Sometimes after searing acres of foie gras, you have to take a break and stuff a taco. Just ask George Papadopoulos. The much-lauded opening chef for millionaire Scott Ginsburg’s Voltaire restaurant has just landed back in Dallas after an eight-month sojourn in New York City and Philadelphia to ink a…
When the British created a sitcom based in a professional kitchen, they turned out a consistently funny and relatively accurate series called Chef. You can catch it on KERA during those occasional periods of regular programming in between pledge drives. The best that American networks could produce was a deservedly…
Geode is a restaurant I wanted to like. It’s got guts and lineage, after all. The interior is clean and crisp, with modifications that only slightly deviate from the innards it inherited from Bistral, the casual American bistro that was installed in this McKinney Avenue space by Dallas-based Richmont Corp…
There’s a sight at Lobster Ranch I can’t seem to get out of my head. It’s in the lobster tank, which is behind a display case where other live lobsters crawl tentatively around crushed ice like Raid-misted mantises and huge North Atlantic salmon–silvery with tails that curl like scissors-scraped ribbon–are…
You wonder how long it can last. It’s tempting to put bets on it. But Paris Vendôme is a scene–a scene in a way that only Dallas can precipitate, one swollen from steroids or at least creatine. Its West Village quarters are perpetually surrounded by Lexuses, Beemers, Mercedes, Porsches and…
Last week it was reported in this space that Avner Samuel’s fledgling Bistro K, a kosher restaurant in North Dallas, had surrendered to an entity called Bagel Cowboy. It turns out that’s not exactly true. While the parent company of the restaurant is called Bagel Cowboy Café, the name of…
If the Burning Question crew learned one thing during our interminable grad school years, it was that meaning exists in each action and every creation, that cultural identity emanates from the smallest bit of Depression glass to the largest concert. In every product, design or activity rests clues to our…
Bistro K, famed chef Avner Samuel’s stab at a kosher restaurant he sprung on North Dallas earlier this year, has suddenly shuttered. The only telling details of the demise in the kosher carcass are the disconnected phone and a sign taped in the window that mentions a soon-to-be-coming Bistro K…
This weekend, Hola intends to brazenly flout Dallas health codes. It’s a one-time deal for the Knox-Henderson-area establishment: break the law, do it quickly and get away scot-free. Their fiendish plot involves a happy hour for Dallas dog owners, a gathering of people and their pets on the restaurant’s patio…
It feels like an old neighborhood nightclub in an aging industrial city or maybe New York, one hollowed out of the ground like a gopher den. The ceilings are low. The light is scant. And while it doesn’t have much in the way of coffin-nail clouds on account of political…
9 Fish is difficult. Not because the food isn’t good–it’s great–but because this esoteric restaurant is so infuriatingly remote, hidden deep in the monotonous bedroom community wilderness. Shoved way up in Frisco, on the leading edge of North Texas’ metastasizing strip-mall incursion, 9 Fish demands you traverse Dallas’ most notoriously…
Abbotsford Court, the banquet-facility arm of Wall’s Catering, has delivered an offshoot called “a,” a full-service restaurant situated inside a 15,000-square-foot facility. “a” features little flecks of dining exotica such as prime beef, Hudson Valley foie gras and timpano–a pastry crust jammed with pasta, ragu, meatballs, peas, chicken and mozzarella…
Americans love steak. Well, nobody could afford it in the 1930s, and the government rationed steak in the ’40s. In the 1970s, Californians took over cuisine, substituting tofu and such for red meat. And in the ’80s we considered it a deadly, artery-clogging abomination. But, damn it, in the ’90s…
The brothel burgundy that drenched everything–including the sagging velvet curtains–has been stripped away. The acoustical ceiling has been blown out and replaced by a glossy surface, recessed lighting and crystal chandeliers. Plus, there’s more window real estate now, so you can actually see the Dallas skyline instead of just a…
To launch his next food, beverage and titillation projects, Sipango operator Ron Corcoron is bonding with a pair of new Dallas characters: Eric Kimmel, founder of The Joint restaurant, one-time publisher of defunct Ouch magazine and rag-picking clothing designer; and Sipango bartender Smokey Hill, a man Corcoron says can do…
Some questions just seem more important than others. Who cares, for example, about the status of the Trinity River boondoggle or the merits of a police pay raise? We’d rather find out if Jerry Jones plans to embarrass the city by sponsoring a NASCAR team. But this week’s Burning Question–Where…
Tim Penn, who was the opening executive chef at Il Sole, has blown out of his most recent executive chef post at the lauded Bay Leaf restaurant in Deep Ellum. Bay Leaf owner Ronnie Crayton says Penn cut loose to pursue consulting exploits and to spend more time with his…
Chef Joseph Maher insists the color that drenches his North Dallas restaurant is not orange. “Actually, it’s papaya,” he corrects. “Papaya is my favorite fruit.” Whatever the hue, the textured color soaks Mirabelle’s walls, trim and, clumsily, the ceiling acoustical tiles. There’s a novel relationship between color and fruit swirling…
It’s difficult to approach a restaurant transplant like Roy’s with a whole lot of hope and without a whole lot of suspicion. From the press kit, Roy’s kind of seems like a Hawaiian vacation exhibit in the Palace of Wax, one with a toque-wearing Roy Yamaguchi facsimile tossing leis around…
Cube farmers in corporate America strive mightily for one thing and one thing only: a power title for their business cards. A power title opens doors, you see. In a few short words it conveys far more information than DKNY, Cole-Haan, Lexus or Rolex combined. Hand over a card with…
The interior of The Old Monk is outfitted in woods of varying degrees of wear and significance. Tables come in diverse shapes: from rectangular to square to circular, most of them deeply scuffed. Wooden stools hug little table rims wrapped around building posts and hugging exposed brick walls. Other barstools…
Royce Ring, who left Carlson Restaurants Worldwide’s Emerging Brands (Samba Room, Fishbowl, Timpano, etc.) to launch his own restaurant company dubbed Triple R Group, has landed his first Triple R chef. Tim Byers, who comes from New York’s Thom, a Pan Asian restaurant in 60 Thompson, a boutique Hotel in…
