What I Ate: February 15, 2010 (Texas Land & Cattle Steakhouse)

Lunch: The last of the BJ's Favorite Pizza - one more slice of the BJ's Southwestern Pizza left.

Dinner: We tried Texas Land & Cattle Steakhouse (5510 S I H 35 # C, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 442-6448) on Stassney after picking up some more supplies at Lowe's. The meal was surprisingly good.

We started with Fried Jalapeños (Jumbo jalapenos, battered and stuffed with mixed cheese and bacon. Served with ranch dressing.) We each had a bite and thought it was very flavorful, but too spicy for us to eat. (Our server had informed us that they remove the seeds, but they do not.) My mouth burned for several minutes as I contemplated taking another bite - but in the end we sent it back.

I had a cup of Steak Soup, which although salty was very flavorful and pleasant on such a cold night (around freezing temperature).

I was going to try their Signature Smooked Sirloin but they ran out for the night. So, we split a medium-rare Texas Bone-In Ribeye (The classic cowboy cut. Served with a fresh grilled jalapeno and topped with crispy onion strings. 18 oz.) The rib-eye is hidden underneath the mound of onion strings in the photo. The cut had a large portion of spinalis dorsi, the rib cap or cap meat, which is our favorite cut. It was juicy, tender, well-marbled, and delicious.

We had half a rack of Baby Back Ribs (A half rack of baby back ribs, slow-smoked to tender perfection and basted with Texas BBQ sauce.) and a sweet potato as well. The ribs were decent - tender and falling off the bone, but not much flavor except in the barbecue sauce. The sweet potato, on the other hand, was simply amazing. It was gigantic - like a small Nerf football - and tasted great (especially the charred flesh right under the potato skin).

We also got a side of creamed spinach (which I forgot to photograph) with the meal. The bread that was served was a sourdough that we really enjoyed. The crust was thin but crispy and the crumb of the bread was moist and fluffy with real flavor. We haven't had decent bread all to often while eating out in Austin, so we ate a lot of the bread at Texas Land & Cattle.

All in all, we were quite pleased with our meal - the steak was properly prepared, the sweet potato was excellent, and good bread.