Eddie V’s owners Larry Foles and Guy Villavaso had recently sold the business to Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze), and House and Robert were both busy adjusting to the corporate shuffle. House informed Robert that he had some investor interest for an independent restaurant in Austin and wanted Robert to partner with him on it. By that time, the two had been working together for nearly a decade and Robert’s answer was unconditional: yes.
So began planning for Fixe, which at the time was nothing so much as unformed clay. It took shape as the partners began thinking about how they liked to dine. They wanted hospitality and refinement, but they also sought approachability. They wanted the foods they served to be something people would come back for time and again, something addictive. Robert, who is originally from Louisiana, started listing the ingredients he most loves to cook with. Very soon it became apparent that Southern food met all the conditions.
From there planning fell into place: financing, space, design. And through fortuitous circumstance they secured Zach Hunter as their chef de cuisine. Hunter had worked for Robert at Eddie V’s in Scottsdale, starting in the line fresh out of culinary school and then working his way up to sous chef and eventually executive chef. His prodigious talent was evident to Robert even before he was offered the opportunity to work at Mugaritz in Spain, and then help Matt Lightner open Atera in New York City. When Hunter heard about the opportunity to help open Fixe, he was all in.
Now open since late December, Fixe is quietly making waves Downtown (including a recent Chronicle First Plates nod). Engstrom Design Group’s artful interior is an apt expression of Fixe’s spirit. A circle of private dining rooms done up with dark wood, luxe upholstery, and elegant chandeliers flank the outer walls of the restaurant. Meanwhile Fixe’s beating heart, the main dining area, resembles nothing so much as a bayou fish camp: all 2x4s, chicken wire, and bare bulb lighting.
The kitchen is completely open, with a stage-like relationship to the dining area. From our front-row seats at the chefs’ table, it felt like we were close enough to trip the staff – indeed a run to the restroom necessitated some clever dodging of laden servers. It takes confidence to have a kitchen with virtually no separation from diners, but no one seemed to miss a beat, almost as if engaged in a carefully rehearsed dance, reminding us all, yet again, that dining out these days really is performance art.
The space is an apt metaphor for the food. Fixe’s culinary building blocks – buttermilk, black-eyed peas, grits, salt pork, and sweet potatoes (among others) – are ridiculously humble. But Robert and Hunter are performing some serious kitchen Kung Fu with these time-worn ingredients. Like plumping a fusty old pillow, they’ve made them stand fresh through a combination of molecular gastronomy and just plain ingenuity.
And so we have crunchy buttermilk meringues dressing up a flouncy sweet potato pie, veal breast smoked and cooked sous vide so that it falls apart on the fork, a light-as-air lemon cake confection that makes cotton candy look heavy, and toasted and puffed grains offsetting a salty smear of … well something, but it sure tasted good. These pair effortlessly with the provisions we’ve come to recognize as Southern cooking: flaky biscuits, crackling fried chicken, deviled eggs, all of them as delicious as they come and with just enough irony to fascinate.
I never knew that the corporate kitchen of Eddie V’s hid so much moxie.
This article appears in February 13 • 2015.
