New Summer Menu At TRACE At The W Austin

July 18th, 2012

TRACE at the W Austin has a new summer menu from new Chef De Cuisine Ben Hightower. Chef Hightower, originally from Louisiana, brings his bayou-style flavor in unique ways throughout the menu.

Heirloom Tomato Salad at TRACE at the W Austin

Heirloom Tomato Salad (Photo Credit: Leslie Silver)

My personal favorite dish was a great take on the chef’s Southern roots, the dirty rice stuffed Texas quail. The quail was perfect but the rice really gave it an extra kick of flavor and it was the perfect size appetizer for splitting with a friend or two. I also started with the blue crab hush puppies with a creole remoulade. They had a nice taste and were a fun group up elegant version of a hush puppy.

For a lighter starter, the heirloom tomato salad was perfect. It was served with bosque blue cheese and I’m not usually the biggest blue cheese fan, but I loved this mild version of the cheese. Each bite with the extremely fresh tomatoes was delightful.

Trace club (Photo Credit: Leslie Silver)

The new Trace Club is a great lunch sandwich dish made with chicken sausage, maple bacon and avocado. It was very tasty, but I was pretty fully from all of the appetizers (and wanted to save room for dessert) so I brought most of it home. I thought the club was almost better the next day, served cold from the fridge. The chicken sausage had so much flavor the next day with the amazing house mayonnaise.

Then, to finish our meal, were drunken donuts served with vodka whip cream, bourbon dulce de leche and tequila chili fudge sauce. I also tried the new ice cream flavors and just loved the cheerios with berry swirl. It wasn’t too rich, and the warm donut was the perfect last bite of a great meal!