Sweetmonger and I celebrated my birthday (a few days early) on Saturday at Jasper's in The Domain. Jasper's is a place I have wanted to eat at for a while. A few months ago, I was lazying around on the couch one weeknight and saw an Iron Chef America rerun with Kent Rathbun battling Bobby Flay. Then, the very next night I caught a Bon Appetite TV special naming Jasper's barbecued ribs as the country's second best. Even though Jasper's is a mini-chain in Texas (3 locations and a fourth opening soon), this TV publicity (I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff) made Jasper's a must go and we finally made it up there this past weekend.
The menu is enticing (for the most part) and certainly conforms to the restaurant's tag line: Gourmet Backyard Cuisine. The only turn off is the inclusion of 5 or 6 "fine steaks" which range in price from $32 - $67. Expensive steaks are one of those things that rarely meet expectations and I prefer to just stay away from them. And at a restaurant like this where they appear to be nothing more than an afterthought and are certainly not consistent with the restaurant's theme, I would prefer they just be left off the menu.
That being said, Sweetmonger and I enjoyed out meal. We started off with prosciutto wrapped shrimp and grits. It's hard not to like this dish. Fat, juicy grilled shrimp wrapped in salty prosciutto served over top of creamy grits and blue corn chips. Really good.
Next, we split a grilled asparagus, tomato, red onion and blue cheese salad. The presentation was nothing to write home about but the tomatoes and asparagus had a lot of flavor and the blue cheese was definitely a compliment instead of being the unintended, overpowering centerpiece that it so often is. Well-done.
We also decided to share two main courses. First we opted, obviously, for the ribs. Are these the the second best ribs in America or even the best in Austin? Who the hell knows? But I will let the pictures do the talking.
Before:
After:
These ribs are excellent. They have a crispy, outer texture. The barbecue sauce is spicy and deeply flavored. And the meat is smokey, fall-off the bone tender and super moist. I could eat them again and again. Sweetmonger, who usually doesn't particularly like ribs, was in love with these. Additionally, they came with a pretty tasty "creamy baked potato salad," which can best be described as Jasper's take on cheese fries.
Unfortunately, our other main course was an unmitigated disaster. It was some type of firm white fish along with grilled shrimp served with fingerling potatoes and some type of hideous green brie cream sauce. This was just terrible. The seasoning on the fish was ridiculously sporadic. Some bites had absolutely no flavor while others were unbelievably over-salted. Further complicating this mess was that the sauce was not only hideously ugly but also tasted like nothing. It was completely useless. A third of the fish went uneaten. The only thing it was good for was dipping the shrimp in the side of extra sauce that came with the ribs.
For dessert we went with a simple chocolate cake. The cake itself was good but a little dry. However, dipping the cake into the side container of what can best be described as melting vanilla ice cream turned an otherwise okay dessert into something very enjoyable. It was much like a hot-fudge brownie.
Jasper's is good, and we would definitely go back for the ribs at some point but as good as they were there are plenty of other rib places that we must try first. Ultimately, 4 of the 5 dishes were good enough to warrant a 3 cutting board rating; however, the horrific entree cannot be overlooked.
Jasper's at The Domain
www.kentrathbun.com/jaspers/austin
11506 Century Oaks Terrace
Austin, TX 78758
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