So last night my boss took me and two other interns out to dinner at a restaurant I had never head of named Zoot. It's on Bee Cave pretty far out past Resaca at a little shopping center named La Hacienda. It just recently moved there from another location and when we got there it was pretty obvious, the place is very underdeveloped, looks like Zoot is one of the first restaurants to move out there. They don't have their liquor license yet so they only offer beer and wine, for now. Their wine list is extensive but they said they only had a few beers to offer.
The menu was very fancy fare - foie gras, duck and the like. The front side of the menu includes appetizers, salads, soups and entrees a la carte. The second side of the menu has two preset menus, a Chef's tasting menu and a Farmer's market menu which was vegetarian. They each include 5 smaller courses for $67 or for $97 you can have a wine paired with each course. My boss decided that the latter would be the best choice (I had no problem arguing with her!).
This week I'm trying not to eat meat. It's been actually... not difficult per se, but it definitely requires me to be aware. Meat is not something that I crave, unlike bread and chocolate, but it is something that I take for granted in all my meals. When I think of dinner or lunch, my planning usually revolves around a particular protein, and so when I cut out meat (including fish) it's hard! So far I've stuck to... well let's see. Monday I had a salad for lunch and then an english muffin with pb for dinner. Yesterday I also had a salad for lunch and then Zoot for dinner (I chose the Farmer's market menu, I'll get back to that soon!) and today for lunch I had some tabbouleh that I had purchased at Whole Foods brought in from Tom's Tabooley on Guadalupe. And for dinner I had some cottage cheese with yogurt with strawberries and then a little later I had a big salad. It's been interesting, and I feel like it's good to give my digestive system a little bit of a break (after the weekend I had of eating!). I'm trying to go easy on eating bread also. But I can't cut everything out at once! I'm already drinking no coffee, again. I went through a period of not drinking coffee, a few months, but I recently started drinking it again. Then this weekend I drank way too much and thought I'd give my body a bit of a break with no coffee and no meat!
Anyway, back to Zoot. I ordered the Farmer's market menu which was difficult for me because I absolutely love meat! And the Chef's tasting menu included scallops, marlin, NY strip steak... oh, it was difficult. But, I'm glad I stuck to my plan! And it was still delicious! (And it better have been for that price!). I'm not much of a wine drinker, to be honest. I find it very harsh on the tongue, and I definitely felt that last night, with some more than others, but I'll get to that!
To start - warm mini baguettes served with butter. I ate one, without butter, it tasted just as a well made baguette should taste - I tell you, sometimes there's nothing better than just simple bread. And it reminds me why I forgo pasta, rice and potatoes for bread any day.
They also served us each an amouse bouche, very cutely on a spoon for each of us. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but let me tell you. One spoonful of A LOT of flavor. We were all in pure shock at how much flavor they managed to get into that one tiny spoonful. It was absolutely, incredibly delicious.
First course: Cracked wheat and fava beans with dressed spinach. The fava beans were the best part of this dish. I love beans and these were so creamy and well seasoned. The cracked wheat, seasoned, was interesting. Similar to the cracked wheat in tabbouleh, very textured. It was a very healthful, vegetarian way to start the night off. They paired it with a sweet white wine, I think it was my favorite wine of the night.
Second course: Root vegetable soup with candied ginger! This was by far the best course. The soup was so flavorful, it was incredible. The flavor was superb. They paired it with a white wine which was quite smooth and went perfectly with the soup. It was just amazing... I could have just had a whole big bowl of that and it would have been a wonderful night!
Third course: Sweet potato gnocchi served with marinate beets! This was the coures that I was most excited about but which was the biggest disappointment! I absolutely love sweet potatoes, and I love gnocci. But they were very dense and pasty. Thick on the tongue, like it would stick to the roof of your mouth. The flavor was great but the texture, heaviness of it was too much. Gnocchi is tranditionally quite a heavy dish but this was just too much. The red wine they served with it was a Malbec blend from Argentina, still too strong for my tastes.
Fourth course: Ravioli with roasted artichoke hearts! The artichoke hearts were very strongly marinated. Flavorful but intense. The ravioli was simple, straight forward. Delicious but nothing exceptional. The filling was a ricotta or mascarpone mixture, I think. It was creamy, white and mild. It was pleasant, especially with such an intense side. The red wine that they served with it was extremely spicy and strong, too much for my tatstest!
Fifth course: Dessert! A very dense, dark chocolate pie with dried rose petals on top, a sprinkling of salt, and three roasted hazelnuts! Served with a scoop of... pomegranate (that would be my best guess) sorbet. It was delectable. The perfect combination of intense and light, bitter and sweet. The perfect ending. And they served it with a 20 year old Port wine which was... oh it was just intensely sweet and absolutely heavenly.
Apparently they change the tasting menus every so often and the sommelier chooses the wines each night depending on what he wants to serve.
So, obviously it's extremely expensive (and their tables were really wobbly, that's the only real complaint that I have!) but if you're looking for an indulgence, a peaceful escape from the city, this place was really wonderful. The food, the wine. The waitstaff are extremely polite and really know what they're talking about, which is always a really nice thing to have at a restaurant (and something not found often enough!)
All in all it was a wonderfully enjoyable meal. (And I still think the non-vegetarian menu would have been better! :P)
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