Burnt Donuts
By now, everyone in Central Texas must know about last week’s devastating fire at Lone Star Bakery, home of the nationally famous and locally beloved Round Rock Donuts. KVUE showed poignant footage of grieving customers being turned away and shellshocked owner Dale Cohrs sifting through the charred wreckage of his popular business. On camera, Cohrs assured his loyal clientele that he’d rebuild the bakery as quickly as possible and let brides know their wedding cakes would be baked and delivered as previously promised. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit in all the news coverage was the revelation that Round Rock city leaders promised to forgo all red tape and waive building permits so Cohrs could begin rebuilding immediately! It makes you wonder just how popular an Austin eatery would have to be for someone to voluntarily cut through our city’s lengthy and often financially debilitating permit process. Just one day after the fire, Lone Star Bakery owners were looking for a temporary location in which to make their famous doughnuts until the new facility can be built.
Appetizer Atlas Dinner Club
If you’ve every wondered just how cookbook authors go about developing and choosing recipes for their works, two local authors offer you an opportunity to observe the process from a seat at the dining room table. Published cookbook author Dr. Arthur L. Meyer and frequent Chronicle Cuisines contributor Mick Vann are currently developing recipes for their forthcoming book, The Appetizer Atlas: A World of Small Bites, to be published by John Wiley & Sons in the fall of 2002. In order to thoroughly test potential recipes and defray the cost of recipe development, the authors have come up with an intrepid idea, the Appetizer Atlas Dinner Club. They’ve scheduled a series of dinners on selected Saturday nights and are taking reservations for each dinner. It’s possible to reserve dinner for one, two, or four, or book an entire table of eight for a private party. Each $50 meal will feature six appetizer recipes from one of 28 regions around the world, and guests will receive the recipes for each dish and a souvenir menu from the evening. The fall schedule features the following: China on Sept. 30; Cambodia, Burma, and Laos on Oct. 21; Thailand on Nov. 4; India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka on Nov. 18; Persia, Nepal, and Afghanistan on Dec. 9; and the Middle East on Dec. 16. The dinner club will resume in the spring with a schedule to be announced in November. In order to become a member of the Appetizer Atlas Dinner Club or for more information, contact Art Meyer at ameyer@texas.net or Mick Vann at mvann@mail.utexas.edu.
Guest Chefs
The Whole Foods Market at Sixth and Lamar has scheduled a Guest Chef Cooking Series on Monday nights through Monday, October 23. From 6:30-8:30pm on those evenings, chefs will instruct customers how to prepare several dishes with all-natural and organic ingredients and provide free samples of the various dishes. Check with the store information desk at 476-1206 to see which popular local chefs will be teaching for the next six weeks.
This article appears in September 22 • 2000.