Creative Italian Dining at Austin’s Asti
Until two weeks ago, I lived in one of the world’s great food cities, San Francisco. In The City (and locals always call San Francisco The City, as if there were only one, unless they are Hell’s Angels or shop regularly at Frisco Choppers, in which case one can acceptably refer to The City as Frisco) I had an embarrassment of riches within easy walking distance of my home, available any day of the week. Stunning French bistro fare on Monday. Hot juicy burritos for three dollars at a quick Tuesday lunch, the most crisply fresh organic produce from the farmers market Wednesday afternoon. The grocery stores around the corner from my house sold anything I needed to make spicy Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Mexican, or Nicaraguan for my friends at my house on Thursday night. There’s always a new opening at chez so-and-so because San Francisco has restaurants like funk has soul.
And up until about two weeks ago I didn’t care anymore. I was feeling terminally bored with food. Eating out is about food, but it’s not just about food. I was feeling as if I were eating great food without dining well.
Dining well is such a lovely thing. Sharing a meal and special time with great friends, gladly being parted so decisively from one’s money with so little to show for it but the girth of ones’ thighs, savoring a morsel so succulent the endorphins literally leap across your synaptic junctions-these are part of what we want. But they’re also more than that: these seeming exigencies can be more important than the food. The food almost becomes meaningless, adjunct. This is the lesson that a decade in San Francisco taught me: really good food is all pretty much really good, and it’s something beyond the food, extrinsic, that makes a gastronomical event sublime. Such an experience happened to me recently at Asti, the charming Hyde Park trattoria.
My in-the-door experience subtly set the mood for culinary appreciation. My dear dining companion, hereafter referred to as Dear Darling, and I paused outside Trattoria Asti to admire the snappy spare modernism of its exterior, the word “Asti” itself neatly couched in red circles, before we stepped inside and were greeted cheerfully and professionally by the hostess. Love that. A stingy and sparing host or hostess will make you WANT to dis her joint.
We had a drink while we waited for our friends, Hot Blond and Totally Charming Guy, to meet us. When they arrived I knew we were in for a treat because Emmett Fox, Asti’s ebullient chef and co-owner, appeared as if by magic to personally welcome Totally Charming Guy. Two weeks in Austin and I already I’m a person who knows a person who knows people. Love that too. We were directed to a power table at the center back of the restaurant, right in front of a handsome display of wines. Every table is a power table when someone takes the time to make you feel welcome.
Almost before we had a chance to open our menus, there was a delicate appetizer on the table before us: lightly toasted brioche daubed with chevre, dotted with tender baby artichokes, and sparingly sprinkled with a chiffonade of mint, cool as the other side of the pillow. I bit into one gratefully while I looked around the room.
Trattoria Asti, opened by Emmett Fox and his wife Lisa Fox in 2000, is a lively, popular, and yet calming space in Hyde Park. The interior is coolly and unostentatiously modernist, featuring clean lines and muted tones. I’ve noticed that Austin has a little bit of a modernism thing going, and a lot of good modernist architects too. Austin’s own M.J. Neal says, ” Restaurants themselves can have a real theatricality to them. They can become an event of sorts, a ritual people don’t even realize they are a part of.” Asti’s modernism is the kind that’s scaled for human use rather than awe. I appreciate that after San Francisco’s answer to the ubiquity of its own Victorians, what I call High End Modern For Some Kind of Robot.
Asti’s menu features fresh and creative takes on hearty Italian cooking, with entrees ranging in price from $8-$18. You’ll always find their signature housemade sausage, flavored olive oil, breadsticks, and focaccia on the menu. Gnocchi, polenta, risotto, and Osso Bucco are staples, tricked out according to the availability of local fresh produce. I was still just glancing over the repast when a perfectly crisp, tender pizza topped in oven-roasted crushed tomatoes and basil ($7.50) arrived at the table, and Emmett reappeared to talk about wines with us. We hadn’t even eaten and already I was basking in love and bliss.
The chef chose a rotund, approachable Sangiovese blend for us, and our server arrived to tell us about the nightly specials. Sometimes this point in the evening is like fumbling in the pocket of your ash-and-sackcloth garment for coins to pay the boatman to take you across the River Styx, or standing before that two-headed dog that guards the mouth of Hades: fraught and frozen. A harried server who stutters the memorized but poorly understood menu in a nervous monotone just makes you feel like weeping in sympathy. Luckily our server was not at all like that. When she told us the fish special, she explained the texture and density of the fish (cobia) after telling us it was served wrapped in prosciutto and fried sage. I didn’t know what cobia was, and bless her heart, I didn’t have to ask. Another server poured our wine while Hot Blond and Totally Charming told us all about Austin.
We’d ordered several things to share at the table: rigatoni in a marinara sauce redolent of long slow cooking with plenty of garlic and herbs ($13), Asti’s savory, dense housemade sausage nestled throughout; a mound of seafood and saffron risotto in a piquant tomato sauce colored so brightly and boldly yellow that it was joy made visible ($16.50); “white pizza” topped with three cheeses and a white truffle oil ($8.50). Italians say truffles smell like the feet of God. If I make it to heaven, I’m bringing truffle oil with me to see if it’s true. We also chose two great non-fussy salads that girls like Hot Blond and I love, with Bartlett pears and Gorgonzola ($5.50), or roasted baby beets with Caracara oranges ($8).
We ate with abandon and relish, we drank just this side of copiously, we laughed at everything. I watched other diners at comfortably full tables around me enjoying themselves as well, though maybe not quite as loudly as our table: a nearby foursome of hip (possible) lesbians wearing adorable eyeglasses, a distinguished gentleman that Hot Blond swore convincingly was Peter Jennings. Dear Darling kissed me on the nose, and I thought to myself, these are the moments of our real lives, when we are truly alive. Totally Charming told a story about traveling with a team of professional swimmers high on mushrooms, and Hot Blond pealed delicious laughter across the room. I realized I’d had to leave my great food city to reconnect to great food. I’m so glad to be in Austin.
Trattoria Asti is located at in Hyde Park, at 408 E 43rd Street, Austin, Texas. Open every day except Sunday, lunch and dinner every day except Saturday.
