This one’s pretty basic. Barbacks set up, close down, replace empty bottles, fill ice baskets and pour an occasional drink. Well, that’s how we’d answer this week’s Burning Question if someone hired us to write daily briefings for, oh, a world leader with little tolerance for nonlinear expression who doesn’t…
“Nothing here is spicy.” This declaration from a Little Havana server, after a question on the heat level of the beef tips, is perhaps unintentionally tone-setting. After all, Little Havana is pure poseur: A bar in search of a theme, it settles on a Caribbean Island long led by a…
There are two great things about Jaden’s: The restaurant’s Web site does not use the words “hip” and “urban.” It doesn’t use “trendy” or “chic” either, so this restaurant gazelles out of the starting blocks–at least on paper (though there is a Jaden’s talking points memo that says it’s “one…
Move over, Jerry Falwell. Take a hike, Jimmy “I have sinned” Swaggart. Stow it, Ned Flanders. The Burning Question crew chooses not to follow false prophets. For yea, we say unto thee, chef Russell Hodges preaches the apocalyptic vision America needs in these dark times. An example of a fiery…
Sure, you could call Deep Ellum a car wreck. Crime and petty harassment are universally perceived. Ladies–the mother’s milk of nightlife–are leery of riveting in the tongue studs, buckling on the strappy sandals and heading down there for a night of primping and puckering. Bar and restaurant owners are suffering…
Urban bistro. It’s a familiar culinary idiom, but what does it mean? Maybe Paris. Paris is urban. They love bistros in Paris, where the word means “pub.” They love dogs there, too. Sidewalks groan under the accumulated evidence. Leashes are woven through the cafe tables–kinky culinary bondage with a bark…
The first entrepreneur who opens a démodé rum hole and beanery downtown will probably make a killing. We say this because every time we turn around someone is sinking a fistful of boodle into some restaurant-lounge baptized “hip.” We ask: Doesn’t all of this edgy fashionability get redundant? Look at…
Recently, Ben Caudle, bartender at Hibiscus, challenged the Burning Question crew to shatter centuries of cultural indoctrination, shred the very ideals that define our country and ignore billions in advertising dollars. Well, actually he mentioned something about inexpensive liquors comparing favorably to more popular and costly bottles, but we recognized…
Albania. Where’s that? It’s not a country most Americans–let alone Dallas residents–have much familiarity with, and for good reason. Locked into obscurity and solitary confinement throughout most of its history on account of its rugged, mountainous topography, Albania nonetheless has had a tendency to incite violent intrusions. This is because…
We’re big fans of restaurant critic anonymity. It protects us from getting salads where fried capers have been intentionally replaced with bunny pellets, or having our Visa card number slipped to a Moldavian porn site after a review hits the street. That’s why we go to great lengths to protect…
Like a pair of tectonic plates, itching to lurch forward but frozen into place by geological procrastination, Watel’s changes little before making sudden leaps. It was in place on McKinney Avenue and Harwood Street for more than 10 years before scrambling up the avenue not far from Allen Street in…
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our current leadership, it’s the infallibility of America’s worldview. We characterize the French as weak-willed surrender monkeys because they are–simple as that. Russians drink to excess; Brits need a lesson in proper dental hygiene; and Africans, well, they just serve as safari guides…
Nine years is an eon or two in kitchen dog years. “About three or four chef eternities,” clarifies Green Room chef Marc Cassel. Or as of this writing, former Green Room chef. After nine years steering the Green Room “feed me, wine me” stove, Cassel has packed his Deep Ellum…
His business card is simple: Chef Joseph. His trajectory is not. He trained at La Gastronome in the Basque region of France and Spain. He practiced at the Arizona Biltmore L’Orange and the Ritz Carlton in Spain. He was installed at the hip upscale Voltaire before it became that downscale…
So there we were: six martinis into an evening, bleary-eyed, beer goggles at full fuzziness. We mean “Janet Reno looks good to us” fuzziness. That’s when clarity struck. It came in the form of Misty, a friend of Linda. We were at a bar flirting with Linda–we think; the night…
Every once in a while a dining experience is of such a piece that the food is almost beside the point; you’re just content to revel in reality gone slightly askew, maybe with a drink. You-Chun Korean Restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol, but it does serve water. It’s dispensed from a…
Big Fish Little Fish Restaurant and Boathouse, the seafood shack on Henderson Avenue that managed to stay afloat since its 1998 launch before sinking last fall, will be raised in mid-April and reflagged Vickery Park. “It will not be a seafood restaurant, and it will not have the Big Fish…
Whither steak? Haven’t we had enough already? Are any arteries left in North Texas that don’t proudly wear the badge of sclerosis crimp? Is there a credit rating nearby not creaking under the strain of prime beef? Are you vexed by the under-representation of creamed corn, sautéed mushrooms, mashed potatoes…
Here’s to those few pioneers willing to confront the impossible, challenge the unknown and find the answers that unleash human progress. Only the fearless defy prudence in a quest for great truths: Is the earth round or flat? Can we split the atom? Why does Michael Jackson exist? Yet curiosity…
An Open Appeal to Dr. Robert Rey: You may find this hard to believe, but before last week I had never heard of you. I had no idea you were one of the pioneers of the transumbilical procedure, which sounds suspiciously like a financial instrument designed to skirt Securities and…
A couple of housecleaning items seem appropriate before we address this week’s topic. After all, in less than two months we’ve managed to…well, let’s just get right down to the mea culpas: Sorry, Greg, but Kinella is the correct spelling after six martinis; we entered Shade, Cuba Libre and Mick’s…
Italian stares at us perpetually, teasing with promise. It draws us with its sassy Latin vibrato and Ferrari-like lust with hints of Fellini-esque expressiveness. But the stare is an empty leer. What you get is Ed Wood warbling Lou Reed while tooling down the road in a Kia Sorrento. Italian…
