Restaurateurs have one goal. Not to cook the finest food, but to make a living. To do that, they have to make you want to eat at their place. And not just once–simply because it serves the trendiest cuisine or is owned by the sexiest athletes. The trick is, they…
I’m as tired of fruitcake jokes as I am of fruitcake; they’re as endless as the stuff itself. This year, forget the fruitcake. Send them cheesecake instead. The jokes aren’t really any better, but you don’t have to douse cheesecake with liquor or serve it with hard sauce to make…
The big deal about Cafe Express isn’t the concept – we’ve seen upscale fast food (as if that weren’t an oxymoron) before – but the fact that its owner is Robert Del Grande, a real big deal chef, the owner of the renowned and illustrious Cafe Annie in Houston. This…
I’ve expressed loudly and often my general distast and ill-will toward Cajun food outside Cajun country. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – I don’t think it works, and I resent people continuing to try. Let Muhammad go to the mountain, I say. Most Cajun…
It’s getting to be that time of year when partygoers start working overtime, often covering several invitations in a single night, not to mention a limited number of days between now and New Year’s to hit the clubs. End your night out with Avanti’s “moonlight breakfast”; the restaurant on McKinney…
We’ve got a Green Room, we’ve got a Blue Mesa. Of course we’re curious. Why Yellow? “It’s the word, the color–I don’t know, it just felt right,” says Yellow’s chef-owner Avner Samuel. In other words, the only reason is why not? A refreshing reason–it opens your expectations. When every business…
Chip’s new location in the former International House of Pancakes on Lovers is bound to give Harvey Goff across the street a run for his money–the burgers are better, the French fries are better, and the atmosphere is free and easy, a little less like an outpost of the Citadel…
One exciting night at Cafe Expresso, the patrons sat politely, patiently smiling, ordering more wine and more foccacia while their dinner took as long as 45 minutes to arrive from the kitchen. At another establishment, these people might have walked out–might have lost it, might never have returned–but this is…
There is an unofficial but generally accepted rule that critics aren’t supposed to visit a new restaurant until it’s been open at least six weeks. Obviously, it is a rule invented by restaurateurs, not reviewers. In theory, that cushion of time gives the restaurant time to “iron out the kinks”;…
Eighteen (count “em if you can) different herbs and spices go into the crust at In the Red. They say the recipe came from a pizzeria in Rome–that In the Red’s owner stood outside the back door and bribed a waiter for the formula. It could have happened, I guess…
When I moved to Dallas at the age of 10, we lived way up north at the edge of town, near Forest Lane. Back then, you could catch crawdads and find fossils in the fields by Marsh Lane, LBJ was just a ditch, and Addison wasn’t even a gleam in…
When you drive by The Dallas Farmers Market, it looks like a gourdfest this time of the year. But there’s more than pumpkins in those sheds. My favorite find is Mark, the mushroom man. Mark sells caviar, smoked salmon, and other luxury foods during regular workdays, but every weekend or…
That’s a haunted house there on Maple across from the Crescent. You can’t tell by looking–the place still has plenty of drive-up appeal, the bushes are trimmed, and the porch is painted–but it’s inhabited by ghosts. Not the spirits of the people who used to live there, but ghosts of…
Mai Phom opened the first popular Vietnamese restaurant in Dallas. She deserves a medal. Those were the days when ethnic food meant Mexican food, unless it meant Szechuan. Now Vietnamese is practically mainstream and even has at least one almost upscale representative. Mainly, it has become habitual; many of us…
Location is important, food is important, atmosphere is important. Restaurateurs and chefs and critics love to argue about which is the most important, but no one would argue that one of the three had better be good. People will eat good food in lackluster surroundings; they’ll eat ordinary food in…
Four years ago, a New York-based wine company met with Federal Trade Commission officials, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the U.S. Surgeon General. The subject was a fortified wine called Cisco that was posing serious health risks–particularly to teens. The company, Canandaigua Wine Company, was under fire…
Everyone has to keep up with the latest information in his field. Doctors have to learn about lasers, teachers have to learn about guns, mothers have to learn about Power Rangers. (The white one is named Tommy.) And food writers have to go to tastings. The palate needs constant education…
My dad, one of my regular dining companions, doesn’t like goat cheese. He’ll tell you so with great firmness and maintain that opinion right up to the moment when he puts it in his mouth. “Mmmm…that’s good. What is it?” “Goat cheese, Dad.” He’s not a wishy-washy guy; it’s just…
Talk to me a minute about this term “home cooking.” When is the last time you had this kind of food at home? Fried chicken, wilted greens, chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, chocolate pie, sweet biscuits, mashed potatoes? I don’t think so. Even if you allow yourself a thousand fat…
Real ice cream, the kind with lots of butterfat, seems to be nearly extinct. Culinary Darwinism truly favors survival of the fittest these days, so natural selection is in favor of frozen yogurt. Only a few places, most of them the remnants of chains, still serve real ice cream, scooped…
Bangkok for your buck, that’s what some people look for in Thai food. For instance, my husband is mostly a sensitive, new age guy, but when it comes to Thai chili, a macho streak emerges in Michael. He orders everything full strength. (“I want something hot,” he’ll muse as he…
I’ll bet you’ve heard enough about bagels, already. Coming in on the coattails of the craze for coffee and bread, bagels are especially popular because each one only has about a hundred calories. That’s without cream cheese of course, and without cream cheese, a bagel is just another hockey puck…
