Full schedule today from 8am to 10:30pm - so fast meals.

Lunch: Costco Polish Sausage and Coke.

Dinner: Chick-Fil-A deluxe chicken sandwich with fries and sweet tea.

Lunch: Tina made crab salad sandwiches for lunch.

Dinner: We revisited The Driskill Grill (604 Brazos St, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 391-7162) tonight and boy has it changed since our last visit (when they were excellent). The meal started with our waiter, Jonathan, explaining the revamp of Driskill's menu. Apparently, they had evolved past the trendy tasting menu to let their evolved patrons take the evolutionary step of creating their own tasting menu. (Personally, I enjoy tasting menus that the Chef has put together - a good tasting menu will take my taste buds on a journey from light to heavy, acidic to creamy, sweet to savory and back to sweet… all the while getting a sense for what the Chef is culinarily interested in showing me.) Anyway, they believe this style of menu will allow visitors, who may not have the chance come back to taste something different, to order smaller versions of their entrees so more can be ordered (at prices around $20 each instead of $30). In addition, Jonathan explained, The Driskill has usually had customers that visit once or twice a year, but he hopes the menu will inspire customers to once or month or more. (Those two statements - "visitors won't have to repeat to taste the food" and "customers will come back more often" - seem to be almost opposing to me.) In any case, it all sounded like they hired a marketing consultant and then decided to say or do whatever the consultant told them to do. Problem is, the food has to be good enough for people to want to come and create their own tasting menu, and that is no longer the case.

Okay, now onto the food. We started with an amuse bouche of cured duck, microgreens, and apple-berry relish (at least that's what the woman who brought our food told us). It was kind of tacky - served on a plastic Asian spoon on a tea cup saucer. They do make porcelain spoons (that's what the Chinese did before plastic) and they do make appetizer plates… Anyway, it tasted like a chewy piece of meat (like a lightly smoked ham) on sweet apple sauce (or "grainy apricot jam" as Tina called it). I had a single microgreen, so the flavor was kind of lost.

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What I Ate: March 10, 2010 (Driskill Grill)

Lunch: Another busy day - microwaved the last of the tamales from Costco for a very late lunch while our neighbors played with Hairy.

Dinner: For my personal sanity, I decided I needed to cook something tonight. I grilled up a USDA Prime Ribeye Steak along with sweet bell peppers and the bulb of fennel for dinner.

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What I Ate: March 9, 2010

Dinner: I met up with a bunch of friends (Tina couldn't join us because she had to keep watch over Hairy who has a doggie cold) at Ryu of Japan (11101 Burnet Road, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 973-9498‎). I thought much of the food we had was delicious. The monk fish liver, oysters, and hotate (sea scallop) nigiri were my favorite dishes. The okonomiyaki is mediocre (having too much cabbage), but I don't know another place in Austin that serves it.

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What I Ate: March 8, 2010 (Ryu of Japan)

Lots of quick and simple foods today as we adopt our new dog who we're calling Hairy:

Breakfast: Before heading to the early morning church service (which we rarely do - we're late service people), I made egg sandwiches for us.

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What I Like: March 7, 2010 (Costco)

Dinner: We ate at what I would argue is the best trailer food in all of Austin - The Odd Duck Farm to Trailer (1219 South Lamar, Austin, TX) across the street (and just a tad south) from the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse Theater. Ultra-friendly service, outdoor seating, and decent amount of parking spaces are just bonuses - the quality of food is amazing here.

We ordered several items to share, paid by credit card, and sat down at one of the many outdoor tables they share with the Gourdough's Donuts trailer parked next to them. It wasn't fast (there were several people ahead of us) after we ordered - waiting about 25 minutes from the time we sat down to when we got our food - but it was worth it.

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What I Ate: March 6, 2010 (The Odd Duck Farm to Trailer)

Dinner: We tried Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q (11570 Research Boulevard, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 418-9898‎) which was more like a Shell gas station / restaurant than a real country store. As far as barbecue places in Central Texas go, Rudy's had a lot more selection than the usual brisket, spare ribs, and rings. First timers get to have bite sized samples of whatever meats you want to try before you order. We tried a little of the turkey breast (lots of smoke flavor), lean brisket (beefy and smokey), moist brisket (decadently juicy and streaked with delicious fat), baby back ribs (a bit dry but nicely seasoned with a dry rub that isn't shy on the celery salt), sausage (finely ground texture and salty), cole slaw (sweet without being drowned in dressing), potato salad (not special - like supermarket potato salad), and creamed corn (very sweet).

Rudy's is worth going to just for the ultra-moist brisket - it's the best we've had so far. The rest of the BBQ is good, but not the best around. The baby back ribs at The Salt Lick are better and so are their sides.

Lunch: I ate the leftover trout and shrimp from Green Pastures.

Then I ate the flat iron steak.

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What I Ate: March 4, 2010 (Red Robin)

Breakfast: I woke up early a took my car to the VW dealer for routine maintenance. I picked up a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, Hash Brown Patty, and Coke to munch on while waiting in the waiting room.

Lunch: I made a Cajun-style turkey sandwich.

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What I Ate: March 3, 2010 (Taqueria Star)

Dinner: We went to Green Pastures (811 W Live Oak St, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 444-4747‎) for our first Austin Restaurant Week dinner of Spring 2010. We didn't get to see it very well because our dinner was after dark, but the land around the restaurant and the Victorian home that Green Pastures is housed in looked beautiful.

Green Pastures' Austin Restaurant Week menu looked so good and was such a good deal ($25 per person) that we couldn't resist ordering three meals instead of two. We tried everything on the menu except for one of the appetizer courses (we didn't order the South Texas Trio: A Little Quail, A Little Pork, and Some Chicken Bacon-wrapped jalapeno-stuffed Texas Quail; Pasilla-Nutmeg Pork En Croute; Ancho-Garlic Goat Cheese Chicken Sausage) because neither one of us wanted to share our lobster tail. The lobster tail - Breakfast in Vegas A Tempura Lobster Tail with Wasabi Mashed Potato, Coconut-Ginger Butter, Guajillo, Corriander [sic] and Crispy Basil - was rich (you'll see this an an ongoing theme with this dinner) and delicious. I loved the crunchy and well-seasoned tempura shell around the generous portion of lobster. Tina found the fried batter to be distracting and wished the lobster hadn't been fried so she could taste the lobster more.

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What I Ate: March 2, 2010 (Green Pastures)