Back in November we revealed that Tony’s Wine Warehouse & Restaurant was essentially a sucker farm (see “Sour Grapes,” November 10, 2005), where customers were consistently snookered into buying over-the-hill wines at over-the-top prices via donated wine classes and tastings. Time will tell who sucks now. Tony’s owner Michel Monzain…
It used to be a Dairy Queen, which helps explain the Sunday-Monday-Happy-Days feeling inside Starfish Seafood Diner. Walk up to the counter to scan the menu board and you’ll see a smiling guy in a white paper hat. A paper hat! That’s Tom McCoy, co-owner with partner Hank Branstetter of…
Pinned to the server’s starched white jacket lapel is a long narrow ruby bar trimmed in gold–a ruby sliver really. Guest: Tell me about your red bar. Waiter: This is the red “i” in Bice. Guest: Say it again. Bee-shay? Waiter: Bice. Guest: Bee-say? Bee-jay? Bee-shay? Waiter: It’s like Beach,…
The European twists are there, to be sure: truffles, snails, pâté and Parma prosciutto. There’s a sort of winsome arrogance to the BLT, which is composed of brie, lettuce and tomato. In a sign of still more haute haughtiness, you can order the BLT with bacon–for an extra buck. But…
If you don’t like to eat in public, Aqua Italian Bistro and Bar is just about perfect. Think of it as a don’t-see-anyone/won’t-be-seen kind of place. On two visits, a weekday dinner and a weekend lunch, we find cavernous Aqua sitting empty. “Are you open?” I ask, squinting into the…
Steak–damn straight–is the mother’s milk of Dallas dining. When imagination fails you, when the prospect of culinary risk numbs the cojones, when the anxiety of outfitting a restaurant without mahogany, polished brass and frosted glass tulip blooms over chandelier bulbs paralyzes you, it’s best to load up on 1,800-degree broilers,…
The Burning Question crew hates to pry into someone’s personal, um, habits. Really. All we did was innocently ask for comment on the subject of pork slabs streaked with fat, cured and smoked and cut into strips. But Nick Badovinus, chef for such hotspots as Hibiscus and Fireside, dragged the…
More than a decade ago, former Duke University English and law professor Stanley Fish published a biting critique of academia titled “The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos.” But potential automotive unsightliness is not why Van Roberts, owner of Lola the Restaurant, unloaded his Point West Volvo dealership to Park Place last…
Let’s put aside pup tents for a moment. The American cowboy is an icon of rugged individualism coupled with stalwart determination, plus a little recklessness thrown in. The cowboy myth is embodied in the stoic, emotionally distant adventurer. You feel it at Cattleman’s Steakhouse. The moniker on the canopy over…
Last week, U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee Victoria Tutterrow slapped the Entertainment Collaborative (Green Room, Jeroboam, Gypsy Tea Room) out of its chapter 11 bankruptcy protection slumber with a motion to dismiss or convert its case, filed last October, into Chapter 7–a move that would essentially force all three venues into…
It’s easy to get a sense of where the cash registers rang up cups of coffee and pouches of teriyaki jerky. You can tell by the cameras fastened to the ceiling tiles. Four of them are visible, and their site lines converge on an area near the four banquettes lined…
After nearly 15 years, Café Brazil is abandoning its Lakewood bed, aborted by a landlord/lease dispute. “They just wouldn’t work with us,” says Café Brazil CEO Brant Wood, who bought the then six-unit chain in 2004. “They wouldn’t put any money into the building…I have a feeling they’d like to…
Call it an extraordinary coincidence. We dropped by our editor’s office to let him know about the subject of this week’s investigation, and a set of Rangers tickets with VIP parking and club access mysteriously disappears from his desk. This, um, chance occurrence illustrates a peculiar outgrowth of conspicuous consumption…
Neighborhood joints, whether bar or restaurant, have always been difficult to define in broad strokes. A few become notable culinary destinations with adept staff and stunning dishes. More operate on our lives as Robert Frost’s mending wall. They set unnatural borders and bind locals with the dull safety of ritual…
have seen the metamorphosis, the changes in customer behavior.” –Dante Picazo Before Dante Picazo began his quest to tickle American tongues with a full deck of Latin flavors, he was running a small bingo room and a couple of blackjack tables at Station Casino Hotels in Las Vegas. This taught…
The weekend of April 8 marked the 14th Annual New Vintage Wine Trail in Grapevine, a wine bash celebrating Texas’ new releases. But it also marked the debut of Grapevine’s La Buena Vida Vineyards under new ownership. Earlier this year, The Puente Group, parent company of two La Bodega Wineries…
Partial transcript from group therapy session, Baylor University Medical Center, March 15, 2006. …screamed in agony. It was like someone, you know, some weed-smoking, tie-dyed vegan took a pair of tweezers and ripped the veins right out of my epidermis. Bibb lettuce: You mean they burn us and breathe the…
For most of the 19th century the most common ill-luck superstition was 13 at a table: If 13 people sat down together at a table, one would die within a year. So what happens if 13 people sit down at a table in a restaurant called 13? Does the solar…
When we began researching this week’s topic, a female acquaintance dismissed the mystery of women cavorting over a table of appetizers. “It’s just like a guy’s night out,” she said. But men rarely gather in a large group to sip house Chardonnay, admire each other’s footwear and snap countless shots…
Parking is hard, so this tells you something. Every slot contains a car–Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and so on. A manager in a crisp suit strolls out onto the patio to direct. No valet on weekdays. But it’s OK to park in the dim strip mall across 7th Street, he says…
Excerpts from a telephone chat with famed former Mansion maitre d’ Wayne Broadwell on his new position. What’s up? I’m blessed with opportunity…I’m a very fortunate person. I’m the director of operations for Riccardi’s Restaurant in the Quadrangle. What does that mean? I oversee the daily operations, and I’m in…
Let’s try out that old Sesame Street game, shall we? One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn’t belong. Did you guess a neighborhood sushi restaurant in Cowtown? Maybe a popular Japanese destination owned by a native of Taiwan who received her culinary…
