Food-o-File
Virginia B. Wood demands the restoration of the Schlotzsky's Original.
By Virginia B. Wood, Fri., Sept. 5, 2003
News Shorts
In the off-with-her-head department, I'd like to apologize sincerely for renaming a local pastry chef in a recent mention about his August pie-and-cake sale. The executive pastry chef at the Driskill Hotel is Jimmy McMillan. Sample his elegant plated desserts at the Driskill Grill and his full line of pies, cakes, and pastries at the 1886 Bakery & Cafe... By press time, the new casual fine-dining restaurant in the old Basil's space will be open to the public. Cafe Caprice (900 W. 10th, 477-5576), under the direction of Paul and Joni Constantine, serves dinner six nights a week... This Monday, Sept. 8, marks the annual celebration of Dining for Life. Check out the ad on p.37 to see which of your favorite local restaurants will be donating a portion of their daily profits to benefit AIDS Services of Austin, and then make your dining-out plans accordingly.
Concept 2005
During the summer, the Food staff was invited to the Schlotzsky's flagship restaurant and franchise training center on South Lamar for an extensive menu tasting. We ate and ate, and then ate some more, and were very impressed with nearly everything we tried (more on that later). The new menu offerings include hot panini on La Brea Bakery breads, cold sandwiches, flavorful salads, hearty soups, stuffed baked potatoes, wraps, thin-crust pizzas, cookies, and dessert items. The new menu items are part of Schlotzsky's Concept 2005: a "concept design and menu roadmap" for a new tier of upscale stores. The prototype of the Concept 2005 store is the Schlotzsky's Bakery & Cafe at Parmer Lane and I-35 in the Tech Ridge Shopping Center. The new restaurant, under the direction of GM Johnny Golden and bakery manager Lorena Legaretta, features a snazzy design with bold colors and a very comfortable interior décor. The new menu is in place, there is a full-service bakery case stocked with a dazzling array of sweets, and the drive-through lane is operational. Inside, there's an eight-computer kiosk for guests who'd like to check their e-mail or surf the net, as well as arm chairs for those who want to plug their laptops into the free WiFi Internet connection. Definitely the restaurant of the future.
While the full line of Concept 2005 menu items is only currently available at the South Lamar and Parmer Lane outlets, look for some of them to be incorporated into the offerings at your favorite neighborhood Schlotzsky's during the next year or so. The new bells and whistles at the Parmer Lane store are very impressive, and it's great to see that Schlotzsky's has finally hired someone to whip the pastry cases back into good shape. However, I have to say that I still pine for the original chewy sourdough bread on the Original sandwich. Sandwich lovers who patronized the first (independent) Schlotzsky's sandwich shop on South Congress Avenue have not been fooled by the small, limp imitation of the Original that the corporate guys have been serving for so many years now. The sandwich has gotten progressively smaller over the years, and, for a while, the filling all but disappeared. The filling is more substantial these days, and we were promised that the dark days of testing soft, spongy bread are now over, and the chewy sourdough buns will soon return. Here's what I've got to say to Schlotzsky's CEO John Wooley: Restore the Original. The empire was built on it, and all of the salads, wraps, and WiFi connections in the world can't replace it. To quote fabled UT football coach Darrell Royal, it's a good idea to "dance with who brung you."
