Two Texas restaurants are in the limelight. Voice (pictured, at the Hotel Icon in Houston, under chef Michael Kramer) and Dallas’s Mansion on Turtle Creek (under relatively new chef John Tesar) have both made Esquire magazine’s list of the best new restaurants in the country. Nationally known critic John Mariani obviously liked what he ate (check out his web site and sign up for his newsletter).  Watch for Esquire’s November issue on newsstands soon .

As far as I’m concerned, any day is the right day to eat out, but tomorrow–Wednesday, October 1–is especially right. Why? Because some of your dining dollars may help a food bank in your city. The gig is the Go Texan Restaurant Round-Up, a charitable event sponsored by the Texas Department of Agriculture. Being part of it couldn’t be easier. Just pick a participating restaurant from this list and go eat at it on October 1. That’s all. Really. Do it.  Now.

I love this idea: Go out to eat on Wednesday, Oct. 1, and be a do-gooder without even breaking a sweat. A whole slew of Texas restaurants are part of the first-ever statewide dine-out day next week. If you visit them on Oct. 1, you’ll be promoting Texas foods and wines; on top of that, many restaurants are donating part of their daily profits to Texas food banks. The event is the first-ever Go Texan Restaurant Round-Up, sponsored by the Texas Department of Agriculture. Participating restaurants will have special Texas menu items, a fixed-price Texas meal, a Texas food and wine pairing, or a Texas wine list. So go forth and eat (out). Pictured is Rebecca Rather, chef-owner of Rebecca’s Table in Fredericksburg. Click here for a statewide list of participating restaurants.

Foodies and amateur cooks alike may find one of the latest cookbooks to hit the shelves a perfect addition to their cookbook collection: Cooking with Les Dames d’Escoffier: At Home with the Women Who Shape the Way We Eat and Drink.  

Les Dames D’Escoffier, the exclusive organization of more than 1,300 women who are considered leaders in the dining and hospitality industries, have recently put together a hefty compilation of special recipe selections from Dames past and present (including Julia Child and Alice Waters), excellent wine pairings, and informative cooking tips.

Though the book has a somewhat inordinate amount of introductory prefaces—a foreword by Alice Waters (a queen of the sustainable food movement) and Jerry Anne De Vecchio, a preface on who Les Dames D’escoffier are, another preface on who August Escoffier was, acknowledgements, AND a formal introduction—once you get to the actual cookbook portion, you’ll find a fantastic repertoire of recipes and notes.

This comprehensive collection of everything from chilled cucumber buttermilk soup to veal and wild mushroom ragout will give beginner cooks some great challenges to experiment with. (Texans will enjoy the nod to Tex-Mex-style chiles rellenos) Desserts are also well covered—HELLO Peach Tree Country Kitchen bread pudding with Jack Daniels caramel!!!

Pros:

1)     The beginning of the book (after the myriad introductions) has a helpful intro to basic ingredients such as salt and olive oil. It gives excellent info on what types to use as well as when and how to use them.

2)     Each chapter opens with a list of dishes—all from Dames, of course. The best part of the chapter list is the right side of the page, where there is a separate listing of all of the great cooking tips you’ll find in that chapter such as: how to use a whole chicken carcass and how to choose the perfect artichoke.

3)     Most of the recipes have wine pairing blurbs as well as “make ahead” tips, giving readers an idea of how to time their food preparation.

Cons:

1)     There seem to be a lot of bios of the different contributing Dames and the writing can seem a bit self-indulgent with regards to the organization. Some of this gets in the way of the actual cooking part of the COOKbook.

2)     If a recipe has a main part as well as a sauce, or second portion of the dish, the ingredients are all listed together. For beginners, and those home cooks that thrive on organization, such as myself, it would have been more helpful to break out these ingredients by category with a list of ingredients for the main portion of the dish and a second list of ingredients for the sauce.

Overall the book is probably best for former or existing Dames or for those Foodies looking to capitalize on food tips and who can’t help themselves but read lists of ingredients when perusing recipes. The lack of photography makes this book not as approachable for beginning cooks. But the notes and tips on how to make your cooking skills better make this an advantageous addition to the cookbook collection. 

Bobby Mueller, the owner of Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor, is dead at the age of 69. His son Wayne Mueller, vows to carry on his dad’s tradition. Bobby–who was the son of Louie, who founded the sprawling barbecue restaurant in 1949–died in his sleep on Saturday morning. The death was unexpected, as Bobby had been in excellent health. In the obituary in the Austin American-Statesman, Wayne reported, his dad had been an avid runner until a few years ago. Although the barbecue joint was located in Central Texas, its fame is statewide, and ‘cue fanatics would drive miles to eat there. This magazine, in fact, had named it one of the state’s top five (or even top two) joints since the early 1970’s. No competitor even came close for beef ribs, notoriously hard to do right, and Louie Mueller’s brisket could be transcendent, as well. Thank you, Bobby, for the happiness you brought to ‘cue lovers around the state. Our sympathy to the Mueller family.

When I arrived at work today (the Tuesday after Labor Day), the first words out of editor Evan Smith’s mouth were, “Las Manitas is closed. They’ve hauling the furniture and fixtures out the back and there’s a big sign on the front door that says, Closed Forever.” Forget the Republican Convention. Forget Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy. Some things are just more important.

The beloved, controversial, unpredictable Austin Mexican restaurant that for 27 years has been a virtual boarding house for downtown workers, movers, and shakers closed its doors after Sunday brunch on August 31. Its loyal customers–count me one–had expected that there would be, oh, at least a month, or even several months, before it moved out of its old location into new digs nearby. But the shaky detente between the purchaser of the property (White Lodging Services Corp., parent company of Marriott hotels) and Las Manitas’s proprietors, Cynthia and Lidia Perez, came unglued at the end of last week for reasons that are–I’m just going to say they’re fuzzy, in order to avoid stepping in a bear trap.

In any case, Las Manitas is now outta there. The place is a sad sight. The tables and chairs are gone, so are the booths, but the artwork is still there. Employees were moving the kitchen work tables out when I went down to see what was happening around 11 a.m. Fortunately the gas and electricity and water was still on and some of the ladies were cooking refried beans and quesadillas on the stove, apparently for their own lunch. Ultimately, the plan is for Las Manitas to move down the block into the building that is presently La Pena gallery. The Perez sisters own the new place, but renovation hasn’t really begun. Also, given that the floor was entirely ripped out, right down to the bare earth, and that water from a faulty pipe or main was oozing all over the place, things didn’t look so good. Cynthia jokes that she’s going to be selling tacos under a tree soon.

Nobody expects it to come to that, but for now the home of the Paco’s Taco is, well, homeless.

By the most conservative estimate, my dear departed father ate at the Nighthawk, near the UT campus 18,237 times in his eighty years on this earth. That’s lunch every working day for 35 years (he was a journalism prof), followed by a snack in the middle of the afternoon. The waitresses would spot him coming a half-block away and have his apple pie and coffee waiting (he always sat at the counter). The Sharpes were a Nighthawk family, and I was semi-delirious when I moved to within three blocks of the Frisco Shop on Burnet Road in 1992 (the Frisco was the last gasp of the once-extensive Austin restaurant dynasty). Just like Daddy, I had Frisco burgers and “steakettes” there a lot–not every day, but a couple of times a month, along with all the other hoary regulars and the few computer nerds and impecunious tattooed types who thought the Shop’s tatty wallpaper and eccentric servers were cool. So when the Frisco closed down a couple of months ago, in preparation to moving to a new site up the street, all of us curmudgeonly Austinites grumbled, “It ain’t going to be the same.” How wrong I was. The Frisco is open again and it’s just like it was, only better. On opening night, you couldn’t even see the front door, the queue was so long. Inside, the line crept along (kind of like most of the customers, quite a few on walkers, cupping their hands behind their ears, shouting “What!!!???” to each other). Most of the former waitresses are still there, including the one with the starched blond bangs. The food is really just like it was–I had a steakette, and they overcooked it, just like always, and I had to send it back, just like always. (It was fine the second time around). This morning I went in for biscuits and gravy, which were great — just be sure you request a fresh biscuit, because they tried to pawn off an overdone one thinking I wouldn’t notice that it was half as hard as a rock underneath the gravy. Ha. The place is bigger, thank goodness, quite slick, actually, with dark paneling and a kind of vaulted ceiling and pendant lights that remind me of the old Nighthawk on South Congress. But it doesn’t feel too “done.” In fact, it feels like going home, and that’s a good thing.

To hell with Zagat. What you want is The Ultimate Food Lover’s Guide to Houston. A little larger than a pocket book but still handy (at 5″ x 8″), it is a smart, witty, 352-page guide to not only Houston restaurants but the area’s entire food scene. I especially like that it’s not a mash-up of quotes from everybody and their dog. Rather, it is an intelligent, critical guide to Houston restaurants in every price range (cheap to wretchedly excessive) and ethnic category (Bosnian cuisine, anyone?). It’s brand new (and very up to date) and it comes from the folks at My Table–which, if you didn’t know, is Houston’s indispensable local food mag. Flip through The Food Lover’s Guide and you’ll find (besides restaurants) listings for wine bars, farmers’ markets, coffeehouses, cooking classes, and regional pick-your-own venues, and that is only the beginning. The price is $17.95, plus tax and shipping. You can buy it retail locally and also from my-table.com or amazon.com.

No, it’s not as lucrative as the Pillsbury Bake-off, but it’s not as nerve-racking either. Enter the Driskill Hotel’s first annual Pie Bake-off and you could be the winner of a $500 gift certificate from the historic Austin hotel. Plus, your pie will be famous not just for fifteen minutes but a whole year, on the Driskill’s menu. Don’t dilly-dally; you need to enter by August 15. The contest is August 30 (and will be judged by a panel including yours truly). Read all about it here.

Beaver’s Ice House, in Houston, has gone blue with a vengeance. You know Beaver’s, right, it’s Monica Pope’s retro-mod barbecue joint. Seems that the girl has thrown political neutrality to the four winds and is having what she calls “Blue State Tuesdays” there every Tuesday evening from now until election day. (That’s brave, considering that Texas was a red state the last time I checked.) Beaver’s will sell Blue Agave Margs and Blue Moon Beer and happy hour snacks and will put blues on the sound system. Plus, she’s invited blogger Bill Large to be there, as kind of an emcee, I guess. It’s a chance for blue-minded people to get together. Check it out–Tuesdays from 5 to 7 at 2310 Decatur at Sawyer, just south of Washington Avenue. And, hey, if you hear of a comparable red state happy hour, I’ll give it equal time. I just thought this sounded fun.