices but not a huge amount —  the French-Vietnamese cuisine is fairly pork focused.  But they did have a few things to choose from, and I picked the #49, roasted mushroom and grilled tofu bun.   At $12 it was a little overpriced, but the veggies in it were extremely fresh, the presentation was done well, and I really enjoyed my meal.   For dessert we had the caramelized banana pots de creme.  At $8 I thought it was also slightly overpriced, but it was really delicious and I would get it again, so maybe the price isn’t that far off.  All in all it was a really great meal and a nice, memorable way to spend the New Year’s holiday with my husband.   Probably not the best place to go when trying to help the environment by eating meat less often (the best of pork smells wafting towards you from every corner), but still some pretty good vegetarian choices.