Jezebel's creator keeps hope alive with Simplicity and Braise

By Mike Sutter

AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC

This review was supposed to be about Restaurant Jezebel.

The little place downtown with all the giant paintings of naked ladies played host to a bellwether restaurant night for me. My brother was in town on business, and we sat by the windows and ate osso bucco and lobster bisque and brie-stuffed chicken and snails in sweet balsamic and drank two bottles of good wine. He said it reminded him of one of those grand old places in New Orleans, cut down to personal size.

But on July 26, fire destroyed the dining room, and Jezebel won't be coming back to Congress Avenue. Chef and owner Parind Vora says he'll have to move, that it would cost too much and take too long to reopen downtown. After standing with him among the charred ruins of his wine cabinets and dinner tables, I believe it. I'm not supposed to meet the people whose work I review, but the fire damage was something I had to see for myself. That's how I met Vora face-to-face, at the worst possible time, after so many phone conversations about grease traps and cooking in Spain and $500 bottles of wine.

But this review isn't about Restaurant Jezebel. It's about Vora's side projects, an inexpensive wine-and-tapas bar called Simplicity and a midpriced bistro called Braise, both of which opened this year. He put together the menus and staffs for both places but never intended to cook at either one every night like he did at Jezebel. Still, it's easy to play spot-the-influences.

Both places have concrete floors and dark-earth color schemes (like Jezebel). Both places are decorated with canvases by a single artist (like Jezebel). At both places, vegetarians will have something to eat besides salad (again, like Jezebel). Simplicity and Braise are cousin and son to the mother restaurant.

The cousin, Simplicity, builds a tapas menu around a wine list of about 80 value-conscious bottles, with 30 by the glass for no more than $8. The plates and utensils are disposable, from a local company called ToGoCo, and the wine glasses are sturdy glass tumblers.

What started as a flat $4.95 per-plate system - a screaming bargain for shrimp and grits or a fruit-and-cheese plate with chevre, manchego and bleu - has evolved into a three-tier system of plates for $4.95, $5.95 and $6.95. At the lower level, two simple skewers of spicy roasted sweet potatoes went well with a chilled Sicilian white, which also held up to hearts of palm wrapped in bacon like a barber's pole.

At the middle level, my favorite riesling from Idaho (yeah, I said it; it's gone now) was ideal for spicy Buffalo-style sauteed calamari, and sesame oil turned a watermelon salad with goat cheese into an aromatic sensation. The upper price level now includes the shrimp and grits and an exotic 'beggar's purse' of braised lamb and garlic in a pastry shell and a more grounded dish of chicken meatballs in sweet red-pepper coulis.

Simplicity lives up (and down) to its name. The white letters of the sign are set off against artificial turf. Signs on the window announce both free Wi-Fi and free sarcasm. Inside, there are deep sofas and high tables. Black-and-white posterized canvases of Green Day and Kings of Leon hang within smirking distance of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. The exhibits rotate according to the tastes of general manager Claire Hees, herself an accomplished painter.

Outside, there's no getting around the fact that you're sitting in a parking lot on Burnet Road. But the planter boxes around it are filled with green peppers and herbs, and a noseful of fresh mint and basil fixes just about anything. Maybe not cold pork satay skewers or a dried-out frittata-style tortilla Española. But the gaffes seemed like a small price for the exploratory possibilities and the occasional glimmers of Jezebel here.

A few miles to the east and a few steps up the culinary ziggurat lies Braise, in a section of East Sixth Street stamped from a quasi-contemporary gentrification mold that wouldn't be out of place in a Santa Fe suburb.

Inside, Braise reminded one of my guests of a little restaurant he knows in Belgium, about a dozen tables draped in white cloth, the walls covered with quirky paintings. Think 'Yellow Submarine' meets 'Moulin Rouge.' Braise is like Jezebel Jr., its menu a mélange of bistro classics (roasted chicken with white wine reduction and mashed potatoes so rich they tasted truffled) and defiantly out-of-category surprises (hot, rustic jerked pork with black beans sweetened by pineapple).