Eating on the cheap at Aurora in Dallas

by Teresa Gubbins

DALLAS — After more than five years as one of Dallas' top-rated as well as top-priced restaurants, Aurora quietly changed its profile last year, by revising its menu and dropping its prices. The economy hadn't sunk like a stone yet, so it turned out to be a prescient move by owners Avner & Celeste Samuel.

My mother's salad at Aurora

Part of the do-over included a new lunch menu with a three-course prix fixe meal, for $18.95. Samuel says that it took customers nearly eight months to discover the deal, but these days Aurora is a hot ticket at lunch.

As a point of reference, three years ago, a friend and I had a 10-course or was it 12- vegetarian tasting menu at Aurora and it was $300 each. (It did include wine, which was about a third of the cost.) So how does that transform into "bargain lunches"? In some ways, the cutbacks are obvious. Samuel has trotted out "My Mother's Salad," consisting of chopped tomato, cucumber, and green pepper, dressed in olive oil and sprinkled with fresh parsley, a longtime favorite that's shown up at nearly all of his restaurants over the years. It's elegant and flavorful, but hardly costly to assemble.

Scallops with tomato at Aurora

However, a trio of seared scallops topped with roasted plum tomatoes seasoned with trendy piment d’espelette, and accompanied by pearl couscous, haricot vert, baby squash, garlic cloves, and oyster mushrooms, wouldn't be considered budget fare. And the service component of dining at Aurora remains a five-star experience, with servers in tuxedos, fancy flatware, and your choice of bottled sparkling water or still, free of charge.

Mushroom "cappuccino" at Aurora

A recent lunch began with a complimentary course: a cup of mushroom "cappuccino" -- basically a foamy mushroom soup with truffle shavings. Truffles don't do much for me, but the soup itself was light at the same time that it was hearty, with a woodsy mushroom flavor and a temperature that was hot-not-scalding. Points for the fine-china teacup vessel.

Artichoke soup at Aurora

Artichoke soup consisted of a vegetable puree with a small dose of cream to smooth out the texture; otherwise, just the sweat and blood of dozens of artichokes distilled to their essence. Creamy vegetable soups are often all cream and no vegetable, but this was the reverse. A spoonful of truffle-flavored foam and more of those same black truffles, julienned, added visual interest, and might have pleased a diner who under any circumstances always likes truffles, no matter what kind they are or how they are served.

Potato gnocchi with bolognese sauce at Aurora

The pick of the meal was gnocchi topped with Bolognese sauce. The gnocchi were soft, almost buttery, with a spongy resilience that made you want to keep eating them. The Bolognese was complex, with ground bits of tenderloin making you feel like you were one of the elite, and a whisper of cinnamon in the tomato base to provoke a little brain twist. Served in one of those small Staub cast-iron dishes, it didn't look like much food, but the portion was more generous than it looked, i.e. this alone would have sufficed for lunch.

Spaetzle with lamb meatballs at Aurora

It being winter when this lunch was consumed, they still had lamb meatballs with spaetzle on the menu -- another dish that was hearty, not heavy. The three large meatballs had a Mediterranean feel, with lots of oregano; the spaetzle were appealing, with their irregular handmade shapes and incorporation of still-firm green spinach leaves and baby squash.

Right now they're doing wild leek soup, butternut squash bisque, roast chicken with fingerling potatoes and local vegetables, fish of the day, and a trio of sorbets.

They've also added a whole list of tapas, inspired by a recent trip to Spain, with items such as spiced black olives, white anchovies, frittata with chorizo, mussels, oxtail, beef cigars (another Samuel signature dish), lobster and duck confit, oysters, tuna with pan-fried quail egg, razor clams in marinara sauce, eggs and truffles, wild mushrooms, foie gras (big-time Avner favorite), octopus with potatoes, scallops, red mullet, merluza, Kobe beef, "sea & land" (with pork belly), and quail, priced from $4 to $15.