Welcome

Hello all. Welcome to lineCOOK, a kind of food blog. If you have ever had a meal, ever in you life, you are most welcome to chime in and make your opinions known.

There are no boundaries here. Cooking, recipes, dining, wine, cocktails, beer - it's all fair game. lineCOOK is about food that you find to be the real deal. Strip away food trends, a restaurant's annoying one-word Latin name/ "exit-strategy"ambience, your waiter's attitude, wine markup, etc. What do you find to be truly tasty? Have you found a true Bolognese sauce in or around your town? Do you know a bartender that can mix a simple drink, and make it taste way-better than the sum of its parts? If you know real food and drink and think that something deserves acclaim, or if there is a restaurant that you think gets a bit more praise than it deserves, then PLEASE - post away.

Allow me to begin.

I've been spending a lot of time in Austin TX lately, mostly for work reasons. When first I came here, I saw a town that had solid staples. To tell you the truth, good Tex-Mex, outstanding BBQ and really good beer left a great impression on me as to what food is in Austin. The pursuit of perfecting a few dishes and making them the best in their respective genres seemed like a worthy endeavor. Those were my thoughts when I started coming here five years ago.

But then they decided to get cute.

Austin has seen an influx of Southern Californians throughout the recent years, due (I'm assuming) to an IT boom and a comparatively robust economy; and with these people come money; and with money comes opportunity; and with opportunity comes exploitation; and with exploitation comes insincerity; and with... you get the point. Don't mistake my rant for a diatribe regarding how Southern California sucks. I lived there in LA for four years, and I quite liked it. California knows how to eat. But I digress...

Smoke and mirrors is the order of the day in the Austin Dining scene. Take Woodlands restaurant on S. Congress Ave for example; and to be more specific, take their meatloaf. Meatloaf that contained angus beef and rough-chopped (re: sloppy) tomato sauce seemed so erudite when consumed in a dimly lit, teak-strewn fortress of solitude. One word restaurant name? Check. Waiters that wear all black? Check. Neck tattoos on 85% of the staff? Check. Kicked up corn fritter apps, with all locally sourced ingredients? Check. "Grandma never locally sourced her corn. This stuff must be awesome!!!"

To the novice diner, or to the annoying foodie that rides food trends like The Lone Ranger rides Silver, this may seem like a charming spot whose time has finally come. But to lineCOOKS, this is just another "exit-strategy" joint: a place that has no expectations past three years, when the proprietors realize that their business was nothing more than a grand real estate venture. Strip away the black uni's, the dim lights, the hip cocktail list and the expensive-as all-hell (and not even better-tasting) local produce, and you're left with meatloaf that tastes maybe-as-good as my mother made when she was just learning how to feed a family of four.

$13.00 mediocre meatloaf. A true sign of the times.