Recipe: The Bitter End's Chocolate Terrine

Sam Dickey was a baker at the Bitter End with me. He was a big guy who stood about 6 feet, 3 inches, with a solid linebacker's build. I will never forget the sight of him sprinting full speed down the hallway toward the kitchen at 4:30am inside the restaurant. The bottles of Pellegrino he held in his hands were spraying the walls as he attempted to escape an invisible assailant. I laughed because I had done that same sprint myself.

As bakers, we would arrive after the dinner crew had left and bake bread alone in a dark, supposedly haunted restaurant. The Pellegrinos, the baker's drink of choice, were stored in the bar fridge by the B-Side bar. It was probably the farthest spot you could be from the safety of the well-lit kitchen, as well as where most of the creepy incidents occurred. The second you grabbed the bottle from the bar fridge and turned your back on the bar, the hair on your neck would tingle. It was like being a 5-year-old scared of the monsters living under the bed. As an adult, I would try to convince myself to be more mature. Ghosts weren't real and, if they were, they couldn't hurt you. But by the time I was at that hallway, I was the one sprinting, praying, and spraying the Pellegrino.

Servers who worked there recount many strange tales after midnight, once the customers were gone and the lights were turned off. Bartenders would stack the barstools only to return minutes later to find them moved to a different spot. A manager taking a nap in the office directly above the haunted bar area was awakened by a floating apparition and was paralyzed, unable to move, until the ghostly figure had passed over him. A cocktail server finished wiping the tables at close and went to the bar to finish her cocktail with the bartender. They were the only two people in the building. As she began to leave a bit later, she noticed every freshly wiped-down table had a stack of coins on them. During a lunch shift, a 2-by-2-foot column of rain poured down the bar in an area where there was no existing plumbing on a sunny afternoon. Jeanine Plumer, who hosts the Austin Ghost Tours, started her tour at that same bar when the Bitter End was still open. She claims eyewitnesses to the event said the ceiling above the storm was completely dry and a light mist floated just below it.

Jeanine theorized that the large amount of spiritual activity in the area around the Bitter End and the Spaghetti Warehouse was because it had been the northern border of Guytown. Austin's nefarious red light district existed post-Civil War until 1913 and stretched from the river up to Fifth Street. It was home to many illicit activities, including drinking, gambling, and prostitution. Not unlike today, those activities tended to lean toward violence.

Probably the best ghost story came from bartender Rob Davis, who encountered an 8-year-old girl with shoulder-length brown hair on a Friday night after close. She was by herself and dressed in a fancy white, frilly dress. He walked around the front of the bar to check on her, but she had vanished by the time he got to the other side.

Chocolate Terrine

1 pound bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 pound butter
1 cup coffee
1 cup sugar
8 egg yolks
1 cup roasted pecans (optional)

• Preheat the oven to 300 F.

• Place chopped chocolate in a large bowl and set aside.

• In a saucepan, heat butter, coffee, and sugar until sugar is dissolved.

• Pour the coffee mixture over the chocolate and whisk together until the chocolate is melted.

• Add egg yolks one at a time.

• Place in a terrine pan (a loaf pan works too) and cool in a water bath. If you're using the pecans, add them to the bottom of the terrine before pouring in the chocolate mixture.

• Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

• Let sit overnight in the refrigerator. Cut with a hot, clean knife and serve.