Location, Location, Location

Photo By John Anderson

Y Bar & Grill

Dinner: Sunday-Tuesday, 5-9pm; Wednesday-Thursday, 5-10pm; Friday-Saturday, 5-11pm

www.ybargrill.com

There's an age-old axiom in the real estate business that the three most important things are location, location, location, and it has been known to ring true in the restaurant business as well. For the past few years, one of the most common laments from homeowners in the fast-growing southwest area of Austin and Travis County has been the dearth of decent dining options. Accordingly, the news that longtime West Austin restaurateur Jean-Pierre Piaget would bring a casual fine dining spot to the Oak Hill area was greeted with great enthusiasm, and the November, 2001 opening generated plenty of buzz. The Y Bar & Grill has become a very popular restaurant.

Nestled on the banks of Williamson Creek, the striking stucco building is all sleek lines and innovative building materials. Once inside the tall, etched-glass front door, guests see stained and polished concrete floors, gleaming metal accents, and walls of windows overlooking both the lush creekside and the inviting patio with a gurgling tile fountain. Architecturally, the Y Bar & Grill is one of the city's most appealing restaurants. However, as attractive as all those sleek, hard surfaces are, they contribute to a problem that seriously detracts from the restaurant's overall appeal: the noise. Once the space is filled with staff and customers, background music and conversation, the scrape of a hundred heavy chairs on the concrete floors, the noise level is just this side of deafening.

We were assaulted by the noise issue on our first visit early one Friday evening. At 6:30pm, the dining rooms were rapidly filling, and the bar had been taken over by a raucous group celebrating someone's engagement. Our entire meal was dominated by the party noises; the high-pitched, hysterical laughter suggesting a need for psychiatric care made it impossible to have a conversation over dinner. It's difficult to imagine subjecting oneself to that level of noise on a regular basis, no matter how good the food might be. That brings us to the second problem we encountered at this obviously popular restaurant. We had one genuinely awful meal and another that was significantly better, leaving me with very mixed feelings overall. Chef Greg Dishman's fusion-influenced, bistro-style menu offers soups, salads, and appetizers in the $3.75-to-$10 range, and entrées ranging in price from $6.50 to $16 at lunch and $13.25 to $26 at dinner. The portions are generous for the most part, and the plates are all artfully arranged with sauces decorated in whimsical squirts and squiggles.

We began with appetizers, Thai Beef Skewers ($8.50) and Blue Cornmeal Crab Cakes ($8.50) With Cilantro-Lime Remoulade. The crab cakes arrived burned on both sides with a disappointing interior that was more filler than crabmeat and a remoulade with a definite sour edge. Once unthreaded from the skewers, the beef slices were so old and overmarinated they were the texture of sawdust and had the unmistakable flavor of meat that had spoiled. To his credit, our waiter noticed how quickly we pushed the beef plate aside and came to inquire if something was wrong. When we explained that the beef was bad, the plate disappeared immediately and was subtracted from our bill with no further comment.

While there's nothing like the taste of spoiled meat to put you off your feed, we had hopes that our entrée choices would turn the evening around. The Chile-Rubbed Ribeye ($20) With Blue Cheese Mashers, Tobacco Onions, and Asparagus is a bountiful platter of food, enticingly crowned with a tangle of thin, crisp onion rings. While the side dishes were all quite tasty, the steak itself was mostly fat and gristle, a disappointing, inferior piece of meat. My friend fared somewhat better with the Macadamia-Crusted Shrimp ($15.75) With Cilantro-Lime Pesto, Mango Ginger Butter, Stir-Fried Vegetables, and Pineapple Cucumber Relish. The fusion elements to all the condiments made for a busy plate, but the shrimp and pesto were very enjoyable. Unfortunately, our losing streak continued with the dessert portion of the meal. A trio of peach, plum, and raspberry sorbets ($5.25) had the texture of frozen confections that have been thawed and refrozen; the fruit juice and purée had separated from the viscous simple syrup. At this point we hypothesized that perhaps the problems with our meal were the result of a refrigeration breakdown or a power outage, looking for some reason to give this regularly packed restaurant the benefit of the doubt. Regardless of the cause, however, the fact remains that substandard food should never have made it to the table.

Working on the theory that a restaurant this busy couldn't possibly have such disasters on a regular basis, I returned to the Y Bar & Grill with two friends who've eaten there several times with greater success. We arrived one Sunday to find that the brunch menu had been discontinued and replaced with the weekday lunch offerings. The dining room was only about one-third full during our meal and the noise was fairly unobtrusive. On this outing, we opted for appetizers, salads, and fish entrées, and had a much more satisfying meal. The house salad ($3.75) is a mixture of crisp, cool baby greens topped with pickled red onions, tomato wedges, cucumbers, and croutons, lightly dressed with your choice of homemade dressings. For our appetizer, we chose one of the menu's vegetarian options, Polenta Wedges With Grilled Portobello Mushrooms ($9.75) Goat Cheese and Sun-Dried Tomato-Spinach Pesto. The "wedges" turned out to be an architectural stack of small, thin polenta pancakes layered with chunks of sautéed vegetables and surrounded by slices of meaty, grilled portobello in a pool of the hearty tomato pesto, garnished with two squiggles of goat cheese sauce. Shared between three friends, it whetted our appetites for the fish entrées to come.

This time out, the crab cakes were cooked properly and the remoulade tasted fresh, although I would still have preferred more crabmeat in the filling. The Pan Seared Idaho Trout ($9.75) in Lemon Herb Butter Sauce was a delicious fillet, perfectly sautéed and draped across a flavorful portion of wheat berry and rice pilaf with fresh asparagus spears. The Tostada Crusted Catfish ($8.50) also proved to be a good choice. The crisp coating encased a sweet, flaky catfish fillet with a roasted corn and poblano tartar sauce and avocado pico de gallo that were the best condiments in the chef's fusion repertoire. We topped off our lunch with a Bourbon Pecan Tartlet ($5.75), a crumb-crusted tart filled with pecan halves and a dark chocolate ganache garnished with sweetened whipped cream and fresh berries. It was more than enough to share and the rich truffle-like filling would satisfy any chocoholic's cravings.

A great location and eye-catching architecture can only take a restaurant so far. At some point, the proof has to be on the plate. For the Y Bar & Grill, a menu and kitchen focused more on food quality rather than a mishmash of trendy, fussy fusion elements would be a good place to start. If I were to return there, I think perhaps I'd give dining on the patio a shot and remember to order fish.