Hemingway Restaurant and Bar

My sister and I love to find new places to eat.  With that being said, sometimes we're lazy and don't want to drive too far to try something new.  Since my sister and I live up in North Austin we didn't really want to drive back to the down town area or to south Austin to try out some local fair, so we searched for something up north and found ourselves at Hemingway Restaurant and Bar (http://www.hemingwayrb.com) in Cedar Park.
   Small Plates(Appetizers):  For an appetizer we had the Fried Portabella & Avocado Strips.  The breading was had a good crunch and was seasoned well and the portabella mushroom tasted very good.  It reminded me of the flavor of Plucker's Wing Bar's fried mushrooms (that's going to have to be a different blog).  The Avocado was breaded with the same breading, which was fine, but the avocado itself didn't have any real flavor, it needed some seasoning.  The avocado was creamy and buttery, but with the fried breading, it needed something that would contrast the flavor.  The orange marmalade sauce that came with the appetizer was awful.  To me it tasted like a Chinese plum sauce that had red peppers added to it, not a good pairing, at least not by my taste buds.  Overall the appetizers were decent.

  And that's pretty much the best part of this meal.  For the entrees my sister went with the  double chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and a salad.  As for me I selected the Gulf Coast Two Step.
   Let's start with my sister's dish.  "Country Fried Steak: Third pound of tender steak, topped with old-fashioned seasonings, lightly hand breaded and smothered with scratch cream gravy."  The breading was thicker than was on the appetizer, but essentially it had the same flavor.  However the breading fell off the steak as soon as a knife was applied to the steak.  The steak itself was chewy and wasn't seasoned or at least wasn't seasoned well.  The gravy wasn't spectacular and added nothing to the steak except a gelatinous mass.  Now the mashed potatoes; tasted like they were rehydrated from from a box.  The potatoes were dry and flaky instead of smooth and creamy and again wasn't very pleasing to the palate.

   Gulf Coast Two Step: "Three Gulf Coast shrimp and three farm raised catfish fingers served with a double order of french fries."  If you can believe it or not, my sister's entree was better than mine.  Everything on my plate tasted like it came freezer section of HEB.  I guess I was expecting too much when I read, "Fresh from Texas and the U.S. coast whenever possible."  I would've thought that a restaurant that has only recently opened would use fresh ingredients instead of ingredients that have been frozen.  To add insult to injury, I don't believe that the oil was hot enough when they dropped my food in the frier.  The reason I say this is because the shrimp, catfish and fries were greasy.  I know, I know, the food is fried, it should be greasy.  There is a difference between frying at the correct temperature and frying at a lower temperature, the food becomes more oil soaked than it should.

   Conclusion: I'll probably never come back to Hemingway Restaurant and Bar and I do not recommend this place to anyone who actually enjoys good tasting food.