Sifting Through Austin

Today we went to the Keep Austin Spicy Festival at Fiesta Gardens. There was a pretty good turn out for a first time festival. It was much smaller in scale than some of the other events I’ve seen hosted at Fiesta Gardens. For instance the Austin Celtic Festival takes up the whole park and is much larger, with more vendors and activities. It has been around for awhile and it could have something to do with them serving up copious amounts of Irish beer.

There was a great variety of Asian inspired entertainment. Plenty of singing, dancing and demonstrations. Also a good showing of local Asian food and drink (no alcohol) vendors.

We tried some Indonesian peanut noodles from the Jade Leaves Tea House stall. They have a full service tea house on Guadalupe that serves over 90 varieties and features all sorts of organic and handcrafted teas. There is a “tea-guru” (I don’t think I could spell his name) that hosts demonstrations and tastings on Mondays and Saturdays. He is well versed in the art of brewing and serving tea. We sat down with him outside their booth – tried some green tea and learned a lot during our brief chat about steeping vessels, times and tea tradition.

We had some other satisfying treats. Boba (aka bubble) teas are one of my new favorites. They are flavored teas with tapioca balls or pearls that are poured into the bottom of the drink. They use a large straw so that you can suck up the pearls as you sip the drink. It is an interesting texture to get used to at first, but it quickly grows on you.

Some boba tea vendors seal the cup with a thin film of plastic. I think that is traditional. It works well to shake up your drink. This is the machine that does it. We got ours from the Short and Sweet Cafe.

This is the end result – a Thai tea and sweet almond tea.

There was one stage that all the entertainment took place on and each act ran about 15 or 30 minutes.

The Austin Chinese Chanson Choir on deck.

Some Bollywood style dancing. They were very good!

One of the best parts of the day was soaking up some rays and watchin all the festivities around us. The day was very windy but beautiful otherwise. There was not a cloud in the sky.

If they do this again next year, and we hope that they do, I would predict a larger turn-out and it growing in scale.

On the walk back to the car we decided we were going to stop by Thai Fresh to pick up some Zhi Tea. We went into the store a few weeks back just to look around and explore a bit and picked up some Zhi samples. We were surprised to learn that they are an Austin based company. They have a warehouse and gallery in East Austin that you can visit to purchase their items and other tea related wares. The tea is pricey but very good. My favorite flavor is the Turkish Spice Mint.

I guess we didn’t have enough “spice” at the festival because when we got to Thai Fresh we decided to order some food (our first time). They have a refrigerated deli case and you can either order by the pound and take it with you or they will heat up a plate for you to eat there. We got the 3 item plate – Pad Prik King (spicy green beans and tofu), The Chef’s Special (chicken and rice with cilantro and an awesome lime and pepper sauce) and the yellow curry with chicken, potatoes and carrots. I love Thai food and this place serves up some great stuff. The seasonings were spot-on and had a definite kick. More on this to come… I’ll review in full in a later post but to sum it up – Awesome!

Off to the Zilker Garden Festival tomorrow morning. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!