JUST LIKE HOME
Wheatberry’s Gourmet Market and Catering
2422 RR 620 S. #114, Lakeway, 512/263-7188
Monday-Saturday, 10am-8pm; Sunday, 11am-5pm
Jennifer Allen came to Austin five years ago from a catering career in Toronto. When she arrived, the first thing she did was set up a personal chef service, preparing her specialties in people’s homes and leaving the food in ready-to-heat containers. When business grew to the point she could no longer keep up with the schedule, she created the Wheatberry’s Gourmet Market concept.
Wheatberry’s is not a fresh market. Instead, it is Jennifer’s way of letting more people in on what she does. “This is just an extension of what I’ve been doing in people’s homes,” she explains. “But I’ve added some things. We now offer catering, and for the personal chef service, they now come here and pick it up. But the big change is we’re now offering gourmet-to-go.” The opportunity here is for folks who don’t feel like cooking very often but also don’t feel like sacrificing their health to a nightly diet of fast food or takeout. A quick stop at Wheatberry’s and you can pick up dinner for a single person or a family, and for an evening or for a week’s worth of meals.
The shop is just outside of Lakeway in a strip shopping center. It is small, with a fresh counter directly in front, holding about six or seven salads. To the left is a large freezer with about 50 items ready to go into your oven or microwave. Conspicuously absent are any Tex-Mex dishes. Instead, creative-sounding labels like Sweet Potato, Cauliflower and Roasted Garlic Soup; Bavarian Beef Roladen; or Mashed Potatoes With Buttermilk and Bacon.
Just to test the quality, we tried five of the salads and three of the main courses. The best salad was Wild Rice Salad with Cranberries and Raspberry Vinaigrette ($5.99/lb.), a great mix of meaty wild rice along with the tangy cranberries that also had a nice richness from the dressing. The Marinated Chinese Noodles and Vegetable Salad ($7.99/lb.) used the acidity in the dressing to slightly cook the veggies, providing a nice muted crunch to go along with the well-textured noodles and the ginger/sesame dressing. Wheatberry’s Summer Tabbouleh ($7.99) is a lovely version, redolent of summer citrus. Their Green Beans With Shallot Vinaigrette ($6.99/lb.) features delightfully crispy beans with a good dressing, which, like all of their vinaigrettes, was rich rather than too tart. The most popular salad at Wheatberry’s is called Our Most Requested Potato Salad ($4.50/lb.), a fresh-tasting concoction with big chunks of potatoes that, for once, are not overdone, and dressed with a light touch.
Jennifer told me that the main courses were all made with good-quality fresh ingredients – she singled out the fact that she uses good fats like real butter and extra virgin olive oil – and that “Since we aren’t a franchise or a corporate place, we can go anywhere our culinary muse takes us.”
The Shepherd’s Pie ($7.99) is her No. 1 seller; Wheatberry’s goes through almost 50 lbs. per week. It’s good comfort food with garlicky mashed potatoes, but a little light on the seasoning and using ground beef in place of the classic lamb. Beef Roll-Ups With Risotto ($8.99) were a tender pair of roladen with a scoop of cheese-infused white rice. Not quite risotto, but delicious nonetheless. My favorite entrée was the Beef Pot Pie With Puff Pastry ($8.99) with big chunks of melt-in-your-mouth beef topped with buttery puff pastry.
Everything I tried at Wheatberry’s was good, and both the Wild Rice Salad With Cranberries and Raspberry Vinaigrette and Beef Pot Pie With Puff Pastry would have made me smile in a high-end restaurant. If you’re out in the Lakeway area, Wheatberry’s is a good respite for the overburdened home cook and a valuable alternative for the cooking-challenged who find themselves forced into dining out too often. – Wes Marshall
This article appears in September 30 • 2005.