Intero Chefs Up a Bonding Experience: The Eastside Italian eatery allows much time to dine – Food
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It’s good that Intero’s pizza program – Pizza a Parte, a continuous expansion of their savvy to-go pandemic pivot – it’s a good thing that isn’t the restaurant’s only focus. For other pizza bakers in town, that’s a good thing anyway – because Intero’s pizzas are * a kiss * … and nobody needs such fierce competition.
A breathtaking array that whispers to your palate: “Live and let pie.”
The beef confit pizza with braised vegetables, onion agrodolce and gorgonzola. The vegetarian corn cacio. The Kennebec potato pizza. The –
But no, although you can order these pizzas for your meal – note the photo evidence above – the Italian restaurant at East Cesar Chavez, run by Chef Ian Thurwachter and pastry chef Krystal Kraig, is about fine dining in general. We generally mean really good food, from the moment you step out on the street and step into the elegantly decorated venue, from the moment you first notice the ornate chocolate truffles in the host station’s shop windows, and –
Oh yes: these truffles. Good God, those truffles. That’s because Chef Kraig is a staunch chocolatier, and when she’s not making the other confectionery marvels that complete a meal at Intero, she does things with cocoa beans that people line up for in advance. And –
Where were we? Ah, right: sit on the comfortable seats of the spacious and yet somehow intimate interior of Intero, look at the tasteful art on the walls, sip a glass of bubbly water and await the starters of the nightly gastronomic journey. To be served by people who not only know what they are doing but also care how well they are doing it: make sure your dining experience is as enjoyable as possible.
But that’s the thing: Waitstaff, no matter how skillful, can only ever contribute to a good culinary experience. The heavier lifting is done by the cook and the crew in the kitchen. Because, as they say, the proof lies in the pudding. Or, as with Intero, in the freshly made pasta, the luxurious sauces, the perfectly prepared cuts of meat from the region, the vegetables that were recently harvested from a nearby garden, and –
Ian Thurwachter. Kristal Kraig. Those names, right? And they are married too, these cooks. Like a couple from Ian Fleming, even though they are both Austinites. Like a couple from a James Bond movie that happens to be shot in a great Italian restaurant on Austin’s Eastside.
Tell you what, if this high-living 007 spy ever had a plate of Thurwachter’s smoked lamb fillet on risotto with pickled corn, green chilies, and roasted garlic, he’d love to trade his license for anything just to have another plate of that meal all over again in his lifetime. If Miss Moneypenny took more than two bites of the braised Wagyu kulotella with ricotta dumplings and pumpkin-with-brown butter, she would likely betray her long-time spy crush to SPECTER if they promised her a few more bites of it.
And what does Ernst Stavro Blofeld eat that shows that he is both brilliant and not entirely evil? Suppose he eats Kraig’s peanut butter honey chocolate truffle is what he eats and his eyes roll back with the delight of taste.
But now, at this point in the article, your reporter’s wife insists that he mention the bread. Anyway, the starters, this is the bread course, WTF? That’s because she – Katherine – had some of Intero’s bread with her homemade ricotta cheese as a starter. And Katherine loves cheese, and the ricotta was excellent, but she barely noticed the stuff: the bread required a lot more attention. It was perfectly crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside and the taste overwhelmed her taste buds. She couldn’t – and can’t – stop talking about this bread.
“Yes, we make the bread in the house every day,” the friendly waiter informed us as he put down a bowl of roasted peppers that had to knock my own palate away after a single bite.
It’s almost ridiculous, isn’t it, how much delicacy a skilled kitchen can elicit from the cultivated abundance of nature?
So, citizens. Ever wanted to eat in a place that your body’s nutritional pleasure centers would welcome as great, good friends? Do you mind – or do you prefer? – that it is one of so many other great options in the culinary destination of East Cesar Chavez?
Well then. Allow me to do this … intero-duction.
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