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If Tex-Mex could be anything, you'd want it to be an all-inclusive resort village on South Padre, but if it couldn't be that, you'd want it to be just-opened Cafe Malta. The intimate, white-tablecloth joint's helmed by a husband/wife team who're using TX ingredients to re-engineer the Mediterranean tastes they discovered on their honeymoon (food, not topless beaches).

Dishes hearty enough to feed a Knight Templar include Braised Lamb Shank (w/ orange, date, onion, and roasted tomatoes over candied-carrot cous cous), lemon beurre blanc Half Roasted Hen (w/ rosemary mashed Yukon golds & brown-buttered cauliflower), and, tossed in parsley pesto & grated Manchego, Winter Ravioli stuffed with roasted butternut squash, goat cheese, and Wyld Stallyns.

They're also rocking smaller plates like gnocchi with roasted tomato ragout, Quassatat (Maltese savory pastry with housemade ricotta/golden raisins or balsamic-glazed onion/arugula), and their sig homemade Maltagliati pasta, topped with pork and beef rib meat braised in tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and herbs, though to anyone who's lain with Popeye, aren't we all?

Since there's nothing more European than inebriation, CM's pouring drafts of Barcelona's Estrella Damm, as well as cocktails like the I Can Explain Everything (cachaca, limoncello, Prosecco) and the Cynar/Paula's TX Orange Fa Niente, Italian for "do nothing", which apparently is also Club Med's attitude towards turning Padre into the Turkoise of places-we-can-drive-to-and-hang-out-with-college-kids.

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Bone up on their explanation of Tex-Med at CafeMaltaAustin.com