In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, many Dallas-area restaurants diligently wrote public alerts every time an employee fell ill with the disease. But as cases surge, hospitals fill and the government response falters, restaurant owners are facing a new logic: Cases may be too common to report. And…
It’s July. While that would normally mean we could be at a Texas Rangers game succumbing to the employee who’s sweating in the heat yelling “Lemon Chill,” we’re at home. But it’s still hot: As of now, it looks like we could reach 100 degrees this week, something we know…
The novel coronavirus may have shifted the way we work out, eat and live, but it didn’t change the need some of us have for coffee. That’s evident based on the line of cars and people at White Rock Coffee in the Hillside neighborhood of East Dallas. The Lake Highlands-based…
Well, amazingly we’ve just about made it halfway through 2020. High fives all over the place. As we ease into the downhill side of this (please, can it be the easier downhill side?), when making plans for our Fourth of July parties, let’s focus on locally owned places. This is…
Damasita’s dining room has changed dramatically in the last six months. The restaurant opened in early 2018 as a Japanese izakaya, serving tempura platters and agedashi tofu. But without changing its name, new owners arrived in December 2019, remodeled the whole space and converted the menu to a list of…
This summer, Palmer’s Hot Chicken will be one of the new Nashville hot chicken establishments opening in Dallas. It’s the brainchild of Palmer Fortune, who is also the owner of two Porch restaurants in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. The menu at Palmer’s will be identical to that of Porch, offering…
Friday morning, Gov. Greg Abbott snatched up the welcome mat to bars, which were ordered to close at noon that day as more COVID-19 cases surged across the state. Also, restaurants were required to go back to 50% capacity, down from the 75% at which they had been operating. However,…
It all started with a typo. Peja Krstic, chef-owner of acclaimed Dallas Vietnamese restaurant Mot Hai Ba, reversed the h and n in “bánh mì” while writing a caption on Instagram June 16. He says autocorrect is to blame. But then three Vietnamese American women replied to correct the typo…
Businesses are slowly bringing back some food events — which you can attend masked up and staying the heck away from other people — and whether or not you decide to be a patron at one of those, one can start to feel cooped up after 100 days in a…
We’re moving like chess pieces. The summer heat is heavy as iron, even in the morning; we’re sweating through our masks as the line spills onto the sidewalk in front of Jarams Donuts in East Dallas. Each of us seems ready to face the new challenges that come with grabbing…
There’s an interesting culinary movement playing out in kitchens across the area that swings far and wide on a pendulum, both socioeconomically and culturally. It’s a combination of Japanese and Mexican staples, topped off with a bit of Texas. If this were Russell Crow in A Beautiful Mind, there’d be…
Legacy Hall’s adult sipper frosé is making the kid (and adult) in all of us happy.
There has been some talk about how the restaurant industry might look when we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic: Maybe QR menus should stay. What will happen to fine dining? Perhaps being able to purchase alcohol to-go from a restaurant could stick around. It’s entirely possible that months ago,…
Dive bars don’t happen by design. There’s no script or blueprint. They’re unimpressed with plans. Usually they have odd touches of character in both people and furnishings that just fall into place. Over time, they evolve into a retreat where we yearn to wet our whistles. The Grapevine Bar seems…
The tipping point happened in a parking lot just off the Dallas North Tollway, while I was sitting in my car. The sun had only put in a few hours’ work that day and was casting a golden yolk haze inside my Honda. I was holding a kouign-amann (pronounced “queen…
Kick off your weekend by picking up a free Nutella crepe at Whisk this Thursday. No purchase is necessary, and they won’t ask you any questions about it. Just take the sweet crepe and go. What: Free Nutella Thursdays When: 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday Where: Whisk Crêpes Café,…
The Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission got busy last weekend. Last Wednesday, it issued a warning to businesses that weekend plans included “strictly monitoring bar and restaurant activity” to ensure compliance with the state’s protocols. They warned they would take swift action and suspend liquor licenses for 30 days for first-time…
As we get deeper into life amid a pandemic, simple pleasures are sweeter: a beautiful summer afternoon, a cooler morning with rain falling, an exceptionally friendly server who beams sincerity even though you can’t see his smile behind a mask. And ice cream. There are plenty of places to get…
There’s frequently a lot of work that goes into a favorite dish at a restaurant, and now you have the opportunity to learn more about how some of our city’s notable chefs and tastemakers came to be. Monday through Thursday, you can bid on a 30-minute, one-on-one conversation with a…
Palmer’s Hot Chicken will open later this summer in Hillside, the neighborhood just north of Lakewood in East Dallas. We’re still awaiting Lucky’s Hot Chicken in East Dallas and Chirps Chicken Shack opened on Lower Greenville not long ago, but now there’s another place diving into the hot chicken craze…
We’re going to keep updating you on restaurants that announce they’re temporarily closing because staff members tested positive for COVID-19, but today, we’re sharing how some people feel about returning to such places. Many restaurants say they’re having other employees tested, closing for a few days to get those results…
This Friday, June 19, marks the 155th anniversary of Emancipation Day in Texas, when in 1865 Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston proclaiming that all enslaved people in Texas were free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation declared that slaves in rebellious states were free on Jan. 1,…
