Drought Causes City to Require Customer Request Before Serving Water

Fresh Water

As you know, Austin recently experienced one of the driest and hottest summers on record. To lower water usage, the city recently passed a mandate requiring restaurants to only serve water to customers upon request. This begs the question, why is it ever appropriate to serve water to a customer who isn't going to drink it? For any other drink, you must order it specifically for it to be brought to the table, and the water generally gets to you about the same time--with or without a request. To those who actually drink water, it is only a slight inconvenience, which has no negative affect on their dining experience at all. Thus, it would make sense to always require restaurants to only serve water to customers upon request. This would save thousands of gallons of water a year (especially in the three-quarter-full glass of water, which you don't really want, that the waiter brings you just before the check arrives, which I'm sure this happens to everyone occasionally). Conserving water in restaurants would not only save our water, but it would save the restaurants money on water bills. It is a win win situation. We should not just implement this when we have a water shortage, but all the time.

Cannoli Joe's: A Gourmet Italian Feast

This weekend, I and my family went to dine out at Cannoli Joe's, an Italian restaurant that we had been to several times before. Cannoli Joe's is unique in many different ways. First, as you drive in, you see a large mural of an Italian street, which is breathtakingly realistic and detailed. Then, you walk past several stone pillars to the door, which leads you through a short hall ways with marble busts and paintings on either side. At the reception desk, you can catch a glimpse of a wooden oven behind. If you haven't been to Cannoli Joe's before, then one of the staff members are more than willing to lead you through the buffet. The buffet itself is fashioned in the likeliness of an Italian street, much like the mural, with shops and different architecture at almost every turn. The food is cleverly situated so that it lies on a counter instead of the doors of walls of the shops.

After the tour, you are led to your seat by the extremely nice waiters and waitresses. Another aspect of Cannoli Joe's that I thought was a really nice touch was the rooms in which you ate in. The walls are covered with various arts, ranging from paintings to vases, which is all determined by the room in which you are seated in. So you sit down, order a drink from the drink list that is present on the table, and off you go, out of your seat and bustling to try some of the food. If the decorations and building itself are pieces of art, then the food itself is a masterpiece. It ranges from your ordinary pizzas which are baked fresh, to new and different dishes, all in the range of Italian food. There are even some vegetarian options that are extremely tasty as well. One of the best things about Cannoli Joe's is also that it is a buffet, so you aren't stuck with just the one small meal that you ordered, you get to go again and again until your hunger is sated by the delicious Italian food, and when you think that you've eaten enough, you find out that there is a dessert area, appropriately placed at the end of the buffet area. There they have ice cream, chocolate dipped strawberries that are made in their chocolate fountain, and they even have homemade cotton candy, which they spin and package in front of you, so you can take some home for later in case you're hungry.

All in all, Cannoli Joe’s is a terrific Italian restaurant that you can go and have a good time, while eating terrific food. Even if you aren’t an Italian food fanatic, Cannoli Joe’s might change your mind and your opinion.

You can find the Cannoli Joe's restaurant site here.

Cannoli Joe's Restaurant Mural

Photo Courtesy of Flikr

Good Eatings!!

-Chocolate Rabbit

A Pessimist's View on Life, the Economy and Blue Bamboo Viet-Thai Grill

by Culinary Queen

After eating Chinese food swimming in seas of grease, and rubbery “Thai” chicken, I was quite skeptical when we ordered takeout from the Blue Bamboo Viet-Thai Grill. To be honest, I was expecting an experience identical to my previous ones: oily noodles, tasteless chicken and undercooked rice. Feel free to call me a pessimist.

My opinions changed once the food was sitting on the kitchen counter. Slightly. The thing is, the food smelled good. Still, I refused to get excited. After all, good smells could mean one of two things:

1. The dished had been fried and greased and oiled to appeal to the primal part of all of us which is hardwired to enjoy oil and sugar.

-OR-

2. The food was actually tasty.

I hadn’t actually decided which option I was going with as I plopped an appetizer on my plate. Looking at the pieces of well-marinated chicken on a skewer, I couldn’t find any faults in its appearance. I bit into it and my pessimism receded quite a bit. The dish is called the Satay and it is amazing.

Doesn't that look good?

          Photo by Culinary Queen

I was looking forward to the entree with a more the-glass-is-half-full, every-cloud-has-a-sliver-lining sort of attitude. Good choice too, because my Thai-Basil Chicken was just as good as the appetizer.

If you’re a stickler for facts and need to know exactly what is in your food before you eat it, here they are. The menu describes it as “stir-fried chicken with veggies and spices”. The veggies include carrots, bell peppers, broccoli, and onions; small pieces of chicken are mixed in. The dish comes with steamed rice. Thai-Basil Chicken is a definite recommendation on my part.

My brother, the idealist vegetarian, ordered Spring Noodles (minus the tofu) which I thought were the best of all. Very simple: just egg noodles and veggies (tofu if you’re adventurous) but is very tasty. Be warned though, if you are one of those people who is revolted by even a slight taste of oil, I would not get this dish. That being said, there was not an excessive amount of oil; I would say there was less oil/grease content in the food from Blue Bamboo as compared to other Asian restaurants.

Spring Noodles: Notice the bell peppers and broccoli

                
                Photo by Culinary Queen 


By the time our plates had been emptied, I wasn’t a complete optimist in the area of Asian food, but it would be safe to say that my opinions had changed quite a bit. Thank you, Blue Bamboo.

You can find the complete menu here.

Inception: A Dream within a Cookie

Being the dork of a high schooler that we are stereotyped to be, I attended a six week math camp over the past summer. Though the first year camp attenders were not tortured in any way, our counselors might as well have just done so. We were surprised by an evil, cunning plan proposed by our counselors: making us start our businesses over the course of the six weeks. As terrifying as it sounded, we were given a forty dollar pity contribution from our camp counselor Andrew and then shoved out to be swallowed by the wolves.

So, as I am one of those boring, uncreative people that panics whenever the idea of designing or planning something is brought up, I fled to my sister (over email) and begged her for some ideas. She was not very helpful. I tried something that I had seen her do before (I definitely did not read about her cookie business in her middle school diary). As there were other idea-stealers at camp, there was quite a bit of cookie competition. And the main problem here was that the only way that we could even get any people to buy our products was to somehow be different from others. Taking inspiration from a fellow classmate who sold cookies a throughout our last school year, I stumbled upon this idea of inception cookies.

To make it clear, I have had people look at me questioningly and comment that inception cookies sound "sketchy", but they are merely Oreo cookies smushed between two chocolate chip cookies. Two very, very delicious, warm chocolate chip cookies. I found a recipe online here, and as the follow-along pictures and explanation were very helpful, the first batch turned out pretty darn good looking.

Photo credit to Teena, my sister.







Fresh out of the oven. And yes, they were even more delicious than they look.


So, even though our company did end up making around $120 including the $40 start-up (or pity donation, as my group liked to call it), we did end up putting way too much work into the project. (Even as baking may be fun, it gets a little... monotonous.... after baking about two batches a day for a few weeks). We sold each cookie for fifty cents, and in the last two weeks we incorporated some Oreo Cake Balls into our company as well. They are very easy to make and a recipe and instructions can be found here. Enjoy.
Anyhow, something to take away from this ridiculously over-worded rant: math camp is actually fun (I promise) and inception cookies are quite delectably delicious.

Thanks
Lily

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step

Welcome to the Savorish blog! This is the first of a number of stunning, exciting posts by the Savorish staff. We hope to enlighten you about the amazing food options available in Austin. We look forward to entertaining you. 

-- The Savorish Magazine Team