I was physically unconfortable much of the time we were at Bess, but it really wasn't the restaurant's fault. I'm a sucker for just about any place with a decent cheese plate (Bess offers a very good one as an appetizer), but I was less impressed with my pork tenderloin, which was just kind of bland.
I'm wondering if Bess is worth trying again as a sort of tapas place; order some soup, the cheese plate, maybe try the sweetbreads with onions, and some of the macaroni and cheese (also pretty good).
This place has lots of promise: It has a nice, attractive interior with a sort of European ratskeller cafe feel to it, it's well-staffed, and it's located on a stretch of Sixth Street for which it is generally possible (Praise Jebus!) to find parking at 6 PM on a Saturday night. However, much of that promise remains unfulfilled because the food, while solid, is not terribly exciting, and suffers from being slightly overpriced.
I liked the bread basket, but the bread itself a typical rustica offering; a decent carrier medium for butter, but little more. The "smoked bacon mussels" were good, but for the bacon you had to go diving into the broth. The Crab Cake (not crab cakes) was good, but not $12 good.
For my entrée I had the bone-in pork tenderloin, which was just fine; I didn't detect any mustard on the "tossed mustard aeoli" (which might explain why it was so bland). My side for fries was quite good, but the macaroni and cheese I had on the side was both too bland and watery.
The crème brûlée was also disappointing, as the custard seemed a bit on the thin side.
Simply put, the bill was too hefty for the quality of the food presented. I want to like Bess, but they need a lot more imagination in the dishes if they want to continue to charge these prices.
And no, we didn't see owner Sandra Bullock there.
I liked the pad thai, the sushi (especially the bagel roll) and the barbecue pork (all of which are available at happy hour prices). I didn't care much for the woon sen soup or panag, both of which were too heavy on vegetables for my taste.
It also seems to me that the menu is curiously limited, while at the same time, the restaurant doesn't know what it wants to be; a Thai place? A sushi place?
Sort of an Asian Fusion place with Chinese, Thai, and Sushi. Not bad, and not too expensive, but not all that impressive either.
The calamari was both tasty and tender, making it one of the better offerings I've had. However, the grilled pork and fried dumplings didn't do much for me; there are considerably tastier versions of both dishes around. I did like my Tom Kha soup, which they actually made as hot as I like it; however, the version served at Thai Kitchen is both tastier and cheaper. The unagi sushi and rainbow roll were both pretty credible.
My red pork curry I found a touch on the disappointing side; it was hot, but otherwise a bit underspiced. The fried banana and ice cream dessert was actually four tiny slices of banana fried into dough wedges with a scoop of ice cream; it was fine, but definitely could have used more of the promised cinnamon.
The service was generally good (the refills were a little on the slow side), but the pace was inexplicably leisurely, especially since they were almost empty. It took about two hours from sitting down to paying the check, which was 30 minutes too long.
I don't know what to tell you. Chon Som as just good enough that I wished it was better. The interior is attractive (save the unfinished floor trick; worse, it being Austin, the black and white flecking reminding me of nothing so much as grackle droppings), and the food has a lot of potential. It seems less like the work of people who really want to run a restaurant than ones who are running it until something better comes along. It lacks passion.
I like the Melting Pot well enough; you can get an excellent meal if you're willing to spend both the time (dinner takes a while) and money, and I've never left hungry.
So I'll just observe that Lawrence's coupon was for $25 per person for three courses; appetizer, salad, and main course. No problem, except that the dessert course isn't included. You can pay extra for that. Fair enough. Except that the dessert course worked out to about $14 per person for those having dessert, for a total of about $39 per person. Which is exactly what the normal four course cost is without a coupon. Some savings (unless you skipped dessert, which I can understand but not recommend).
We'd been wanting to do an SDC here for a while, and a coupon finally provided us the opportunity to try it at prices that were merely high rather than nosebleed-inducing.
This is a high end concept chain restaurant, the concept being "fondue," a food preparation style last popular about a decade before I was born. All the food (save salads) are prepared in a fondue pot. Appetizers? Bread and granny smith apple dipped in various kinds of cheese. Main dish? Various kinds of meat broiled or fried; you spear what you want, then drop it into the pot to cook for a couple of minutes. Dessert was a very good Bananas Foster-type concoction into which strawberries, marshmallows and rice crispy bars were dipped. (And, unlike certain substandard Austin restaurants, it was actually served flaming.) Service was excellent.
The food was fine, but the appeal of the place is more the ritual of preparation, much like Japanese Yakiniku dining, but without the all-you-can-eat virtues or the added danger of the fire. Worth trying if you have a yen, a group of people, and one of those coupons; at regular prices, it's pretty hard to justify on the culinary content alone.
How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two. One to screw it almost all the way in and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.