ate.cafe

Last night, our Maya spent the night at Addie's house (thanks James and Laura!).  We took the opportunity to go out to dinner and a movie.  There's a place in Lakeway called ate.cafe we'd been intending to try, and we had a coupon that expired next week. So we tried it out.  The idea is fabulous.  It's a no frills but pleasant and comfortable tapas restaurant... small menu of sharable plates with a mostly Spanish flair.  They also had some salads and sandwiches on the menu.  They had a small indoor seating area, and a lovely outdoor shaded patio (where we sat).  Tim ordered a class of wine, I ordered a Strongbow, which I don't often find.  So it started off great.  We decided to order some tapas to share.  We had Bacon wrapped dates (Tim had them, he said they were good), the Tortilla (Spanish style, so potatoes and eggs), meatballs (a combo of veal, beef, pork) and shrimp in garlic sauce.  The shrimp were good.  Both the tortilla and the meatballs were, well, fine.  They were just quite underwhelming.  And the meatballs were even served partially cold.  Not, oh, they could have served these quicker so they would have been hotter, but actually cold, as in these have been in the refrigerator and didn't get heated all the way up.  They did have EXCELLENT bread, and Tim had the pecan tart for dessert, which he also reported to be great.  Overall, it was really underwhelming, and not worth the trek to Lakeway. The place, however, is actually surprisingly kid-friendly.  There weren't any kids there, but the outdoor patio would have been great for Maya, and she would have been fine eating tortilla, meatballs, and shrimp.  And dessert.