Max's Wine Dive - Austin

An old friend is leaving to get an MBA at INSEAD in France, so we met for a farewell Happy Hour at Max's Wine Dive. My first impression of the place? It's snooty, dressy, Austin's latest happening happy hour and dinner spot, and has umm... fried... everything? It has clashingly southern style food for a modernistic wine place, in my opinion.

Let's see, what does a vegetarian eat at a southern style wine dive from the limited selection on the happy hour food menu?

Given that our table ordered 1-2 plates of everything, I ended up seeing and smelling everything and asking the others if the "drunk bread" had prosciutto in it, or the Mac-n-Cheese had bacon bits.

I ended up chowing down on the vegetarian Mac-and-Cheese (not too yellowy, and with a little gourmet touch to it) and the Tres Frites (again fried vegetables with a buttermilk dip to dunk in) that was tres average! As for the giant marinated Portabello Mushroom that came on a beautifully decorated plate, it was well, wierd to eat... (like shrivelled elephant skin? kills your appetite right there after piquing your interest at the wierdness of the plate).

The highlights of the evening? The wines (weren't too shabby) and the bread that I kept stealing off the sliders... In the end, one of our friends pushed the entire plate of 3 sliders in front of me and forced me to take the top bun off all of them... funny! But hey, how can a hungry vegetarian resist such surprisingly good bread?!