NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 15:28:39 EDT Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 14:28:35 -0600 Xref: alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu austin.food:3768 We lunched today at Mirabelle, the new restaurant from the team that created Castle Hill. Mirabelle is located at 8127 Mesa, in the location of the gone but not forgotten Pancake House. It's just north of Little Italy. The lunch menu was heavy on salads, but offered a few interesting entrees. My pork dish was essentially BBQ pork on homemade bread, and was a bit unspiced for my taste. My companion's chicken salad was quite good, according to her. The cuisine is essentially upscale comfort food, with interesting twists on the ingredients, as would be expected from the Castle Hill family. Lunch runs from $6 to $10, about right for this type of food. It will be interesting to see how this restaurant does; at 12:30, it was only at about 40% of capacity.
Austin, TX
First Look: Mirabelle
Albert N. wrote: >We lunched today at Mirabelle, the new restaurant from the team >that created Castle Hill. I've tried it, too. Was thrilled to find that they "carried over" the gumbo from Castle Hill. In fact, I found it even better than Castle Hill's as it was filled with tons of meat -- no skimping. On the advice of a waitress/hostess/?, I tried their version of the club-sandwich. We actually chatted about it and I asked for a comparison with Houstons' club-sand. Was given the spiel that their's was soooo much better. I didn't think so. Houston's still is the best (IMHO) in town, though Houstons did just recently remove it for some peculiar reason from their menu. Fortunately, one can still order it. >It will be interesting to see how this restaurant does; at 12:30, >it was only at about 40% of capacity. I very much hope for their success. It's nice not having to travel downtown.
NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Jan 1999 00:13:00 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #2 (NOV) Xref: pale-rider.INS.CWRU.Edu austin.food:3776 Albert N. wrote: > We lunched today at Mirabelle, the new restaurant from the team > that created Castle Hill. Our waitress told us that "one of the owners of Castle Hill Cafe is an owner [or did she say "*the* owner?" I don't remember] of Mirabelle." Lance H. wrote: > I've tried it, too. Was thrilled to find that they "carried over" > the gumbo from Castle Hill. The salad dressings are extremely similar also: sesame ginger and vinaigrette w/ feta cheese (except this one is really vinaigrette with feta cheese crumbled on top, not mixed in, which I liked better). The place certainly did evoke images of the Castle Hill Cafe: from its decor (a Southwest kind of motif; tables separated by low partitions; etc.), to its waitstaff (maybe it's me, but I found them of about the same level of eccentricity as those at Castle Hill Cafe; not a bad thing, though), to the aforementioned salad dressing, to the way they list *almost* every ingredient for each dish on the menu! ("...and a pinch of salt and pepper." |-) The menu, so far, seems a lot more Southwest + TexMex than Castle Hill Cafe, where are hints of the Orient and the Caribbean and Europe in their "melting pot" menu. I hope they stay that way and not grow more similar, because though I like Mirabelle so far, I would hate to not have an excuse to frequent Castle Hill Cafe anymore. I had been to Mirabelle once for lunch. I liked the "Pork Adobo" that I had.