Wink leaves us confused.

Since we're in birthday season here, a few weeks ago we visited a restaurant we'd been wanting to try for some time.  It's called Wink, and it's in a small strip mall just northwest of downtown Austin.

The experience was really good tempered with emphatically not good. 

Prosecco by Villa Sandi, for instance, good.  One thing Wink does have entirely under control is their very nicely chosen wine list.

Having to wait a half-hour past our 9:00 reservation?  Well, we didn't really care that much, but I figure it's worth mentioning for those people that get really Teutonic about the timing of their evening out.

Their wine bar looked very nice, and the bar snacks going by were intriguing, but unfortunately the place was full.  We sat with our backs to the camping display at Whole Earth Provisions and watched cars come and go.

When we did get seated, I immediately had the impression that we'd somehow pissed off the waitress.  Perhaps it was just the tail end of a long night, or maybe it's that we're kinda on the young side for this restaurant, but I'd swear she rolled her eyes when we ordered our food.

Wink does offer a tasting menu, but the dishes we wanted to try on their always-changing menu weren't on it, so we devised our own.  Our starter was a kitchen-provided sweet corn soup with chili oil.

BTW, this is a DARK restaurant.  We'd been forewarned and had brought a little tripod.  I'm thinking our waitress didn't care much for this either.

The soup tasted like sweet corn.  It was nice, but not that interesting.  I was a little surprised to see anything with sweet corn on the menu, since Wink prides itself on seasonality and local sourcing, and I'd thought the season for sweet corn was later. 

I do admire Wink for how much they do with local sourcing, and for changing up the menu.  Actually, I'm concerned that the night we were there, we discovered some of the pitfalls of changing basically your entire menu each night.  And this is a large menu - we're not talking four apps and four mains, here.

For instance?  Well, the first thing we ordered, the roasted onion soup with cinnamon oil and brioche croutons ($9) had a pretty strong note of burned onion.  I'm all for the bitterness and small black spots on a good roasted vegetable, but this was difficult to get past.  The cinnamon oil was a nice idea, but the brioche croutons immediately became soggy and their flavor disappeared against the onion.

We do appreciate the kitchen splitting our courses for us, though.

The next dish was more successful - a trio of beets with baby arugula from Boggy Creek Farms and "wink chevre" ($13) - I didn't think to ask if they were making their own cheese?

The trio were roasted, candied, and pickled. 

At first, I thought both the candied and pickled varieties were too strong, but paired together they muted each other's sour and sweetness.  Plus, I'm just a dork for beets - I like them pretty much every which way.

Unfortunately, the next dish returned us to the land of oops.  And we had such high hopes for the seared hudson valley foie gras on pain perdu with roasted cipollini and strawberry coulis ($22).

Let's start with the high points.  The strawberry coulis was nice, quite a bit more tart than I'd been expecting.  Yay for first-of-the-season strawberries!  The cipollini were perfectly roasted, though unnecessary in my mind.  Things started to go pear-shaped with the pain perdu, which suffered from the same sogginess as the brioche croutons - this would have been fine had the outside been crisped.

And the foie gras.  Dangit, it was undercooked.  When our forks cut into it, a puddle of pinkish fluid snaked its way out onto our plates.  The outside was perfectly cooked, but the inside was still just about raw.  If this was a stylistic choice, I'd be surprised... my guess would be that their foie pan was too hot.

Continuing the offal kick- yet another thing I like about this restaurant - we ordered the veal sweetbreads with israeli cous cous, radicchio, and spring onion aioli ($17).  This was much more successful.

The sweetbreads were very nicely done, and I thought the richness got along well with the strong bitterness of the radicchio.  It might have been fun for the aioli to be a little cooler, but I'm sure that would be difficult to pull off in a busy restaurant.  The couscous was fun starchy tastiness.

Our last two dishes came out together - this was fine by us, though we'd been told everything would be coursed.  At this point, however, we'd had some extremely long waits between dishes and the restaurant was starting to empty out.  So, we got our pork belly with our grouper.  Oh well.

The braised karabuta pork belly on fuji apples and caramelized fennel ($15) was nice, but didn't stick with me for some reason.  I'm not sure why, since pork fat and I are always good friends.

It was all good, but nothing really stood out about it.  I know that's sort of an infuriating thing to say about a dish, but I just can't point to anything great or awful about it.  Pork.  Apples.  Fennel.  It's a solid combination that we all know works, and it did here.

The pan roasted grouper on gnocchi with brussels sprouts, fiddlehead ferns, and bcf spring mix ($27) was a little more interesting, though not necessarily in a good way. 

Firstly, the grouper was fricking awesome, cooked just right, firm and meaty and very good.  I was surprised by how good the brussels sprouts were - I wouldn't have thought they'd be a great combo with fish, but they were.  Husbear thought using the two strong vegetables, the sprouts and fiddlehead ferns, was overkill.  I actually liked the two together, but I was a little tipsy by this point and my notes say "FIDDLEHEADS = NATURE'S CURLY FRIES!!!!?!?!!" so maybe I shouldn't be trusted.

But the gnocchi was bad.  Mealy, hard, bad.  I cried a small tear, because gnocchi are my favorite thing in the world (even more favorite than a perfect oyster) and I hate when they're screwed up.

And then we didn't get dessert because it was very much time to go before our waitress tried out the Vulcan death grip.

I have to say before I hit Publish Now on this review that we have food-loving friends who've had terrific experiences at Wink, and I'm certainly not universally panning the place.  But there are a number of other places I'd like to try out before I rush back.  However, our verdict after one visit - spotty food with pretty bitchy service.

Wink: 1014 North Lamar, Ste. E Austin, TX.  512.482.8868.  Reservations strongly recommended, if not mandatory.

Comments

[Albany Jane]

Wow, very interesting. Also, kudos for getting past the not-so-stellar service. I probably would have been annoyed by it throughout the meal.

Even though there were some flat notes, I really enjoyed your photos. Hopefully your next meal tickled your tastebuds!

[Girlie]

Thanks, Albany Jane! I have to say we did our fair share of eye-rolling at the waitress' back. Glad you liked the photos! Maybe we should bring out the tripod more often.

[Joolie]

If I were waiting on someone who was so committed to taking photos that they brought a tripod, I might assume they were going to write about their experience and maybe be a little nicer to them. Happy birthday season, by the way!

[Girlie]

Ha! Next time, we should totally tell the server that we're bloggers. See how far that gets us. Thanks for the birthday season wishes!

[carol]

nice blog!

the gnocchi i had was GREAT (my fav out of all the plates) and i had no idea the pink juicy stuff coming out of the foie gras meant that it was undercooked! (it was my first time having foie gras). your pictures came out well...i didn't think to bring a tripod so mine were pretty dark & noisy.

[Girlie]

Carol, I'm glad you enjoyed the post - and the gnocchi! Further confirmation of the consistency problems this sometimes-great restaurant has.

And our foie gras wasn't so much pink and juicy as it was, well, goopy. There's a definite difference!

[shae]

Loved reading this post. My husband and I had a very similar experience at Wink about 3 years ago - especially related to the waitstaff comment...too bad not much has changed.

[Boots in the Oven]

Thanks, shae! Sorry to hear that our Wink experience wasn't isolated. Thank you for the comment.