Babe’s is a family-style restaurant, so we descended on it in full-strength family style, which, frankly, can be formidable. Our waitress was not one to be intimidated, however. She was tiny, young, and sassy, with a clever comeback for every query or comment. About half of our extremely extended family…
As I write this, it’s been just a week since Andre Soltner retired. Now that’s hardly big news to the general population (raise your hand if you know who he is), but to folks in the slice of the pie chart that makes food and wine its business, this is…
Quick–before it gets too hot. It’s the time of year when one should forego the restaurant lunch and take a sandwich to the park. And here are some of the great sandwiches of Dallas: any of the panini at Arcodoro; the chicken salad at Marty’s; the incredible layering of tomato,…
I was supposed to meet friends for supper at 7 that evening, leaving everyone time to do their laundry later. But my meeting ran late, then my after-meeting ran late, and then I found out my car was threatening me with that irritating fuel light which means that, in reality,…
The return of the Noonday onion to the market and table is as sure a sign of the season as azaleas and Easter lilies (though perhaps not as poetic). The number A&M gave to its Texas version of the honeyed Vidalia onion strain is 1015; Noonday onions are 1015s grown…
When the man whom I usually refer to as “my dining companion” first started traveling to Japan on business 11 years ago, he stayed at the luxurious New Otani Hotel in Tokyo. He would come back two weeks later, his bags stuffed (no, not with towels) with presents for me…
Have a good time and do a good deed, all at once. Share Our Strength’s “Taste of the Nation” is the restaurant industry’s effort to stamp out hunger. Every year, in the same week, food and wine tastings take place in more than 100 cities nationwide, with the proceeds going…
Driving north on the Tollway last week once again, I made a vow: I won’t complain any more about going north. No more diatribes about cookie-cutter developments and Dallas clones, I promise. I’m sure you’re as sick of reading them as I am of writing them. I’ll just make the…
Okay, walk east on the sidewalk in front of San Remo (the one on Frankford Road) and you’ll come to the Rice Boxx. It’s just a Chinese take-out, but since I happened to know it was designed by some talent, and since I also knew it was owned by the…
Warnings are a big topic these days–when the world is such a hazardous place, and we can’t seem to be trusted to take care of ourselves anymore. I read in the paper a week or so ago that because of a tragedy involving children and balloons, a watchdog group is…
There’s one good thing about Tuesdays: hot duck fat. Le Char-donnay serves confit of duck every Tuesday, and if the week looks long, I suggest you stop in for lunch or dinner and take comfort in confit. To prepare confit, a country specialty of Burgundy, you cook the duck meat…
The whole population of this neat-as-a-bandbox (what is a bandbox?) little restaurant was facing the rear wall to watch a green parrot pivot on its perch to reach a morsel of food, reaching, reaching…till finally it overreached itself, capsized, and fell off its perch. Who ever saw a bird fall?…
Fried chicken was the favorite food of my childhood, probably because we hardly ever had it. We came home from church on Sunday not to chicken but to leg of lamb, a legacy of Anglophile grandparents. My mother didn’t like to fry chicken because it was “too messy,” which it…
On my restaurant critics’ top 10 list of most-often-asked questions–along with “What’s your favorite place to eat?” (home) and “Why aren’t you really fat?” (stress)–is, “What’s a good place to go for seafood?” Until now, I haven’t had a really good answer. Cafe Pacific is good, Newport’s is fine, there…
You may or may not remember that a few weeks ago I went off on a tangent about the State of the Cocktail. I received a little mail from that tirade, and I’ll be reporting on the results over the next few weeks–that is, at the slow pace of my…
The Metroplex is a myth. D-FW is actually and appropriately more like a big mall than a single metropolitan area, a messy conglomerate of distinct communities with two main “anchor stores,” linked only by geography and a highway. Everyone knows how different Fort Worth and Dallas are: Fort Worth is…
Five handwritten pages from a devoted diner–how could I ignore this request to check out her favorite pizza place? A transplanted New Yorker yearning for the pizza joint of her childhood, she discovered a menu attached to her doorknob one day which led to the pizza of dreams at a…
The restaurant with the romantic reputation has become even more so. St. Martins is one of the few late-night places that lets you meet the morning in sophisticated style. In addition to the selections from their regular menu available from 10 p.m. till 1:30 a.m., the kitchen is now offering…
This is Capriccio’s third move–it opened in the old house on Maple, then moved to the reconstructed San Simeon space on McKinney. In December, it moved again, into the old house once occupied by the ever-lamented Routh Street Cafe. Capriccio’s most recent space on McKinney had been completely redone, transformed…
Everyone loves to be the one “in the know,” the one in touch, the one who knows what’s hot and what’s not. Everyone loves a secret–if they’re in on it–and from the first day it opened, Gloria’s was everyone’s favorite secret. “Hey, I know this great little Salvadoran place.” (Salvadoran–what’s…
How sweet it is. Lakewood is one of the prettiest parts of Dallas, but it lacks certain urban quality-of-life requirements. You can’t get good groceries there, or go to a first-run movie. Good restaurants are scarce and–until recently–to get a good cup of espresso you had to drive across, or…
We live in scary times. And what’s the first thing to do when you get scared? Tell the truth: you turn around and run. Hide under the bed. Find your mommy. Eat something. That’s why, I theorize, comfort food has become the sure bet of the food business. It began…
