May 4, 2017

Toulouse – Austin, TX

This is a review of Toulouse Austin in the Domain. Our visit was also only a few weeks after opening so I’m sure things will smooth out a bit over the next few weeks. With that being said, the only real bumps in our dining experience were primarily with inconsistency and quality coming out of the bar. The rest of our experience, from service to food, was fairly good.

Overall, I was happy with the quality of the food. We started with drinks, which were a challenge for the bar it seemed. The first drink, French 77, was not prepared well – it didn’t taste anything like a French 77 should, and whatever champagne they used made it taste more like beer than a cocktail. We sent the drink back and ordered a house special raspberry cocktail. The first was great! The second, same drink, tasted nothing like the first, and not in a good way. Not wanting to send back another drink since the bar looked like it was in the weeds, we forced it down with some mussels.

For the first course, we had the charcuterie board. It was huge with such a wide selection of meats. It was a bit heavy on the terrines and pate but overall very good. The second course we ordered was my all time favorite preparation of mussels – Les moules marinières! They were delicious, soft, and flavorful. They had been cleaned and prepped well before cooking in the classic, but delicious, wine-shallot-butter sauce. We finished every last one and used an extra mini-loaf or two of bread to sop up the broth.

For our main course, we ordered the Dover sole meuniere with homemade gnocchi. I’ll start with the good – the gnocchi was amazing. They texture and smoky flavor of the grilled gnocchi in the cream sauce and wild mushrooms – wow! However, the Dover sole was a bit disappointing. Everything was seasoned and prepared just right. It was just way overdone. The manager came out to present the whole fish before filleting and serving, but that entire process took much longer than designed. The person doing the filleting was new and butchered the filet (please don’t train on your customers, train in the kitchen). I felt bad for this sole – he was destined for such tender greatness but fell to the dry and tough despair of bad execution.

Our dessert course lifted our souls though – a warm beignet, probably as good as you can find this side of Cafe Du Monde. Nothing more to be said about them.

I blame all of the missteps of this visit on being new, and I probably should have waited a few months before trying, but I love French cafes so I had to try. I will revisit them in a month or two and hope for better.