The catchiest business name I’ve seen in a while has to be Holy Cacao (1207 S. First, 851-CAKE, www.theholycacao.com), the logo painted on a festively tricked-out new street-food trailer in South Austin. Entrepreneurs Ellen Kinsey and John Spillyards have brought the latest East Coast dessert sensation to Austin and hired recent Culinary Institute of America-San Antonio graduate chef Mary Margaret Higdon to produce their line of sweet treats. For a while now I’ve been reading about how cake balls are all the rage at weddings, parties, and festivals – the most popular party and street pastry since cupcakes – and I’d been wondering when they’d show up in Austin and how they’d fare here. Cake balls are crumbled cake mixed with frosting, rolled into balls, and finished with various coatings or dipped in chocolate, served truffle style or presented on a stick. Holy Cacao’s current five flavors of cake balls are dipped in white, milk, or dark chocolate and served on a stick at $1.50 each or $17 per dozen. (One caution – nibble these little sugar bombs; don’t pop the whole thing in your mouth at once.) The eye-catching trailer also sells cups of voluptuous drinking chocolate with homemade marshmallows, luxurious cake shakes (cake crumbs and Blue Bell ice cream!), and S’mores on a Stick (homemade marshmallows dipped in melted chocolate and graham cracker crumbs). Talk about a sugar rush!… Although I found the fresh, local, organic produce in the promotional bag from Farmhouse Delivery (www.farmhousedelivery.com) perfectly delightful last week, the truth is my favorite items were some marvelous shortbread cookies and tender scones from baker Barrie Cullinan. Cullinan was formerly the pastry chef at Vespaio and Enoteca, but she left there last fall to pursue a new business plan. She’s currently providing top-quality baked goods to Farmhouse Delivery while she looks for the right space for Word on Food, a new and used culinary bookshop concept complete with a demonstration kitchen for cooking classes, cookbook author demonstrations, and her own baking business. Quite selfishly, I can’t wait for her to get this store open so I can go over and play!… Longtime local restaurateur Jeff Weinberger has made some changes at his 20-year-old Downtown restaurant, shortening the name to Shoreline (98 San Jacinto, 477-3300, www.shorelinegrill.com) and installing new Executive Chef Scotty Szekretar to oversee changes to the menu. Szekretar, a New Yorker with a volume of experience in top Long Island seafood restaurants, has spent his first few weeks in Austin developing relationships with local purveyors and sourcing as many items as possible from the surrounding area. Under his direction, Shoreline is becoming a sustainable seafood restaurant, and Szekretar has begun a series of very affordable three-course wine dinners Wednesday nights… Sincere condolences to the family of Tex-Mex restaurateur Matt Martinez Jr., who died of cancer on March 13. Matt was the third generation of his family to make a mark in the Tex-Mex food business with a career that included operating successful Dallas restaurants and writing cookbooks. His grandfather started out as a street-food vendor in Austin, and his late father founded Matt’s Famous El Rancho, a landmark Austin Tex-Mex restaurant still operated by Matt Jr.’s sisters today. Like his father before him, Martinez Jr. was a proud representative of an authentic American regional cuisine, and he will be missed.
This article appears in April 3 • 2009.