Bistro entree-ducing Austinites to talents of ACC

Austin Community College's Bistro 3158, a restaurant put on by their culinary students, offers a tantalizing selection of food from different cultures and gives you an upscale dining experience.

The restaurant, located at the Eastview Campus, is an elegant dining experience from the moment you walk through the door. Guests are welcomed at the door by a host who takes them to their seats. The restaurant is presented formally just as any other upscale restaurant would be. The atmosphere is relaxing, with soft fifties music playing in the background, and dimmed lighting.

Every semester, Bistro 3158 offers their guests a menu that contains authentic foods and flavors from around the world. This semester's theme is countries featured in the Olympics. The restaurant allows guests to choose from a standard menu that represents cities from around the world or from a chef's menu that features an Olympic city.

Each meal generously includes six courses which include a cold appetizer, hot appetizer, soup, salad, entree, and dessert. Every course contains a nice portion of food that is presented beautifully on the serving dish. The standard menu offers sushi as the cold appetizer, Chicken Crepes Sauce Mornay as a hot appetizer, which features two handmade crepes stuffed with juicy chicken and sauteed mushrooms served hot with a rich cheese sauce drizzled over the top, a sweet buttermilk soup that is served chilled in a wine glass, an orzo and herb salad, a New York sirloin grilled to perfection along with grilled onions and mushrooms, and a moist piece of German chocolate cake with a rich creamy coconut pecan icing. Every salad is served with a couple of different breads and butter.

When I visited the restaurant the city featured was Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. One of the courses that I enjoyed the most was the Sarajevo cold appetizer that was served with four pieces of a Bosnian version of pita bread and a roasted red pepper and eggplant relish. The relish was seasoned perfectly and the roasted vegetables were so tender that they melted in my mouth. All of the flavors came together so well that I could have had the relish by itself, but it was even better served on the homemade fresh pita bread.

For the entree, I had the Sarajevo Csirke Paprikas and Guluska that was a braised chicken and vegetables dish served in a rich sour cream sauce with traditional dumplings. I was very impressed with this dish because there was a nice-sized chicken breast that went perfectly with the light sour cream sauce with roasted red peppers and onions. This dish had layers of flavor from the way that the chicken breast was braised to the flavorful sauce that was poured over it. I also sampled the entree from the standard menu, which was the grilled New York sirloin topped with grilled mushrooms and onions served with duchesse potatoes. The large steak was so tender, juicy, and flavorful that I had to ask how this steak was prepared. Salt, pepper, brown sugar, extra-virgin olive oil, and being grilled over hot coals is what makes this steak explode with flavor, and the grilled onions and mushrooms give it even more of a kick.

To finish my night off, I had the German chocolate cake that was layered with a rich and creamy homemade coconut pecan icing between each layer. Between the combination of the creamy icing and moist cake this dessert had me leaving the restaurant more than satisfied.

The bistro is open on select Thursday nights during the semester and reservations are highly recommended. The food on the standard menu is offered every night along with the chef's feature menu which contains foods and flavors from a different country each Thursday. Each meal is $28.00 for a six course meal, which includes beverages (water or tea), and children under 12 years eat for only $7.25. The prices are extremely reasonable considering the quality and portions of the food.

When you visit the restaurant, expect a friendly wait staff that will make sure that you are enjoying your meal and the chefs to put their best effort into every dish. Since the chefs are students of the ACC culinary school, with an obvious passion for cooking, they are intensely motivated to please their customers with taste and presentation.

Log onto www.austincc.edu/hospmgmt/aboutbistro to book your reservation and see why Bistro 3158 compares to Austin's finest restaurants.