Austin - Around Town: Yoga, Networking and lots of Food and Drink

So it's true, we've been too busy to blog. But that just means this will be a long, text-heavy post.

So this is what we've eaten...

We had our first visitors two weekends ago. Dad & Beth arrived with badly needed reinforcements - bagels. Delivered from the reputed best bagel shop in the greater Houston area (because we've exhausted the Austin options, and it hasn't been pretty), the Hot Bagel Shop, as recommended by a co-worker.

Thank goodness for these bagels. Right now there isn't much I miss about the Northeast (it's hard to feel bad when it's sunny and 65), but the bagel thing had me seriously down. As it was, West Hartford had lost any reasonable bagel shop once Manhattan Bagels and then Bagelz closed. Bruegger's? Hard round bread. Goldberg's? Too big. Lox, Stock & Bagels? Aftertaste. Yeah, ok, I'm picky. But you have to have some standards.

Bagels delivered, we proceeded to Tomo Sushi. Recommended by Sumina & Saurabh, this was a nice lunch. Tomo is a modern looking place on the north end of town (aka South Dallas), with a sushi bar, a couple of booths, and 4 or 5 tables. We slid into the last table and enjoyed some edamame, gyoza, oshinko, sushi & sashimi.

We also ate at Zuzu Handmade Mexican Food that weekend. Zuzu is a nearby, quick service place. You order at the counter and get a number. Food comes out pretty quickly. This would be a good place for a quick lunch, but we found it just average overall. The fresh salsa from the salsa bar was the best one, if you want my opinion (and if you don't, I'm going to give it to you anyway).

Next up: Feeding the soul

I finally made it to yoga last week. Kula Yoga is a quiet, small studio, with two teaching rooms and complimentary tea and chocolate following the class. My Hatha class, taught by a woman whose last name is Pancake (this is not relevant to anything), had 6 or 7 people in it of various levels. It was a fairly standard class, though I thought the teacher had a relaxing, inclusive style. This week I'll try a couple of other classes and teachers. Then perhaps I'll try a different studio, like Yoga Yoga.

Feeding the body again

At the end of last week's rather dreary week, I worked from home on Friday. Jon and I had lunch at Foodheads, a little cafe right near Salvation Pizza (for those unfamiliar, see our New Years post). They have an interesting collection of sandwiches, from roast beef with brie to salami and cheddar (these things don't really go together to me) to salmon salad. Then we caught up with the Jelly crowd at Genuine Joe, where I met the now-famous (locally at least) John Metcalf and actually got some work done.

Dinner was at another new place, Thanh Nhi, a sparkly clean Vietnamese place in a nondescript strip mall on North Lamar. Jon had some shrimp pho and I had some grilled chicken and shrimp bun, plus we ordered some spring rolls and egg rolls. As usual, dinner came to only $20 ($20.08 exactly), continuing our experience of good cheap meals. Service was fast and friendly, with the presumed proprietress giving me a hopeful thumbs up while removing my nearly clean bowl. If only that place were near work; bun is perfect lunch food.

Around the town

Saturday was a busy day. We started at the Counter Cafe, which looks like your typical greasy diner, but in fact serves fresh, local food. I thought $8 for eggs any style with bacon/sausage and a biscuit was a little steep, but breakfast tacos at $6 are a good bet. The biscuits are pretty good, too. Next time I think I'll give the hotcakes a go.

Then we followed the siren call of Cheapo Disks, discussed in another post, and then were off to the farmer's market. We bought a bread from Texas French Bread (a nice semolina with sesame seeds) and some swiss chard. But there is quite a diversity there, even in the non-veggie items. You can get yourself a whole fish, grass-fed beef, whole chickens, goat and lamb. Plus eggs and cheese. Last time we went we bought a handmade feta cheese packed in oil. This was delicious on our bread alongside a salad. We also had a handmade pepper jack, which had some nice kicky peppers to set off the mild jack.

Our next stop was my own personal Holy Grail. The Austin Public Library downtown branch could quite easily occupy a person for a whole day. Maybe more. First stopping to get my shiny new library card, we browsed the fiction on the lower level, then went up to the 3rd floor to check out the nonfiction. I had always liked the West Hartford library, but city libraries are just in a class of their own. There are 22 libraries in the system. You can check out and drop off books at any branch, and of course there are CDs, DVDs and even LPs (vinyl, man!) for checkout. Multiple copies of books, recommendation lists by genre. Joy.

Texas - 73; Texas Tech - 47; Bob Knight - 0

Saturday evening, after a stop at the Dog & Duck, we were off to the Erwin Center to see our University of Texas Longhorns stampede over the Texas Tech Red Raiders. But more than that we were there to see Bob Knight. Would he throw a chair? Choke a player? Meh. The most he could muster was a brief berating of a player. Bob, oh Bob, what's happened to you? So without that sideshow or really any competition, I was left to amuse myself with the supplied entertainment - singing the "Eyes of Texas", admiring the Texas-sized corndog, watching the Pom girls wiggle around the floor. But the main event for me was the bbq sauce bottle-shaped Hindenburg which did a lazy circuit around the arena, dropping coupons for Rudy's B-B-Q. Only in Texas, my friends. Only in Texas.

How about a Guiness?

Hungry (we didn't eat the corndogs), we stopped to see our friends at Salvation Pizza and get some pizza pie.

By comparison, the rest of the weekend was slow. Lester got some badly needed exercise at Zilker Park and a dip in Shoal Creek. After a stop at Epoch coffee, we called it a weekend. Time to go read some of those library books.