Wink Restaurant, Austin TX

This post is long overdue. For MikeDub's birthday, all he wanted was to go dutch on a fancy pants dinner at Wink restaurant. I lament that I do not have pictures of our gorgeous dinner to share; however, that night was about us enjoying a birthday dinner and not getting that picture perfect photo of the food.

http://winkrestaurant.com/

Wink is pretty awesome. They've got the self-professed slow food thing going on, and it makes for a great special night out. All of the carnivore's delights come in the form of  happy meat from farmers markets, and they boasted having their sea scallops overnighted FedEx.

The dining room is tiny, and there is an unattached wine bar across the way in this tiny strip mall, located at 12th and Lamar just behind Whole Earth Provision Co. The bar has a separate bar menu (although you can get anything from the dinner menu out there as well), and the extra tall mini burgers they carried out from the kitchen for the bar looked absolutely delightful. We did not go into the wine bar; we decided to save the experience for another evening.

Perhaps this could be a quest for Kapes and her wine blogging cohort, although happy hour will be required to make that a reasonably priced experience.

Well, let's get to it: our meal and the prices.

MikeDub and I split a tasty bleu cheese laden salad, and then moved on to my personal favorite food: sea scallops. They were the jumbo sea scallops, which I'm pretty particular about. I can't say that they were the best I've ever had, but I am from New England where they don't even have to be FedEx-ed in... Oh, but they were served atop a bed of these long mushrooms with tiny tops (forgive me, I waited too long to blog this and can't remember the name) and truffle. I had never eaten truffle before, but knew what it was immediately upon tasting it. Fabulous combo, although I wasn't quite on board with the "doneness" of the jumbo scallop.

For dinner, I had the lamb shank. It was the texture of brisket and was falling apart—almost difficult to keep on the fork! It was some of the best lamb I ever tasted. MikeDub had the antelope, which they prepared so well I could hardly detect any gaminess at all.

It was MikeDub's birthday, so we did desert. If you can even call it that. The Chocolate Soup was a meal in itself. Creamy chocolate soupiness with soft spongy "cookies," if you will, laid in the liquid. It was a little too sweet and I am not that much of a dessert person, but MikeDub really seemed to enjoy the decadence...

With four glasses of wine and a nice service discount they gave to MikeDub, dinner rolled in at a smooth $120, and was nearly paid for by a bill left by Mom and Dad :) Not for everyday dining on my budget, but prime for a special night.