Three days, three new restaurants

We had a busy weekend, both around the house and around the town. But somehow we were able to check out three new (at least to us) restaurants.

On Friday afternoon I met an acquaintance for tea at The Steeping Room. We had a few things to talk about and since neither of us drinks coffee, she suggested we do The Steeping Room. While the restaurant does high tea, we opted not to do that and instead selected from the dizzying array of individual teas. I ordered a chocolate chai frappucino and my acquaintance ordered the iced tea version of a mojito. Both were yummy. However, the reason this place is blogworthy is the service. My acquaintance ordered a chilled watermelon soup; however, she’s pretty reserved and didn’t mention that she didn’t like it. I admit, I didn’t even notice she hadn’t eaten it. After the bill was paid, the waitress came back to the table and said her manager noticed my acquaintance didn’t eat her soup and was something wrong. The waitress offered to take it off the bill. When that didn’t work because the credit card had already been run, the waitress gave my acquaintance a coupon for a free soup on her next visit. One little act of customer service gained two return visitors.

That evening, Doug and I went to another new place, Gypsy, on Barton Springs Road. This quaint northern Italian restaurant had great wine, food and service. The waiter was excellent, giving great suggestions and allowed us to sample a few wines before we made our selections. In fact we discovered a few new wines. We split a dessert, a chocolate mascarpone cheesecake – it was rich and almost too much. We had an ice wine to go with it that tasted like apricots soaked in honey. Yum!

We didn’t make it to a new restaurant on Saturday, although we did have an enjoyable meal at El Sol y La Luna. Not only is the food good there, the restaurant is quick (in and out in under 40 minutes), which was good because we were on our way to volunteer for the Zach’s production of Seussical. BTW, the production had great costumes and great performances.

This morning was our third new restaurant – Galaxy Café in the Triangle. Cute little restaurant and good food. I had the Mediterranean eggs, with feta and basil. While there was nothing “oh wow” about the breakfast, it hit the spot and we’ll definitely return. Maybe we’ll even make it back for lunch or dinner.

All in all, a good gastronomical weekend.