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April 5, 2006
Section: Food
Edition: Tarrant
Small towns, big tastes
A jaunt in the Hill Country used to mean barbecue, chicken-fried steak and more barbecue. Now it's rare yellowfin tuna and big-city sophistication - in a world-unto-itself setting.
AMY CULBERTSON
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

I had never tasted yacon before, nor ever seen it listed on a menu. It was a tuber from the Andes, the chef told me, something like jicama, only sweeter. The nuns who supply her restaurant with organic produce grow it on their nearby farm, having discovered it on their mission trips to South America. She wasn't using the yacon in any of that night's dishes, but, certainly, she'd be glad to show me some.

A few minutes later, chef Gabriele McCormick was back from her kitchen with a dark purple-brown tuber about the size of a large sweet potato, along with a plate holding a row of precisely sliced batons of the vegetable's pale-ivory flesh.

I took a bite, and then several more: The yacon was crisp, crunchy, juicy, refreshing and - yes - sweet, with a faint, husky peppercorn kick. I could see trendy chefs from San Francisco to New York vying to be the first to put it on their Bernardaud salad plates. But I wasn't in San Francisco, or the Napa Valley. I was in Welfare, Texas, population 10. The day before, when I'd driven by the old Welfare general store in the Hill Country just northwest of Boerne, I'd had to backtrack to make sure this was the place.

Now, on a Thursday night, I was seated at a linen-clad table in a rustic, warmly lighted dining room along with a score of well-dressed diners, trying to decide whether to start with pistachio shrimp or a gratin of roasted poblanos and goat cheese.

Mention the Texas Hill Country, and most Texans think of bluebonnets and scenic overlooks; fishing on the lakes and hiking up Enchanted Rock; or possibly wineries and quaint antique shops. Mention Hill Country food, and the associations will most likely be burgers, barbecue and blue-plate specials. But on a recent five days in the Hill Country, I dined on oven-braised duck with wild mushrooms in Marble Falls; pancetta-stuffed portobello mushrooms in Leander; a tower of Dungeness crab drizzled with wasabi aioli just outside Fredericksburg; and rare-grilled yellowfin tuna with green-chile mascarpone butter in tiny Tarpley.

This is what happens when chefs leave the high-pressure fine-dining scene in New York or Dallas to go back home - or to find a new home where the living is easier: They bring their big-city ways with them. Not only are the tourists loving it, but the locals are taking to it, too. Call it Texas fusion or rustic refinement, it amounts to a revolution in Texas small-town dining.

"This is the same restaurant I would have opened in Dallas or Houston," says chef-owner Mark Schmidt of Marble Falls' celebrated Café 909. "We're not competing with the Bluebonnet; we're competing with York Street in Dallas."
It makes sense, when you think about the high-end residential developments and resorts such as Lake LBJ's Horseshoe Bay that are being carved out of the Hill Country's rugged ranch land; or about the Hollywood types and other affluent folks who are buying vacation and retirement spreads. These days, along with wildflower gazers, the region's winding farm-to-market roads are traveled by wine tourists doing their own Sideways tours of Central Texas' growing network of vineyards.

"They say this little corridor will be the next Napa Valley," says Kay Pratt, owner of the Silver K Café in Johnson City, "and I believe it."

Everybody agrees that the Hill Country fine-dining trail was blazed in the mid-'80s by the legendary Hudson's on the Bend just west of Austin. In the years that followed, upscale country inns such as Rose Hill Manor near Stonewall and Blair House in Wimberley began serving multicourse dinners with wine pairings, making cuisine an integral part of their attraction. And the quaintsy-posh tourist mecca of downtown Fredericksburg has become a magnet for upscale eateries.

On my tour, though, I chose to head for the smaller towns, to check out this second generation of free-standing chef-owned fine-dining spots. Here's what I found:

August E's, east of Fredericksburg
The setting: Between the tiny communities of Rocky Hill and Blumenthal on U.S. 290 lies a cluster of craft shops anchored by an imposing rough-hewn stone and log building.
Inside this reconstructed 1850s rail depot, the rustic chink-and-stone walls surround elegantly appointed tables, ivory-linened, set with tall, graceful Riedel wineglasses. The stately carved chairs have soft leather seats and striking tapestry backs. Behind the main dining room, a spacious deck with two stone fireplaces and a long bar looks west toward the sunset.

The story: Owners Leu and Dawn Savanh met in the Metroplex, when Leu, a native of Laos who grew up in Thailand, was operating martial-arts schools in Arlington and Fort Worth. Dawn, who had worked in the hotel industry and for the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, was his student. On trips to the Hill Country, the couple fell in love with the Fredericksburg area.

Eventually, they bought the old depot building, which had been moved a decade before from Greeley, Colo. They also bought the nearby family homestead of pioneer settler August Ebers, where they operate a bed-and-breakfast, and the restaurant is named for him (with a nod to French culinary patriarch Auguste Escoffier).

Cooking had always been Leu's hobby and passion, and Dawn, whose hotel background included stints in Asia and Europe, had the experience to run the front of the house. With advice from high-profile mentors such as David McMillan (62 Main, Nana) and Dallas steakhouse owner Al Biernat, they opened August E's in November 2004.

The food: Not surprisingly, Leu's cuisine has an Asian accent, including appetizers such as Asian pumpkin and asparagus soup ($8) and Siam egg roll ($7). You'll find both glass noodles and soba noodles in the salad under his sweet-soy-glazed grilled quail legs ($8), and on Thursday nights, sushi-deprived locals come by for sashimi, nigiri, sakes and Asian beers.
Leu uses local produce when it's available (he swears the organic asparagus from Luckenbach Farms grows "2 feet long"), buys quail from Bandera and venison from Ingram's Broken Arrow Ranch. His fish are flown in from Hawaii and both coasts; on a recent visit, a "Fish Lovers' Medley" brought together marinated salmon, marlin and silky escolar ($32).
There are 14 imported beers on the impressive drinks list, as well as 27 wines by the glass, including five dessert wines.

The details
August E's
6258 U.S. 290 E., at the Rocky Hill Shops 5.5 miles east of Fredericksburg

(830) 997-1585

Dinner 5-9 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday and Sunday, 5-10 p.m. Thursday-Saturday (closing hours may vary); lunch 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday-Saturday; brunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday

www.august-es.com


Café 909, Marble Falls

The setting: Rustic exposed cinder block meets cool urbane chic in this little cutting-edge café. It's just off old Marble Falls' downtown Main Street, increasingly populated with galleries and boutiques.

With its bead-board hardwood ceiling, exposed beams and ductwork, serene pale-celadon walls, glass-block windows and mix of vintage French posters and Santa Fe-chic paintings on the walls, Café 909 could easily be transplanted from Austin or Dallas. Beyond the small but sleek granite bar is an exposed kitchen fronted with a food bar where diners can watch chef/owner Mark Schmidt in action.
The story: It's hard to believe this isn't an old building, artfully updated, but it was built 2 1/2 years ago. Mark and Shelly Schmidt's home is upstairs, in the European tradition of living over the store.

Texas native Schmidt says he "always wanted to be a chef," but he got his degree in geology instead. In 1983, when the oil market crashed, he took the chance to follow his early passion.

He "bounced around" in Dallas and Houston, "working at the type of restaurant I wanted to own": Deep Ellum Café, the Grape, Jennivine, City Café, Zizikis and Stephan Pyles' AquaKnox. Schmidt eventually hooked up with an old friend, Mark Kiffin, who had just bought Santa Fe's landmark Compound restaurant. Working with Kiffin, who went on to win a James Beard award for best Southwest chef in 2005, Schmidt finally felt ready "to go out on my own."

On a trip to Marble Falls to visit his wife's relatives, her uncle told them about a new building that was about to start construction downtown, and "we decided to go ahead and make the move."

The food: What Schmidt wanted to do in his 40-seat restaurant was big-city fare that made sense - "gourmet food but with a lack of pretension."

That means the likes of foie gras hollandaise and earthy-sweet parsnip and chanterelle home fries as accompaniments to a tender pepper-crusted grass-fed beef tenderloin ($30), or Schmidt's signature sweetbreads: On his new spring menu, he's sauteing the rich organ meat with enoki mushrooms, foie gras, crawfish tails and Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, finishing the dish with a veal jus ($13).
Schmidt's creamy-textured frozen pistachio parfait with burnt-honey caramel, reminiscent of an Italian semifreddo, has become a local classic ($7), and his wife's wine list mirrors the sophistication of the menu.


The details
Café 909
909 Second St., Marble Falls (two blocks west of U.S. 281)
(830) 693-2126
Dinner 5:30-9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday

www.cafe909.com


Patton's on Main, Marble Falls

The setting: The '50s-style neon sign on the roof and the screaming-yellow '42 Ford panel van parked outside signal that Patton's is no stuffy spot. And toward week's end, the cedar-post-framed patio attracts a party crowd with its live music.

Inside, though, is a serious restaurant, with walls of windows overlooking Main Street's shops and galleries. The handsome main dining room, with its original pressed-tin ceiling, wraps around the exposed brick of the interior bar.

The building began life as the Quick Filling Station; chef/owner Patton Robertson remembers it as a used-appliance store when he was going to school in Marble Falls.
The story: A true local boy, Robertson grew up in Horseshoe Bay and graduated from Marble Falls High School in 1988, when "I swore I would never be back."
He started cooking seriously during college at the University of Mississippi and finished his schooling at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute in London. After landing a job at Wolfgang Puck's Las Vegas outpost of Spago, he worked his way up through the kitchen ranks for seven years before being named executive chef at Cili's on the Strip. His wife, meanwhile, had a top managerial post at the high-fashion Escada boutique. But Vegas was not their idea of the best place to raise a child.

Reassured by the success of Café 909 as well as reports from Robertson's mother, who works in the title business in the area, they found a restaurant up for sale, closed it down for a week and reopened in August 2004 as Patton's on Main.

The food: The energetic Robertson's playful side emerges in appetizers such as smoked-brisket spring rolls, with avocados, jalapenos and barbecue butter ($9), and he freely admits that he came up with his "Texas chop salad" ($8 lunch, $9 dinner) - grilled portobellos, avocado, buffalo mozzarella and a red-wine vinaigrette - one day when his wife was cleaning out the fridge.

His cooking features plenty of heat, from the turkey and habanero pizza on the lunch menu ($10) to the rich and spicy cheese grits he tops with plump sauteed shrimp and scatters with mushrooms, bacon and scallions ($13 lunch, $23 dinner). And those grits go great with a $7 flute of real French bubbly, Carousel Blanc de Blancs.

The details
Patton's on Main
201 Main St., Marble Falls (corner of Main and Second, two blocks west of U.S. 281)
(830) 693-8664
Lunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m., dinner 5-9:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday

www.pattonsonmain.com

Mac & Ernie's Roadside Eatery, Tarpley

The setting: It doesn't have an address; it doesn't really have a dining room. It's a neat little wood shack set in the gravelly parking lot of the equally unprepossessing Williams Creek Depot store, just above the Williams Creek bridge on FM 470 west of Bandera.

You walk up to the window to order from the chalkboard menu; be sure you have cash with you, because there's no credit-card machine. In back, chef/owner Naylene Dillingham-Stolzer, who is clearly having a great deal of fun, will cook your steak or lamb chops or quail in her open-air 10-by-16 lean-to kitchen.

You buy a beer, a soft drink or a bottle of wine in the store (you can bring your own for a $4 corkage fee), then find a seat and wait for your food.

If it's a nice night, you can settle in under the lichen-clad limbs of the live oak. If it's rainy, you'll want to nab one of the red-checked-oilcloth tables on the tin-roofed patio attached to the store, or a picnic table under the catering tent Dillingham-Stolzer had to set up when the crowds got too big to accommodate.

Mac & Ernie's doesn't exactly fit the fine-dining criteria, as the plates are paper and the utensils plastic. But bending the rules is nothing new for Dillingham-Stolzer, who often cooks in a T-shirt proclaiming "Well-behaved women rarely make history." Yes, she fries a lot of catfish. But she also turns her hand to the likes of lemon-grass pork tenderloin with Vietnamese dipping sauce.The truth is, Mac & Ernie's doesn't fit into any category - but if you're going to be anywhere near Tarpley, population somewhere around 50, on a Friday or Saturday, you need to know about it.

The story: First of all, there is no Mac or Ernie. It's a play on the name of the couple with whom Dillingham-Stolzer and her husband, Steve, started the restaurant, the McKinnerneys.
Both couples raised goats near Tarpley, and Naylene had cooked at San Antonio's Liberty Bar and Grey Moss Inn and at Castroville's Alsatian Inn. In 1999, they "had the idea of opening a restaurant to market our goat meat."

When a job offer took the McKinnerneys to another state, "we bought their half out."

The food: They started with cabrito tacos, sausage wraps, fajitas and beans, but Dillingham-Stolzer tends to get bored easily. These days, it's the weekend dinners she's celebrated for.

"I cook what I want to eat," she says simply.

It was what we wanted to eat, too: hefty pork loin kebabs for $13.95, served with a little cup of addictive chipotle cream, and a lush slab of yellowfin tuna, grilled to a bright-pink shade of rare as ordered and topped with a rich layer of cilantro-tinged mascarpone butter. When was the last time you got a top-grade tuna entree for $13.95 - not to mention a perfect coconut cream pie?



The details
Mac & Ernie's Roadside Eatery
Williams Creek Depot, Tarpley, on FM 470 southwest of Bandera
(830) 562-3250

Lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday and Friday-Saturday, dinner 5-9 p.m, Friday-Saturday

www.macandernies.com


Welfare Café, Welfare

The setting: The Welfare Café's Web site lists the population of Welfare as 10, but the numbers swell considerably on those days when Gabriele McCormick is cooking.

"She feeds 500 people a week out of that 10-by-13 tin kitchen," says her husband, David Lawhorn, whose day job is brokering commercial real estate.

McCormick's kitchen is wedged between the front dining room of the old Welfare general store and post office and the back dining room, where a neon sign reading "Hofner Room" refers to the aged planks that line the walls, preserved by Lawhorn from an old barn that once belonged to Western swing pioneer Adolph Hofner.

The story: McCormick and Lawhorn, who had been living in San Antonio, bought the property in Welfare 14 years ago. They restored the house to live in and had planned to tear down the crumbling old tin-roofed building next door. When they began to find out more about the old store's history, they decided instead to restore it.
Halfway through, Lawhorn says, "she told me she was going to open a restaurant."
"One day we put a sign up," he said. "We had two customers that day." They never advertised, but, as word of McCormick's food spread, "it just took off."

They've since added a balmy outdoor biergarten in back, where their dogs Maggie and Lady like to hang out, and a spacious party building they call the Goat Barn.

The food: It is clear that McCormick was born to cook, though she credits her skills to the tutelage of the grandmother who raised her in Frankfurt - her family immigrated from Germany to Baltimore when she was 10 - and to her former mother-in-law, after she married into the McCormick spice family.

McCormick smokes her own meats, as well as the peppers for the smoked-jalapeno tartar sauce she serves with her lump crab cakes ($10.95). The night we were there, the generous medallions of pork tenderloin ($15.95), brushed with a dried-cherry and molasses glaze, fairly sang with smoky flavor. And McCormick's Chicken Fredericksburg ($15.95) has become a signature dish: a tender breast sauteed with peaches, onions and jalapenos, with a classic white-wine cream sauce soaking into the pillowy little spaetzle dumplings underneath.
McCormick's German heritage is evident in the menu, but the rouladen and schnitzels share space with pad thai, and the demiglace sauces she offers with steaks range from tamarind poblano to pink-peppercorn pomegranate.
Certainly, the adventure of finding a gracefully restored slice of the past in this bucolic little ghost town is part of the allure of the Welfare Café, but it is McCormick's assured, honest, inspired fare that brings the restaurant's legions of fans back.
This is food worth driving almost any distance for, and it's safe to say there is no other place quite like the Welfare Café.

The details
Welfare Café
223 Waring Welfare Road, Welfare (northwest of Boerne; take the Welfare exit north off Interstate 10)
(830) 537-3700
5-9 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 5-10 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday

www.welfaretexas.com


Also worth a try

Selene's Bistro, Leander:
Chef Andy L'Heureux has built an open, airy new restaurant with frosted-glass windows and peachy-hued faux Tuscan walls in this rapidly developing town north of Austin. The San-Francisco-born L'Heureux, whose résumé includes Café Cassis and Evergreen in Santa Fe, keeps his prices reasonable and describes his menu as "fresh, seasonal bistro food." Cannonball Adderley and Gerry Mulligan classics on the sound system provide a sophisticated background for such appetizers as grilled portobello mushrooms stuffed with rich herbed cheese and pancetta ($5.99) and entrees such as venison potpie ($12.99) or salmon filets sparked with ginger and scallions and wrapped in phyllo pastry ($11.99). L'Heureux likes to do wine dinners, and his wine list reflects his interest, including one of Texas' best wines, the Super Texan sangiovese from the Hill Country's Flat Creek Estate, for a very reasonable $28.
1906 S. Bagdad Road, Leander (Crystal Falls Parkway west from U.S. 183; left on Bagdad); (512) 528-9595;

www.selenes.com.

11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.

Silver K Café, Johnson City:

"Texas food, Texas wine and beer, Texas music" is the slogan at this handsome Western-themed restaurant in the Old Lumber Yard shopping complex in downtown Johnson City. Owner Kay Pratt had a long-running catering business in Seattle before moving to the Hill Country, but she has adopted Texas with a passion. During the first part of the week, she serves a home-style supper menu of well-prepared favorites such as chicken potpie ($9.95) and meatloaf with tomato relish ($9.95). Thursdays through Saturdays, the menu gets a shot of elegance, with starters like a gorgonzola walnut cheese torte ($6.95) and entrees such as a blackberry-and-pecan-crusted smoked pork chop ($15.95). Texas singer-songwriters often perform on weekends, and gospel music accompanies Sunday's brunch.

209 E. Main St., Johnson City; 830-868-2911; www.silverkcafe.com. Lunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. daily, dinner 5-8 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday (home-style menu), 5-9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday (fine dining); brunch buffet 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun.

Amy Culbertson, (817) 390-7421 aculbertson@star-telegram.com

California Crab Stack is a tower of flavor at August E's, 5 1/2 miles east of Fredericksburg.

Copyright (c) 2006 Fort Worth Star-Telegram


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