Often, but not always, Indian food assumes the shades of warning signs and traffic cones. At Sitar Indian Cuisine, it’s the tandoori dishes that come out this way. Lamb chunks and chicken parts are bright orange, as if spray painted by some graffiti vandal. The tandoori is an Indian oven…
Damn. It’s frustrating to discover a restaurant’s signature dish spelled out on the front of the menu after you’ve trolled through a half-dozen or so mediocre dishes. But there it is, right on the plastic menu cover: “Half Shells Seafood Grill, Home of the Oyster Nacho.” Not that I know…
Its beige brick façade is hardly flattered by the dim brown trim edging the roof. The sign above the front awning has the word “Buckner” hastily scrawled over the word “Barbecue,” done up in neat block letters. It seats roughly a dozen. “It’s kind of a small, intimate setting,” says…
Emeril Lagasse has a nightly show on the Food Network, a failed sitcom and a catchphrase. He is, in the currency of the times, an American icon. Clint Stoerner quarterbacks America’s team. He is merely a future trivia question. Strange, but true. Flipping through cable, browsing newspapers or magazines, even…
Nothing is the same anymore. Case in point: It’s been reported that at college career fairs, the longest lines are in front of the CIA recruitment tables. Another pointed case: Tom Landis, a co-founder of the Dallas Texadelphia Philly cheese steak restaurant chain, is running for Dallas mayor. He says…
Many, many years ago, a man named Peter Zenger defended the rights of a free press with such vehemence that the idea became sacrament. In the Gulf War–and today–the media chafed under censorship restrictions. Reporters protecting sources for a sensitive story occasionally end up in prison. But the Burning Question…
Pastazios bills itself as a parlor steeped in New York breeding. The menu boasts authentic Big Apple pies. The inside of the restaurant, dressed in diner-ish duds, doesn’t give anything away, but there are lots of New York profile photos, one of which prominently features the World Trade Center towers,…
It’s hard eating pasta with rippled Arnold’s thick Austrian accent warping “hasta la vista, baby” through your head. It’s hard to focus on the pasta, the crepes, the shrimp, the scaloppine, the one wall with wine bottles imbedded haphazardly into the plaster. It’s even hard to reconcile that wall with…
Mongo Man is a 9-foot “warrior mascot” who has the thankless job of traveling around to the various restaurants in the BD’s Mongolian Barbecue chain. That means Mongo Man has the unenviable task of frolicking around some 26 locations from Texas (Las Colinas, Plano) to Colorado, Illinois and Florida. Mongo…
Onetime Dallas wunderkind Doug Brown, who made his mark atop the Wyndham Anatole at Nana Grill before cutting bait for Palm Springs, has clawed his way back from California to the large D. It seems his stint at Murial’s Supper Club went sour after the venture’s main investor lost a…
The Bay Leaf could easily be just another one of those dark, strenuously hip Deep Ellum joints fashioned out of aging warehouse brick and smoky oil paintings. On certain nights it even has live jazz, tucked up front by the door. During non-live-music times, though, Bay Leaf jazz is like…
Inside Al’s Prime Steaks and Seafood the temperature hovers comfortably in the 70s. Wind and rain smack against the restaurant’s walls, belying one of Marx’s lesser maxims: “It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature.” It’s the same story downtown at Jeroboam, over at Brother’s Pizza or at…
Baja California Grill, the Addison Tex-Mex mayhem opened last year by businessman Ken Franklin (former owner of Jaxx Café), bit the desert sands last December. But this past March, Franklin unloaded the hapless grill to a pair of new owners who have ambitiously set out to nudge it into upscale-casual…
It’s hard to not think of Arthur’s as an icon of perseverance amid the unforgiving brutality of the Dallas restaurant scene. Owner Mohsen Heidari, in addition to grappling with the constant and typical tortures of employee turnover, spoilage, government inspectors, taxes and critics, has had to deal with asbestos, bad…
“Part of the secret to success is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.” Voltaire didn’t utter that one (Mark Twain did), but the quote might apply to events at Voltaire that climaxed with the departure of lauded chef George Papadopoulos. Running rumors say…
Chez Gerard is a crotchety old cottage born some 17 years ago on McKinney Avenue at a time when French cuisine spelled sophistication. The restaurant has changed little since then, and a French kiss might not smack of the sophistication it once did, but that doesn’t mean Chez Gerard fumbles…
Bond traders weren’t the only ones abruptly throttled by early September’s airborne spittle from hell. Food pros as well as one of the most lauded restaurant idols were also vaporized in the maelstrom. Windows on the World, that famous 40,000-square-foot feedlot in the sky perched on the 106th floor of…
The Burning Question crew returned from a vacation our editor described as “long-overdue”–a compliment, we presume–just in time for football season. Football is a confusing sport. To some it’s a metaphor for war, satiating our bloodlust in a confined space–a Coliseum for the modern world. To others the sport reflects…
Richard Chamberlain is the type of food pro who has a history studded with jewels. Starting with proletariat food training at El Centro College, Chamberlain went on to apprentice at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. He was credited with developing a cuisine christened American alpine cooking while in Aspen, was…
A study conducted by researchers from the Danish Epidemiology Science Center in Copenhagen has found that wine consumption may be associated with higher IQs. Not only that, but the Danes found that higher education levels, an elevated socioeconomic status and optimal functioning on personality scales and health-related behaviors were also…
Tom Fleming graduated from a top cooking school, Kendall College in Evanston, Illinois. He now serves as executive chef at Lombardi Mare in Addison. Marc Cassel cruised through El Centro’s apprenticeship program then gained fame at the Green Room, a Deep Ellum hot spot. Christopher Short, sous chef at Crescent…
Zen den is a big deal. On a Monday evening when it isn’t even open for dining, a manager escorts groups of people through the passageway into the dimly lit room generously draped in gauzy curtains. “This was AquaKnox?” asks one zen den tourist in amazement. It’s hard to believe…
