Gayle Brennan Spencer – sending random thoughts to and from South Austin
Above: Interior of La Clandestina Cafe
Sending you a final few food snapshots from our spring trip to Zaragoza to offer you another batch of restaurants to tempt you into heading that direction.
Continue reading “Postcard from Zaragoza, Spain: Drooling over meal memories”
Above photo from Postcard from Toulouse, France: Falling in love one quirky detail at a time
The year 2022 brought a reshuffling of what blog entries caught your attention. You dove back as far as 2010, an indication of how long I have been blogging.
You politely made one of the stories drawn from research for An Ostrich-Plumed Hat, And Yes, She Shot Him Dead your number one favorite, clearly attracted by Texans’ love of pralines. You continue to support efforts to populate Brackenridge Park with ghosts, and thanks for welcoming a post about my new hometown focusing on the history of Zilker Park. And the quirkiness that is Toulouse sparked your attention. In other words, your interests are as unpredictably wide-ranging as my posts.
Continue reading “Biannual roundup of your favorite posts”
Above: Casa Lac roasted pimientos del cristal with hake
We’ll start this post exploring a few restaurants in Zaragoza with a leisurely meal at what some claim is the oldest in Spain – Casa Lac – dating from 1825 but with a decor updated sometime during the 19th-century. While Casa Lac features tapas downstairs, upstairs offers old-school, formal, multi-course service – perfect for whiling away time on a cool, rainy afternoon.
The six-course meal suited our mood, but what really drew us was Casa Lac’s reputation for putting fresh vegetables, instead of meat, in the primary spotlight. Ricardo Gil’s restaurant group grows and harvests seasonal regional vegetables, such as borage and thistle, on its own farm on the banks of the Ebro River. Gil says: “Our dishes are full of tradition, but with lively flashes of innovation. This is how we understand our cuisine; this is how we keep it alive.”
Continue reading “Postcard from Zaragoza, Spain: Sampling menus from regional vegetables to Neapolitan-style pizza”
Postcards from Barton Springs 