Too Much.

Boiler House Texas Grill & Wine Garden
312 Pearl Parkway, Building 3

(way in the back, towards the River, behind the CIA)

No doubt the re-developers of the Pearl Brewery complex heartily welcome this trend-following down-home-chic new restaurant. Any addition to their tenant rolls is surely welcome; one that has cachet especially so, as it will draw both locals and tourists, and tourist visits will lend specious justification to the strong desire to snuffle around in the public trough for a ridiculous streetcar line on Broadway (as if tourists are stupid enough to walk three blocks in the summer heat). 

Well, the restaurants and bars at the Pearl are also sufficiently au courant to draw tne New-Age Masters of the local Universe, so this place fits right in, another gilt lily in the bouquet.

It got off to a bad start at the door. I can understand the hostess asking if I had a reservation, because sometimes people with reservations, who arrive to find a restaurant half-empty, don't mention the fact, and the house ends up needlessly keeping a table out of circulation. But when I said no, the young lady asked for a last name. Okay, I thought, a little odd that she'd specify a last name; maybe all those empty tables over there are reserved, and there's actually a waiting list consisting of those three couples at the bar. So I gave her my last name. 

Then she asked for my first name. Hmmm, I thought; my last name is not exactly uncommon; it's possible that someone with the same last name is already on the list. Okay, I gave her my first name. 

Then she said she needed a phone number.

Alright, the light bulb popped on: this is a marketing scheme. No, you can't have my f***ing phone number. You don't need to call me, I'm right here waiting to be seated.

Trying hard to not be in a bad mood (and, to my own surprise, generally succeeding), I and my wife followed the young lady to a table off to the side, where I was able to sit with my back to the television. A lot of good it did: in that half-lit space, the screen was blindingly bright as a searchlight scanning the sky, or one of those irritating new LED billboards along a freeway at night, and its flickering glare reflected off everything in the room.

The menus feature a lot of wines, as one would expect in a "wine garden." I'm not a big wine drinker, but I do like the occasional glass with a nice meal. I skipped to the food listings, to get some idea of what my choice might be before selecting something to complement the meal. I had come to this new restaurant because it showed up on the list of steak houses on Urbanspoon as a three-dollar-sign place, and because I had never heard of it, and don't like the idea of restaurants sneaking into my part of town without my knowledge.* The menu listed a couple of appetizers, seven small plates, five sides, and a half-dozen large plates, in addition to the "boiler cuts," which included a few steak options.

A grilled snapper topped that list, stuffed with crab for $50 ... on my menu. On my wife's, we discovered, the same dish was $32. The cheapest steak was antelope, for $44 ($41 on my wife's menu.) There was also an over-large steak for somewhere north of $90. So the viable choices for plain ol' beef steak were narrowed down to a ribeye, a New York Strip, and a filet mignon, each priced at more than $40: in other words, way beyond anything I'd have been willing to pay for a piece of meat unaccompanied by a glass of bourbon, a good cigar, and a massage with a happy ending. Plus, I was upset that, in the few weeks this joint had been open, the prices had already been bumped up, sometimes dramatically. So we decided to split a couple of small plates and a side, and made our choices accordingly. (And we had learned a lesson the last time we went to one of these modern-day tapas houses: there are very few drinks that go nicely with everything you order, so unless you plan to change wines (or beers) with each dish, it's better to stick to basics: water, or iced tea.)

The waitress (the only completely competent part of the service at the Boiler House) informed us that the dishes would be brought out as they came ready in the kitchen. This is an irksome trend in restaurants, at best a case of making lemonade out of lemons; it lets the business get by with a smaller kitchen staff, and obviates the need to hire those who learned that lesson in cookin' school on how to make things come out at the same time. It is another way of cutting operating costs at the employees' expense. It was charming when I encountered the practice at Feast; it was already tedious by the time I encountered it at the Monterey; now it's just downright slack, another silly trend that is ripe to find itself in the dustbin of fashion, but will probably continue.

The first small plate to drift out of the kitchen was pork pincitos, a pretty white plate with two skewers, each impaling a dozen or so small pieces of pig meat and lying in a green sauce applied with a minimalist's hand, and what looked and tasted like some home-grown artisan cilantro. The presentation was elegant, and the meat was nicely grilled, with a crusty seasoned coating along the edges, but too fatty. Way too fatty.

No city inspection yet.

The next thing that came out from the kitchen (after a longer interlude than I would have liked) was an order of clams casino. This was a compromise dish for us: it wasn't something either of us particularly wanted, but of the choices available it was sort of a least-bad option. (I wonder whether there's really much of a market for "bison Tartare.") There were six clams on a bed of seaweed, which our waitress admitted was edible, "but I wouldn't recommend it." The shellfish were prepared with a breadcrumb crust and a good blend of seasonings, and were almost worth the price charged ($11). But too salty. Way too salty.

Finally came the side dish we'd ordered, zucchini with quinoa and golden raisins. Here, at least, was a dish that was worth what they were asking for it ($8). It had an excellent taste, with the zucchini not overdone and the quinoa simmered to perfection. It was almost perfectly prepared, except that it was too oily. Way too oily.

I have no use for this place. Its appeal is all newness and snobby chic. Next time I want a steak, I'll drive out past the Loop and go to Outback or something like that. If I want a nice wine selection, there are a dozen good places out there (the closest being, I think, 20Nine, at the Quarry). Likewise if I just want elaborate artistry in the preparation of the food: you can't swing a dead armadillo in this town without hitting a place like that. And if I want tapas ... well, I've enjoyed the other such places I've been to in town, certainly more than I enjoyed this one, but frankly have found them all to share the flaw of a too-limited menu. Five or seven small plates isn't enough, especially if they're only on the menu to impress the clientèle with the chef's imagination in the fusion of exotic ingredients and his use of white space on the plate. There need to be twenty-five to forty choices to make the small-plates idea work well; and that, in turn, requires a chef who not only can create inspired dishes, or what passes these days for inspired dishes, but also can manage the menu with an eye toward the bottom line. It is possible, you know, to have a twenty-five-option small-plate menu and still not have to stock an entire HEB in the back room. 

on Yelp!

* I generally don't go to new places until
they've lost their new-car smell, but had
recently been to the only other steak houses
in the area.

Two Step Restaurant & Cantina
9840 North Loop 1604 West

(at Braun Road, on the Northwest Side)

I have a friend, Roland, who lives out in the suburban sprawl of the northwest side, in one of those indistinguishably attractive, oak-studded subdivisions that litter the ground where the grid of streets in the older part of town gives way. He and I and my side-kick Rick made plans to see the new Bond flick, Skyfall, and since Roland has had surgery recently and can't drive, we went out to collect him. We had planned to have lunch at a restaurant near the theater, but some last-minute discussion revealed that none of us was really interested in the place we had planned on. Roland had been there numerous times and pronounced it "okay," hardly a recommendation; Rick had chosen it from a short-list I'd provided after half an hour's research on options in that area; and I had included it on the short-list because it was hyped as a "New Orleans-style cafe." Being a native Orleanian, I was interested. But then I found out that it's a chain restaurant outlet with no connection to New Orleans beyond the fancy of some Hollywood entrepreneur, and anyone who's read more than a couple of the reviews on this site knows that I consider chain restaurants to be the culinary equivalent of relative-humanist Tee-Ball. You know: everybody's good, nobody's better than anybody else, and everybody gets a trophy. A chain restaurant's fine when you're in a strange town at dinnertime, or when reliability is more important that artistry. Maybe someday I'll go to that "New Orleans-style cafe," but not this trip.

So instead, we pulled into Two Step Restaurant & Cantina. I had only heard of the place because someone connected to the place had sent me an email a while back, inviting me to have lunch on the house. I declined that offer, on the probably spurious ground that someone might actually rely on these restaurant reviews, and the appearance of improper influence is every bit as inimical as actual improper influence.* So we had to pay for our lunches.

The place itself is in a couple of buildings surviving from one of the earliest settlements in the area, built about 1870 and subsequently joined together in a full re-modelling. The result is quite pleasant in concept and execution. You enter through a bar that is thoroughly Texan in appearance and atmosphere, if not in size, and have the choice of inside or outside seating in the dining area. The outdoors would be nice in the afternoon, except that the proximity of Loop 1604 makes me think the traffic noise may be too bothersome. (Nothing that a nice limestone wall wouldn't resolve....) On a late morning in November, though, it was just a little too cool to sit out there. But we sat by the large glass overhead doors that open onto the patio, so we got a lot of the effect without the chill or the traffic. Other parts of the dining room seemed as nice, being cozily dark and maintaining the bare limestone walls all round.

The service was as good as the atmosphere. We were greeted by a down-home-friendly someone who seemed to be the head honcho, offered a choice of seating, and given a quick run-down of things we might want to know. Our wants were looked after by a crew of uniformed staff (the uniform being house-logo T-shirts, and jeans): the guy from the front desk, and our particular waitress, Melissa, both of whom were attentive, helpful and charming; plus an assortment of less cheerful functionaries, who delivered this or that item and seemed to be in some kind of daze, as though they were not accustomed to daylight.

Our choices from the menu began with bacon-wrapped brisket-habanero stuffed jalapeños, an appetizer that comes with the warning of being "Super HOT!" They weren't. They were mildly piquant. The jalapeños themselves were large and slightly undercooked (which I liked, but Rick didn't), stuffed with the advertised mixture of shredded brisket with a dose of habanero that was too trivial to thrill. The whole thing was wrapped in a spiral of crisp bacon. Despite the disappointing lack of spicy heat, the overall taste and texture were both excellent.

Roland is on a special diet by his doctor's orders (the kind that would make me reconsider the morality of euthanasia, but it doesn't seem to phaze him), so he had only a house salad with vinaigrette dressing. He had no comment about it, but it looked very much like my salad, the "Texas-Sized Two-Step Salad," with a meat topping of choice: salmon, chicken or blackened catfish. I picked the salmon, which is billed as "cured house-smoked." I'm guessing that after they smoke it (which they do quite well) they keep it refrigerated at a very low temperature, because the meat is extremely dense and served very cold. Once I got past the jarring chill of it, I decided that it was done well, with a deep smoky flavour that complemented the innate salmon taste. There was enough of it, too, to satisfy. The greens underneath were reasonably fresh and varied, and included little bits of lagniappe like pumpkin seeds, corn, bacon and half a boiled egg. I chose the honey mustard dressing, which had the appearance and flavour of an in-house creation.

Rick's choice was the pulled pork sandwich, with french fries. It turned out to be a pretty good version of the classic sandwich, with plenty of tender lean pork and an excellent barbecue sauce, served on the side; and the bun was fresh and soft. The fries had an excellent flavour, and were fried to a nice crispness, though they were clearly of the pre-fab sort that arrive in a freezer pack already blanched.

Last city inspection: May 2012
26 demerits

It being five o'clock somewhere, Rick and I both indulged in frozen margaritas. These turned out to be somewhat pale and thick machined concoctions, with little flavour. And after the meal, Rick was unable to resist the offer of a slice of lemon-lime cheesecake. I thought it was reasonably good, with a nice tartness and a fair texture, though Rick considered it insufficiently creamy. The crust had coconut in it, which added an interesting element, and which I enjoyed. However, both these items — the drinks and the dessert — were seriously overpriced. The margaritas, at $7.25, were a good 40% more than I think would have been the norm for drinks of that size and modest quality; and the dessert, which I considered at the time "a four-dollar slice of cheesecake," was priced at $5.95, nearly 50% more than I think it should have been. The prices of the other items are only slightly above what I'm accustomed to paying for comparable food elsewhere; close enough to call the high side of reasonable; but those drink and dessert prices take the overall rating for value below an acceptable level, I'm sorry to say.

So I would recommend Two-Step only to people who don't drink, and who don't eat dessert. Other than that, it's pretty good.

on Yelp!

* This is why I didn't go into politics.
My friend Roland thought I was too full of myself, and said that he'd have accepted the offer and then written an honest review. I would have liked to have done that, but can't honestly be sure it would be possible. So it set me back, I don't know, twenty bucks?