Dinner: After a long work day and a fairly light lunch, Tina and I were starving. I wanted a steak and the last time we went to Texas Roadhouse the steak was fairly decent, so I suggested we go there again. I ordered a 16-oz. ribeye steak with a house salad and loaded baked potato. Tina ordered a full rack of ribs with green beans and sweet potato.

One of the nice things about Texas Roadhouse is that you can munch on peanuts while you wait for your food. Coincidentally, I had a craving for salted nuts the night before that had never been satisfied. (Well, it wasn't all that coincidental - I chose Texas Roadhouse partly because I knew I could get some peanuts.)

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: October 26, 2009 (Texas Roadhouse)

Lunch: We tried another place in Escarpment Village - Mangieri's Pizza Cafe (5900 Slaughter Ln W # 490, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 301-0063‎) which apparently won several CitySearch awards for best pizza. We started with a Greek salad that had too many sun-dried tomatoes, too little feta, and didn't really taste like a Greek salad.

Then we shared a 12-in. Supremo Pizza. I had asked them what style of pizza they serve and they claimed it was New York-style - clearly it was not. The crust is best described as very similar to California Pizza Kitchen but without the sweetness. Although fairly thin, it's neither crispy nor foldable. The pizza toppings or pretty decent, but really when the crust isn't very good, it's just not worth it for me. At the end of the day, pizza comes down to bread with toppings and that foundation has to be better than this.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: October 25, 2009 (Mangieri's Pizza Cafe)

Dinner: We went to Peter Tsai's housewarming party where he had food catered by local Vietnamese and Laotian fusion food truck Me So Hungry (817 W 5th St, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 659-5744‎). Christina from Me So Hungry provided us with Pad Laos Noodles (Stir-fried rice noodles with sweetened BBQ pork).

Banh Mi (Slices of tenderized sweetened pork, marinated in a 24 hour sauce, served on a buttered baguette and spread in a sweet cilantro mayo. Sliced cucumbers, slivers of jalapeno, shredded pickled carrots, and cilantro.)

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: October 24, 2009

Dinner: We tried Shogun Sushi (Ste 225, 1807 W Slaughter Ln, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 292-1580‎) for dinner again. This time we made sure we had ample time to sit and eat. It took a while to get our food, just like last time. When we arrived, there was only one other table in the restaurant (a couple with two young children). We ordered seaweed salad and green tea to start and just before the seaweed salad came I turned in our sushi order. It took a little over fifteen minutes for our first sushi items to arrive (according to the camera's timestamps).

The seaweed salad ($4.50) was passable, but we both thought there was an odd acidic taste to it that we didn't quite enjoy.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: October 23, 2009 (Shogun Sushi)

Lunch: I ate left over green curry with rice.

Dinner: I went to the Swanky Social for The Movers and Shakers of Austin which was a party at The Phoenix near Colorado and 4th. It was pretty dark, so I couldn't really photograph very well. I had a variety of flavored popcorns, dim sum, empanadas, and other catered foods.

Another uneventful food day. Lunch: We stopped in at Manna From Heaven in Kyle and each got a beef chalupa plate.

Dinner: On our way home we realized we didn't have any food to eat at home so we stopped at Tina's parent's place to grab a bag of rice. (We're preparing to move, so we tried to use up as much foodstuffs as possible.) We ended up staying there to eat. I had the remaining pan fried buns they made from yesterday.

Lunch: We heated the Philly Cheesesteak from Natural Planet Grill in a toaster oven. It was decently flavored, but Tina's half had quite a bit of the browned stuff that you scrape off the restaurant flattop grill - not particularly appealing. Otherwise, not bad.

Dinner: We went over to Tina's parent's place where they had made pan-fried buns.

Dinner: We tried another restaurant in Escarpment Village: Natural Planet Grill (5900 Slaughter Ln W, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 394-1111‎). At first we were not going to eat there because natural food tends to be bland and unappetizing, except I thought I was parking in front of a bistro/cafe but instead found myself in front of Natural Planet Grill. We thought we'd be adventurous and give it a try.

We ordered a Philly Cheesesteak and a Tuscan Pesto Pasta with Chicken. We ended up splitting the penne and taking the cheesesteak home. The penne which is "tossed with fresh baby spinach, sauteed onions, mushrooms, carrots, zucchini and [their] homemade creamy pistachio pesto sauce" was not bland at all! In fact it was quite good with vegetables cooked just enough to be cooked through but retaining some crispiness and texture and an incredibly tasty pesto sauce. We might have misjudged this restaurant by their name. We're glad to find that the restaurants in this shopping center nearest our new home are pretty decent so far.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: October 19, 2009 (Natural Planet Grill)

Dinner: We headed out to the outskirts of Wimberley, Texas to Montesino Farm for a Venison dinner with Dai Due Supper Club.

At this dinner, a sixty-pound field harvested deer from Broken Arrow Ranch fed thirty-five diners. The deer was dressed and butchered the day before as part of a Dai Due workshop on how to process deer and utilizing the whole animal. (Unfortunately, our schedule was such that we could not attend this workshop.)

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: October 18, 2009 (Costco, Dai Due Venison Dinner at Montesino Farm)

Lunch: We tried a Thai and Vietnamese restaurant in Escarpment Village - Blue Bamboo (5900 W Slaughter Ln, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 288-8688‎).

I started with the shrimp spring rolls which I thought were not bad. Often spring rolls are filled with water logged rice noodles and completely flavorless despite the shrimp. These were pretty decent and had excellent texture. Each rice noodle was discrete and cooked just right so a whole clump of them didn't taste like a clump - it tasted like it was supposed to. The peanut sauce was also quite good. Tina's unfortunately had a hair in it (which she wasn't going to say anything about since she views it as a mark of an Asian restuarant) but I mentioned it to our waiter who brought her a replacement and took the spring rolls off our bill.

Click here to read the rest of
What I Ate: October 17, 2009 (Blue Bamboo, Red Robin)