The restaurant of the future:
You browse through the menu on an iPad, then place your order electronically and eat your meal (or attempt to, anyway) while swinging through the air. At Lucky Robot Japanese Kitchen, a laid-back café near downtown Austin, the future is the present. We went for Sunday brunch (really lunch for me), and I ordered their Yuzu Miso bowl with brown rice and a mimosa. As we waited for our food, we watched the server bring an interesting-looking appetizer to a nearby table.
The dish was an oxymoron in food form: Deep-Fried Brussels Sprouts. I got an order out of curiosity, and it ended up being my favorite thing on the table! (Sorry for the blurry photo. It’s hard to take a picture while you’re swinging!)
More highlights from the trip: Coconut Caramels – one of the many treasures I found at the Wheatsville Co-op.
New India Cuisine – An unassuming restaurant, but the food is fantastic. At Indian restaurants I always like to try a variety, so I ordered Malvani Coconut Curry, Saag, and Millionaire’s Curry. Matt got samosas and Chicken Tikka Masala, un-pictured for obvious reasons! (And yes, I accidentally used his real name in a post a few weeks ago. So I guess calling him S now would be really dumb. In retrospect, it was probably just dumb to use a nickname in the first place. I try to respect the privacy of my non-blogging friends, and I’d seen other bloggers give fake names to their boyfriends, husbands, children… but yeah, maybe it was not my best idea.)
Counter Culture – I ordered a lentil loaf and a side order of cashew cream macaroni and cheese. Although it wasn’t my favorite meal of the trip (the loaf was dry and macaroni a bit bland), it got better once I added a little salt and asked for extra ketchup. Their homemade ketchup was really good.
It was hot out, so we ate a lot of ice cream on the trip! Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl from Licks (which has both vegan and non-vegan ice cream), and Coconut soft-serve from Sweet Ritual (The owner is super nice… she even set out a tray of free samples for us). And the ice cream from Thrice Café, reviewed in my Vegan Austin Restaurants post… this was our hands-down favorite.
Ten Thousand Villages – A non-profit organization dedicated to fair trade. They sell intricate jewelry, accessories, home décor, and gifts skillfully crafted by artisans in third-world countries, and all of the profits go back to the village that made each product. Plus, when a store offers free chocolate samples, it instantly becomes my new favorite place to shop. Obviously I purchased one of the chocolate bars… You know, to help the cause. Any excuse to buy chocolate = win.
Link of the Day:
I’m glad you like Ten Thousand Villages too, it’s a great store! I love that they sell fair trade chocolate- and vegan to boot!
Wow, that sounds like a really cool restaurant but at the same time it makes me kind of sad thing will be done so electronically that we can’t even interact with others in a restaurant – well with the servers. It kind of makes me worried about kids being really socially awkward. If that makes any sense 😉
But, at the same time it’s really neat because I’ve never heard of a restaurant like that!
All the dishes look amazing!
And I’m dying over those Indian dishes. Yum.
When I saw the post title, I got really excited and thought that maybe YOU were opening a restaurant. Because that would be amazing.
Those 10,000 Villages chocolate bars are DIVINE. I wish they had a shop around here.
Swinging while waiting for food sounds so exciting. I like the ideal of an electronic menu I wonder will most restaurants start a trend like that… 🙂
Haha, I love how you think “deep-fried brussels sprouts” is an oxymoron in food form. I must say, deep frying brussels sprouts does sound kind of counter-intuitive to me, but I guess your experience just goes to show that you shouldn’t knock it ’til you try it! I’m jealous that you got coconut soft serve. That sounds awesome. I wish there were more frozen yogurt places whose dairy alternatives were healthier than soy. We have a lot of homemade ice cream places here in LA, and a lot of them have nutmilk-based ice cream, but pretty much all the frozen yogurt places use crappy ingredients!
So cool! I have to check this place out 🙂
That sounds like such a cool restaurant… with the swinging benches. I love the flavors of Indian food, it usually seems to be the perfect combination between being really flavorful and yet not too spicy.
awww.. that’s so sad in a way, I kinda like the server coming and interacting with the customer. Well, as long as there is no tip at the end, fine by me. 20% tip is ridiculous in my opinion.
Holy crap I live like 45 minutes away from Austin (which- as you know- is nothing in Texas time) so you just gave me a lot of places to check out when I can. I really need to go to that ice cream shop and I’m debating on the Lucky Robot Japanese Cafe.
(Why am I a teenager? Just one more year and I can actually do these things on my own.)
That ice cream sounds divine!!! I am in THE land of ice cream (Italy). I couldn’t be happier yet it’s not-so great for someone who is lactose intolerant (yet STILL eats it KNOWING it’ll make her feel awful!) Lol!