Consider the curious relationship between Americans and ground corn. Each food item we purchase or consume in public conveys information regarding social status and culinary knowledge. Nothing is more confusing, however, than the tangled messages we send and receive when ordering a meal. For a male diner, steak says strength–and…
Chef David Burdett and Cameron Morris have been around for a while, creating little catering hybrids founded on comfort food with upscale touches. At Rooster, they carved a pioneering “new Southern” patch in the Dallas landscape. Then they took over Brent Place at Old City Park, crafting food in the…
It’s no mystery why bibs are strapped to diners before they arm themselves with pipe wrenches and little twin-pronged awls to mutilate whole lobsters: Lobster butter-splatter makes a Loony Toon tie look like hell. The real mystery is why bibs aren’t strapped on before adults are allowed to play with…
Like virtually every Dallas restaurant that doesn’t deploy a platoon of white-coated servers who can say “excellent choice, sir” in 14 different languages including legalese, bureaucratese and NFL huddle-grunt, Maguire’s M Grill & Tap is riddled with televisions. It’s fortunate that we live in an age of relentless CNBC stock…
Frankie Carabetta, the robust bar and pizza maestro who linked with Ed and Michael Ruibal of Landscape Systems of Texas to compose Rocco’s pizzeria (since sold), McKinney Avenue Tavern and Corner Bar on McKinney Avenue, has shucked his McKinney Avenue bonds and infiltrated the famous Routh Street Café space that…
“Why not have a salt party?” asks David McMillan, holding a plate piled with a gray-white substance. The executive chef of Nana apparently doesn’t get out much. Either that, or he thinks of tame suburban gatherings–Tupperware parties, for instance–as wild, wicked affairs. In the 1960s, shindigs lauding plastic containers were…
Though it was conceptually groundbreaking as it ushered in a fusion of tastes from Thailand, Korea, China, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam and India under one roof, the orginal Liberty Noodles was mostly a bore. From the start the food was plodding, sloppy, indistinct and unworthy of a second glance. It didn’t…
Almost everything that can be done has been done to the sandwich, an innovation named after the fourth Earl of Sandwich from the town of Sandwich, a municipality in southeast England. It’s been injected with special sauce, prodded with deviled this and that, smeared with Jiff and fruit, frilled with…
Dallas millionaire and Porsche/Audi/VW dealer Scott Ginsburg concedes that his biggest mistake with his Voltaire and Bamboo Bamboo restaurant adventures was in thinking his chefs could also grip operations. “From a pure enterprise point of view, the first thing you need to do is choose a manager, and I failed…
They say history proves again and again how nature points out the folly of men. In this case, “they” are Blue Oyster Cult, a band from the days of open shirts and infinite hair. We’re not certain whether they are the “they” mentioned in all the other “they say” references,…
Indian food has had a tough time here. The land of steaks as thick as phone books and spuds the size of VW Beetles is inhospitable to cuisine more complex than a T-bone. Stripped down to its basics, Indian grub incorporates some two dozen herbs and spices, including coconut, chilies,…
So much public health concern, so much smoke. Earlier this month a horrified New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg reportedly dispatched the NYPD to Madison Square Garden to halt a Rolling Stones concert. It seems guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were puffing onstage in violation of the city’s strict no-smoking…
The really profound thing about 36 Degrees, longtime Dallas chef Chris Svalesen’s newest venture, is the appropriateness of the name. Not simply that the name represents the optimal holding temperature for fish, but also that it perhaps describes the number of stages Svalesen’s vision will pass through before it is…
Former Sfuzzi co-founder Patrick Colombo, developer of the Italian restaurant Ferré and the chic wine bar Crú, both in the West Village, says he is close to consummating a deal on the space that was most recently Alvin Granoff’s Eccolo Ristorante and Enoteca before it was Alvin Granoff’s Ecco Italia…
We always run into trouble at Paris Vendome. We’re not sure why, really. It’s a classy place, and people often use the word “class” when describing the Burning Question crew. Of course, they attach the word “low” to it, but still. Last time we visited the West Village bistro, a…
Brewpubs have had a hard row in Dallas. When a measure passed the Texas Legislature in 1993 permitting the brewing and sale of beer at the same site, some 40 brewpubs popped up in Texas within just a few years, eight in Dallas alone. The corpses–Coppertank Brewing Co., Moon Under…
For a downtown groundbreaking, it was a little rickety. It opened with a video presentation highlighting the milestones of Dallas nightclub impresario Keith Black. But sound for the video, projected from twin screens and featuring a leggy nightclub minx spewing breathy descriptions of the Black legacy encompassing clubs such as…
The military has a wonderful habit of turning simple concepts into incomprehensible abbreviations or ironic juxtapositions. Lunch, for example, becomes MRE. That’s short for meals ready to eat. Perhaps this explains how officers learn quickly to misstate the obvious. After getting his ass whipped in Russia, the great Napoleon rallied…
The numbers are startling, but maybe it’s only because of where we live. Judging by our contemporary fetishes of steak palaces, prime beef, Kobe beef burgers (who will be the first restaurateur to introduce a dry-aged prime sloppy joe?), pork chops that could fill a men’s club cleavage and rib…
First off, a correction: In the Dish wrap-up for 2002 published in the January 2 edition of the Dallas Observer, I mistakenly reported that Deep Sushi in Deep Ellum had closed. In fact, Sushi Nights was the Deep Ellum sushi restaurant that shuttered in 2002. I apologize for any inconvenience…
In August, Voltaire closed. And that pretty much sums up the Dallas restaurant complexion for 2002. Voltaire’s death rattle served as a worn metaphor, a symbol of what was expected to happen but didn’t–the big bang that rattled the windows and agitated the lava lamp but left the infrastructure unfazed…
How to define 2002? The most notable figures were pedophiles, Donald Rumsfeld and the Rally Monkey. Hollywood produced yet another Rob Schneider insult. Creative minds working with endless colors and fabrics from all over the world settled on bare teen-age midriffs as the year’s fashion sensation. And when Trent Lott…
