Lists!

The Statesman published a list of the best new restaurants in Texas, as did Texas Monthly.

Of course, Uchiko was at the top of both lists. It even made it into GQ’s list of the best new restaurants in America.

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Favorite Photos of 2010

Everyone loves lists and I’m no exception. (Check out Green Olive’s 15 best meals of the year here.) Here you have my favorite photos of the year. These represent some random combination of how much I like the photo and how much I liked the meal. Presented in chronological order.

1.  Skate bun at Momofuku Noodle Bar.

2. Stevie at the downtown Austin farmer’s market.

3. Charcuterie plate, featuring Dai Due and Kocurek.

4. Chicken taco from Takorea. As you can see, this was my white period.

5. Sign at Father’s Office.

6. Place setting at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon.

7. Brisket closeup at Franklin Barbecue. Special thanks to those guys for linking to our post from their web site.

8. Brisket from Texas Rib Kings. As you can further see, this was my brisket period.

9. Eliza loving life at Russ & Daughters.

10. This one’s obviously more about the food than the photo: pimento cheese with sausage from Jim ‘N Nick’s BBQ, served to us up at the Big Apple BBQ courtesy of Jeff and Elizabeth.

11. Top Notch sign.

12. Eliza nibbling the goods at Luling City Market.

13. Fried Alligator at Cochon.

14. Eliza’s mom, serenaded in New Orleans.

15. Eliza braving post-blizzard NYC.

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We’ve Moved!

If you are seeing this post on your RSS reader or web browser, you should know that we’ve moved our blog to chickenfriedeverything.com (we’re self-hosting our blog, so it will no longer be found at chickenfriedeverything.wordpress.com). So you may want to update your feed. Thanks!

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I Like Cheese: El Meson

Austin may be bursting at the seams with Mexican food, but for some reason we never get tired of the stuff. This coming from someone who didn’t even like Mexican food very much when I moved here. It seems odd to say now, but I had my reasons. One, you have to admit that most Mexican restaurants in most cities are terrible. Two, (and here comes a true confession) I am not a big cheese eater. Yes, I know this harms my bona fides as a food person, but it’s true. I didn’t grow up eating cheese and I’ve never loved the stuff. But I’m coming along. More on that later.

At any rate, when Texas Monthly published their list of the 50 best Mexican restaurants in Texas last month we thumbed through the Austin section in search of something new and exciting. El Meson is both.

The view may not be much…

…but the food is legit. We started off with some queso fundido with rajas. I was recently flipping through some photos on my iPhone and someone stopped me at this one and said “THAT looks good.” This is my favorite part of mexican food: cheese on tortillas. See how far I’ve come! (Though I still can’t handle cheese that’s stinky and hard.)

I like to gaze at this pic when I’m feeling down. It’s chilorio: pork tips in ancho-guajillo sauce. This was a perfect meal.

I should also mention that our waiter was supremely friendly. That kind of easy rapport between strangers is typical of Austin, and is one of the things that attracted me to Austin in the first place. Between the friendly service and the excellent food, I really hope El Meson finds some success amidst the dozens of other Mexican joints in town. I know we’ll do our part.

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Happy New Year!

We’re ringing in 2011 with black eyed peas and mustard greens at our house tonight to bring us lots of luck and money this year. I think it’s gonna be a good one and I’m ready with my new bejeweled felt wall calendar that I just finished this afternoon.

I took Kat McTee’s Spangled Felt Calendar class at the Stitch Lab before Christmas. I love everything about the Stitch Lab, and this class was my new favorite. Kat designed and screen printed the felt calendar designs on wool felt and we got to choose between woodland, peacock, kitty, or spaceship motifs.

As you can see, I went with the woodland scene and bedazzled the heck out of it with felt cutouts, sequins, beads, pom poms, and a few stitches.

I used a tiny bit of felted wool so my fawn could be a white-tailed one.

My prickly hedgehog.

I couldn’t resist adding the gold sequin leaves. 2011 is sure to be a sparkly year.

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