It’s easy to forget how delicious simple food can be when it’s well prepared with excellent ingredients and scrupulous care. La Condesa has been a staple in the Warehouse District for some fifteen years, going back to the area’s heyday, and it’s as much a draw as ever. Sit inside amid tall architect-designed concrete walls, gauzy curtains, chandeliers with modern-art ambition, or take a table outside and watch the boulevardiers parade by on one of Austin’s busiest downtown corners. We didn’t even need a reservation for an early Saturday brunch, though that’s not always the case. Our appetizer of guacamole was a beautiful bowl of pale green, coarsely mashed avocado heaped with sweet, ripe cherry tomato halves, onion, and fresh cilantro (did you know cilantro has tiny white blossoms in the spring?). For a main course, we went big with steak and eggs: a good-quality ribeye, pink inside, deeply charred on its surface, deftly sliced, and topped with two eggs over easy. Excellent refried beans and roasted fingerling potatoes rounded out the plate. The accompanying corn tortillas were fabulous—small but thick, full of flavor, obviously made in house. We took a couple home, reheated them over a kitchen stove burner (never a microwave), and they were almost as good as the day before. The dinner menu offers a cruise through Mexico’s regional cuisines, not a long list but a fascinating one, with dishes like the thick masa tart known as  a huarache with huitlacoche  (AKA corn fungus) and chicken in a black mole sauce shot through with chocolate.