Dining Out Sustainably: Wink Restaurant

Wink Restaurant, located at 10th & Lamar, is one of the flagship restaurants for sustainable dining in Austin.  Since its inception, it has focused on working with locally-sourced ingredients whenever possible and has built relationships with a wide variety of farms across Central Texas.  The list of local purveyors at the bottom of the menu reads like a Who's Who of Central Texas farms.

Wink's goal is to bring out the best in those local ingredients in an innovative way.  The menu changes daily, guaranteeing that each dish offers the best of what was available that day.

Recently, a few friends and I met up for a casual dinner in the Wine Bar to put the gift certificate I was given over the holidays a good workout.  If you haven't planned ahead, the Wine Bar is an easy alternative to the dining room, which is often booked on the weekends.

We started off the evening with a few items from the Bar Apps menu - Mac N' Cheese with Black Truffles and Chicken Liver Pate.  The Mac N' Cheese was some of the best I have ever tasted, creamy and luscious with the black truffles shaved on top giving it an even deeper flavor.  The Chicken Liver Pate was smooth and lovely with a rich, but not livery, flavor.

For dinner, we split the Seared Foie Gras, Gulf Pompano and the Bison NY Strip.  Before you start drafting a protest e-mail, the Foie Gras is from birds from Countryside Farm and is raised naturally and humanely.  And, it was delicious - literally melting in your mouth with its richness.


The Pompano had a delightful grain butter mustard sauce on top and was complimented nicely by the potatoes and celery.  The Bison NY Strip, from Thunderheart Bison, was fantastic - perfectly cooked at medium rare, tender and packed with flavor.

After dinner we compared notes and found it difficult to pick a favorite dish.  Wink offered too many tantalizing goodies to narrow it down to just one.

I encourage you to tempt your taste buds at Wink.  It's worth the splurge and you can feel good about every delicious, locally-sourced bite.