Picnik: A Paleo & Gluten-Free Restaurant

A new restaurant opened in Austin this week – Picnik. It’s a little further from The Fairview than many of the places we recommend but it’s worth it, especially for our paleo and gluten-free eating guests. Picnik on Burnet is an offshoot of the trailer they have operated out of on South Lamar for several years. Both locations are open for breakfast & lunch, while the new restaurant is also open for dinner.

Quality Matters

If you’ve stayed with us at The Fairview, you may have noticed that we pay special attention to little details that contribute to the comfort and pleasure of your stay. We prepare our breakfast in house with fresh, mostly local, mostly organic ingredients. We prepare our fruit salads fresh each morning from seasonal fruit. We bake our own gluten-free bread and serve it with grass-fed butter and organic fruit spreads. Our homemade granola is made with organic, purity protocol gluten-free oats. We serve different home baked treats daily like maple walnut muffins, cinnamon almond coffee cake, or lemon poppyseed teacakes. We make our yogurt from local, low heat pasteurized, non-homogenized grass-fed milk. We purchase all of our eggs from Coyote Creek Farms where their all organic fed chickens live less than 30 miles away in a beautiful pasture. Even our coffee is locally roasted.

All this is to say – to us, quality matters.

This focus on quality ingredients carries over into what we eat as a family. Oftentimes, the quality of ingredients we buy to cook for ourselves exceeds the quality we pay a lot more for in a restaurant. So, while we like to eat out, sometimes it feels silly to pay more for a meal of lesser quality. We don’t feel silly when we eat at Picnik.

Quality matters at Picnik in the same way it does at The Fairview. The quality of the basic ingredients shines through in every dish. They serve real food, thoughtfully sourced, and well prepared. They source most of their food locally like the 100% grass fed & grass finished beef from our good friends at Bastrop Cattle Company or the produce that comes from Johnson’s Backyard Garden right here in Austin. Using quality ingredients may cost a bit more, but we agree with Naomi, the owner of Picnik, that “good food is good for you” and it’s worth a little extra cost.

Something for Everyone

Picnic wants to dispel the myth that healthy food is bland and boring and they achieve that nicely. You can start your day with butter coffee and breakfast hash topped with a poached egg, or have a mug of chicken broth as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, and dinner could be orange chicken with broccoli, meatloaf with cauliflower mash, or a cobb salad that even a 14-year-old adores. Top off dinner with a blondie ice cream sandwich that you won’t want to share.

Special Diets at Picnik

Like The Fairview, Picnik is 100% gluten-free and their meals are also mostly paleo focused. And like The Fairview, they can easily customize meals to suit almost any dietary need. For those who are considering changing their diet for better health and want to test the waters, Picnik makes for an excellent introduction. For those with severe dietary issues it is a safe place to eat gluten-free. They purchase all of their beef from a local ranch where the cattle are really grass-fed and finished. The ice cream for those blondies is made from grass-fed milk, and the bones for the chicken soup are organic and local too. Many restaurants don’t actually live up to the quality they claim, but I believe Picnik actually does.

I think we’ll be regulars there.

Directions:

Even though it is only about 6 miles away, Picnik is on the opposite side of town from The Fairview. You will definitely want to take a car. There are a few different routes you can take depending on traffic and road construction, so best to check with us before you head out. We can advise you on the best route for when you are going.

And who knows, we may just tag along with you.

We hope you will check here again for more of our Fairview Recommends posts. Until then, let us know how you like to eat healthy.