Food-o-File

This is turning out to be a tough year for the local vegetarian-restaurant community. First, Mother's Cafe & Garden (4215 Duval St., 451-3994) was hit by a serious fire that's kept them closed for months. Then in May, Dallas restaurateur Praveen Sachdev decided to give up his Austin experiment and closed the local Cosmic Cafe (1101 West Lynn) outlet. At about the same time, Nu Age Cafe (Windsor & Exposition) owner Greg Ying suffered a debilitating heart attack, and his wife, chef Ethel Liu, had to close their popular eatery. Vegetarian and vegan readers have called and written to express their dismay over the loss of such a wealth of variety in dining choices. There is some good news, however. Mother's co-owner Cameron Alexander reports that he and his partners have finally finished negotiations with insurance companies and are moving forward, interviewing contractors and meeting with the city about permits and regulations. He's cautiously optimistic that Mother's can rise from the ashes by the end of summer!… Long before there was a Food Network, PBS could be counted on for enlightening food programming, and that's still true today. Two out of four of their most recent culinary offerings will feature an Austin connection. The new season of Chef's A' Field will showcase chefs from across the country taking their kids along on expeditions to ranches, farms, rivers, oceans, and forests to see where our food really comes from. The series includes a segment where Austin-based chef David Bull and his sons visit Hill Country rancher Chris Hughes at Broken Arrow Ranch near Ingram, Texas, for a tour of the wild-game spread, followed by the chef preparing venison recipes. KLRU will premiere the show in its 12:30pm time slot on Tuesday, June 5. Also, Dave Eckert, popular host of Culinary Travels With Dave Eckert, will be filming a segment of his show here in Austin in the coming week, but all we know for sure about his itinerary is that he'll be filming at Eastside Cafe (2113 Manor Rd., 476-5858) on June 4 and attend one of their sold-out gardening classes the next evening. No airdate on that piece yet, but we'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, the production company that made Inside the Actors Studio such a hit on Bravo is now giving chefs much the same treatment. Check out Chef's Story on KLRU on Saturday evenings at 8:30pm for interviews with such respected culinary stars as Lidia Bastianich, Anthony Bourdain, Jacques Pépin, Suzanne Goin, and more. And if you missed the Masterpiece Theatre presentation of the biopic of Victorian-era cookbook author Isabella Beeton titled The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton, keep an eye out for it in reruns over the coming year. It was very interesting: Seems she was a well-educated young woman with no cooking skills who lifted all the recipes in her books from other sources!