Cafe Annie

Last Friday was my birthday, so Kimmy took me to lunch at Cafe Annie before we headed out to Austin. It's a nice place in the Galleria area where apparently a lot of old rich ladies like to lunch together. The food is a little bit southwestern influenced, I guess, but not like BobbyFlayBlueCornAnchoChile southwestern, thank goodness. The service was great, I think the kitchen may have been running a little slow because they brought out a complimentary crab salad amuse bouche (what's a food blog that doesn't have an amuse bouche mentioned, now we're for real). It was a crab salad served on a thick homeade tortilla chip with avocado and hot sauce.

I like (maybe love) wedge salads, and their iceberg salad was a nice version, the bleu cheese dressing was nice and tart, the tomatoes were juicy, and the bacon was thick. Kimmy's "small" caesar salad looked good too, but I didn't try it, I enjoyed my salad too much.

Kimmy ordered a grilled skirt steak with creamy avocado salsa and a little potato and cheese enchilada. The steak was really nicely cooked, and the "salsa" was really interesting, like a really creamy guacamole, no chunks, with something else in it to add some depth that I'm sure is pretty simple but I couldn't quite pick out, maybe just a lot of cilantro or parsley or something blended in. It's not something I would think to top a steak with, but that's why I don't have a restaurant, because it was really good. The red enchilada sauce was really good, and that's again not something I'd think to put with a steak like that, but it worked nicely as a side.

I had the grilled quail, which was topped with a green chile and pumpkin seed sauce, thick and nutty like a green chile romesco sauce. The quail was smoky from the wood fired grill and I really liked it. It came with pan fried white beans, which I was excited about trying when I looked at them on the menu, but they were a little too crunchy - not sure if that's what they were going for or if they undercooked them before pan frying, but I ate them all anyway, good flavor.


Sorry for the dark pictures, camera phone isn't perfect and I don't like flash pictures.