http://nutsandboltons.com/food

"Soy mushrooms," the menu said.

"Great," I thought. "Yet another thing the vegans have ruined. Don't they know mushrooms are already made of vegetables?"

To be fair, I have nothing against vegans, or tofurkey, or soy burgers, or any of it. Just keep it out of my mouth. As I turned over the concept of soy mushrooms a few more times in my head, it dawned on me that perhaps they hadn't ruined my favorite fungus, but maybe enhanced it somehow with soy sauce.

As it happens, that's exactly what they'd done, and it was marvellous.

It's funny how much of a breakfast town Austin isn't. I mean, sure, every gas station, convenience store, and oil change shop sells breakfast tacos, but that's grab-and-go food. Even places like Kerby Lane, Magnolia, and the Omelettry don't really hit the spot. When I think breakfast out, I think good, cheap, simple food meant to get you through the day. Scrambled eggs and hash browns. Biscuits and gravy. Pancakes. Sadly, I've only found one or two greasy spoons in town that fit the bill (and no, IHOP doesn't really count -- I want someplace with character).

We tried this place out on Tuesday at the behest of our friend Marty, who was visiting from the states. The BBQ selection was a bit disappointing -- apparently 'burgers' fits the description over here. They did have two kinds of ribs, though.

Marty's beef ribs were sizable, if nothing else. They had a pretty good flavor with a decent glaze and smoke ring. According to Marty, it seemed the final heat was a little high, because the glaze was overcaramelized on at least one of the two ribs.

We took a day trip to Manchester for PlayExpo yesterday. On the way back, we got to the train station early so we stopped by a local pub, where I stumbled across this. It's a very good red beer on its own, but the finish hits you with some very firm rum notes. It's pretty fantastic. Their website describes it as:

We had walked by this place a few times, and it caught our eye every time because it's impossible not to peer in at the hundreds of marionettes hanging from the ceiling. It's in Covent Garden about a 5-minute walk from where we're staying, so we decided to try it out on Monday when we didn't have anything better to do. To our surprise, once we got in and sat down, we weren't creeped out by all the puppets. Not a bit. And it only got better from there.

We tried the springbok burgers this evening with a slice of Gouda. That's a damn tasty antelope. The patties were prepared with a little bit of onion but not too much in the way of seasoning. We dusted the top with a little salt before we pan-fried them. Turned out that was all we needed. This was much better than the kangaroo from last week. The flavor of the meat had a broader profile than the zebra, and was a little fuller and stronger without being gamey. We'd definitely have this again. That said, the zebra burgers are still the best of the three.

We went to Borough Market again today, specifically to try out the curry we'd seen simmering in these giant cauldrons. We were not disappointed. The thai green curry had a fairly mild flavor with a lot of complexity. It was full of mushrooms, chicken, and green peppers which had somehow managed to stay just a bit al dente despite spending most of their day simmering. The sauce soaked into the rice immediately and gave it a nice hearty flavor. It's odd, given how much this place captured our attention, that we still don't know what it's called.

So the Kangaroo burgers were a bit of a disappointment last night. The meat had an ok flavor (if a bit gamey), but because it's extra lean it didn't cook up quite right. Note to future self: stick with the Zebra burger.

So over the last couple weeks, we've eaten at a number of places worth writing about. I'll go through them in the order we visited them:

Asadal (Korean), near Holborn tube station. This place was awesome. We didn't get the bulgogi because we wanted to try a wide variety. Instead, we ordered the Kimchi Set (#8), Kun Man Du(19) Kan Poong Gi (26), and Ojing Uh Bokum (47). Everything was really good, but the star of the evening was actually the kimchi radish.
http://www.asadal.co.uk

So this is our first post. We're planning to document our culinary adventures in London here. We have a couple restaurant reviews we need to do from the last few weeks, so later today or tomorrow I'll be posting some of those.