Let’s just dispense with the President Clinton jokes, the innuendo, and the pop psychology barbs right away. Most cigar smokers are not engaged in some bizarre subconscious dilemma between penis envy and fellatio, and only a few prefer flavored cigars. (Monica-flavored–get it?) Freud acknowledged as much when he said “sometimes…
Where do you get good Texas food in Washington, D.C.? Put a Georgian in the White House and everyone makes fun of his accent. A Californian draws attention to dyed hair and plastic surgery. A president from Arkansas? Feel free to call him “Bubba.” Ah, but put a Texan in…
Over the last few years, millions have been marching to Washington and other places for a variety of reasons, swarming the Mall and pestering the media for attention. Let’s see, there’s been the Million Man March, the Million Woman March, the Million Family March, and the Million Mom March. But…
Sea Grill is an old seafood restaurant that moved from its Plano environs on Central Expressway to new digs on the North Dallas Tollway near Trinity Mills. This might have been just a boring location change, one sparked by a group of restaurant owners trying to beat the clock on…
Stars are everywhere in Dallas. And that’s not just some really lame pun, either. At some point or other, everyone who eats out or drops by a bar in Dallas–this obviously excludes parents with young kids–eventually will bump into someone famous. From Troy Aikman at PF Chang’s to Emmitt Smith…
One of the cool elements of the Paul Draper design in Lombardi Mare, besides the ice blues, the etched glass, and the swordfish heads jutting out of the wall above the semi-open kitchen, is the goldfish bowls strung up above the bar. Only they really need to give those fish…
“Ah, doughnuts,” Homer Simpson once said after a huge doughnut saved his life, “is there anything they can’t do?” It’s a rhetorical question, actually–one not meant to be answered. Doughnuts make a poor doorstop, substitute hockey puck, or objet d’art. On the other hand, they fit nicely over the spokes…
Isola Gozo, that tiny Northern Italian restaurant next to Tiffany’s and adjacent to Neiman Marcus in NorthPark Center, is gone. The once cozy restaurant is nothing more than a terra cotta-tiled, mahogany-paneled storeroom holding stacks of chairs, dishpans, marble tables, and other assorted food-service detritus. Named for the tiny Island…
Is there such a thing as a free lunch? Mothers and presidents once dismissed the notion of a free meal as pure fiction. Yet a number of “gentlemen’s clubs”–topless bars to more honest people–around the Dallas area promise just such a thing. Billboards, marquees, and banners placed boldly along Northwest…
“When they walk in, they’re all prim and proper, but give them a couple of hours…,” says Scott Blythe, bartender at the Whisky Bar on Greenville, his voice trailing off into a knowing smirk. “It’s funny to watch.” Blythe is referring to the men and women who hook up after…
Eating at a churrascaria is eating by wandering around. Or at least having many people wander around and pester you with weapons while you try to eat. Because it often seems there isn’t much eating at all to go with all of that wandering around. Once you flip the coaster…
Deep in the snows of North Korea many years ago, a division of U.S. Marines, vastly outnumbered and almost surrounded, fell back toward safety. When asked about the retreat, a Marine officer reportedly snapped, “We’re not retreating. We’re advancing in the other direction.” The point is, of course, that no…
It seems Tom Landis, one of the founders of the Dallas Texadelphia chainlet, reached his student recruitment goal for the food-service English classes he has developed in conjunction with El Centro College and the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association. To make the classes viable, Landis says he needed a minimum of…
The front door of Samui Thai Cuisine is a fascinating contraption. This is a good sign for a restaurant, because if the front door is compelling enough to stop you and invite you to fiddle with it, think of what the food must be like. The huge 500-pound red oak…
Ajiya manager and sushi chef Ray Lin stands behind the sushi bar and slaps a flounder down onto the cutting board. It’s an ugly fish, like a mutant beetle that impels itself via belly flops, the kind of insect you might find under a rock or a pile of rotten…
Beer occupies a spot of heady importance in our lives. It accounts for 88 percent of all alcohol–by volume–consumed in the United States. We bowl “beer frames,” see through “beer goggles,” and develop well-rounded “beer bellies.” We drink, on a per capita basis, about 340 bottles of the stuff each…
Decorum. Grace. Poise. Elegance. Manners. You can pick up the basics watching old movies–Henry Fonda in Fort Apache, Paul Henreid in Casablanca, films in which men dressed for dinner, sat upright, ordered precisely, and never belched. But that was then; this is now. Image and etiquette consultant (yes, such a…
Mignon postures as a Yankee’s notion of Paris during the ’60s: Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve, hip American jazz, and pill-bug Citrons that would look way cool in 21st-century Plano if they didn’t have the reliability and durability of communist-bloc concrete. Just portside of the hostess stand, above a cabinet that…
It might have been a tip-off when general manager Karim Alaoui packed it in for Lombardi Mare in Addison. Then again, maybe not. But just a few weeks after Alaoui skipped the “swank” Venus Steakhouse & Supper Club, a message on the restaurant’s phone suspiciously stated that the phone is…
Psychologists say football brings out our basest instincts, brutal and animalistic. Historians equate the sport with ancient Rome’s gladiatorial contests. Anthropologists find ritualistic behavior. Ah, to hell with them. If you want to discover the true meaning of football in American culture, you must examine the food we eat during…
The best thing about India Palace, aside from some of the food, is that the press kit contains a sheet of “frequently asked questions,” or FAQs in contemporary parlance. No fooling. There’s this question about owner Pardeep Sharma: Q: Is Mr. Sharma from India? A: Mr. Pardeep Sharma is an…
Dallas Texadelphia founder Tom Landis seems a little annoyed with his fellow Dallas restaurateurs these days. The burr? He’s underwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which they’ve embraced his 3-year-old pet project: food-service English-as-a-second-language classes for Spanish-speaking restaurant employees. Landis calls the project Gringo Lingo, a coinage that may have annoyed…
