What I Ate: September 21, 2010 (Foreign and Domestic Food and Drink)

Dinner: We paid Foreign & Domestic Food & Drink (306 E 53rd St, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 459-1010‎) a visit for dinner. We started with an order of Popovers ($5). Topped with gruyere, these eggy popovers were delicious.

Crispy Beef Tongue Watercress, Mint, & Horseradish Yogurt ($8). The beef tongue was awesome - great concentrated flavor (especially at the crispy edges) that worked amazingly well with the greens and horseradish sauce. It was so good I was tempted to order another one (but didn't since we had a lot more food to taste).

Arugula Pickled Beets, Balsamic Onions, Bottarga ($9). A generous beet and arugula salad. At this point, I decided we would have to return to Foreign & Domestic for a future meal.

Ditali & Cheddar Soft Egg, Bread crumbs, Oxtails ($15). This take on mac & cheese was interesting and flavorful, but not exactly my cup of tea. I think I just prefer the flavor of oxtail in a different setting.

Crispy Chicken Thighs Eggplant, Piquillo, Herb Pesto ($15). Tina's favorite part of this dish was the piquillo pepper stuffed with eggplant, pine nuts, and raisins (tasted like a mini ratatouille). The chicken was exquisitely prepared and perfectly seasoned. I had a couple of pieces of the crispy skinned chicken before realizing I wasn't eating it with any sauce and loving every bite.

Carrot Cake Sundae Carrot Caramel, Pineapple Relish, Butter Pecan Ice Cream. I started with this dessert which I liked quite a bit. Eating the ice cream, whipped frosting, pineapple and carrot cake together tasted great. It was a lot (fairly rich) for one person to eat, but it would be great split between two people.

Chocolate Cake Milk Chocolate Ganache, Vanilla Bean Ice Cream. The chocolate cake had a pretty pedestrian dark chocolate icing, but the rest of it was pure decadence. Super rich and chocolaty, this cake was so strong in flavor that any subsequent bite of the carrot cake dessert meant we could only taste saltiness and the textures of the carrot cake. Much too rich for one person, we split this cake using the ice cream to cut the heaviness (when you use a rich ice cream to offset the richness in a chocolate cake, you kind of get an idea of how rich the cake is) and ended up leaving half the carrot cake.

Lunch: Last of the Leftover Chinese Food