When we get hold of a good word, we like to run it into the ground. Especially when it makes us appear smarter than our associate degree in kitchen physics would imply. But not everybody feels this way, especially longtime Dallas chef Avner Samuel, who is now at Bistro A…
Americans have always had problems with the old question of image vs. reality. For example, hard-partying George W. Bush represents good old-fashioned morality while former seminary student Al Gore suffers on issues of trust. People buy Saturns because of the savings gained from one-price buying, but end up paying 26…
Fruitcakes are crucial to Western civilization. They’ve been around since Roman times–perhaps the same fruitcake–when Russell Crowe and his ilk feasted on a mix of pomegranate, pine nuts, and raisins mixed into a barley-mash batter. No wonder the ancients developed vomitoriums. The English perfected fruitcakes in the Middle Ages and…
One good thing about The Ranch House is that if it weren’t for Interstate 30 just a few yards away and Lake Ray Hubbard (which is really just a gully with big hips) nearby, you’d think you really were on a ranch. And I’m not necessarily talking about the décor,…
Whit Meyers says the last thing he wanted was a shiny new penny, and he didn’t get it. Jeroboam, the new dining spot he and his partners in the Entertainment Collaborative developed in the Kirby Building, is a little clumsy, a bold portrayal of frays. Yet this is perhaps the…
He created the defunct Italian restaurant chain Sfuzzi. He and Phil Romano founded Nick & Sam’s, though now he’s divorced from the project. Today, Patrick Colombo is in the predictable swamp of construction delays with his pair of projects slated for the upcoming West Village project at Lemmon and McKinney…
It’s cold on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, but it’s sunny. It’s only a few days before the holiday season kicks in for real, before the busiest travel weekend chokes the freeways and confounds Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, before retailers grin and brace themselves for the certain onslaught of prosperity-induced holiday…
This time of year was hog-killing time in the old South. Back in the days before air conditioning, Prada, dentistry, and good taste forever altered the Southern states and their cherished heritage, families gathered every November to butcher a few hogs and lay up meat for the year. They smoked…
Frankie’s Sports Bar and Grill is a typical picture-tube-studded suds dispenser with a pool table, a smattering of video games, a few gruff bartenders, and a rec-room-like atmosphere with a sunken dining area. What isn’t so typical about this sports bar is that it has valet service (which is just…
I’m assuming the thing that is so thrilling about opening a Mongolian grill is that it’s dirt cheap to operate and has fat margins. There’s a specified roster of ingredients to stock and prep, labor is limited to drink-fetchers, a busboy, and a spatula swashbuckler who hovers over a griddle…
After sitting vacant since February with little more than a flock of non-rent-paying origami birds hanging from the ceiling to keep it occupied, the space that once housed Anzu, that hip, cutting-edge (at the time) Japanese/Pacific Rim exploit that shuttered after a bankruptcy filing, has been taken over. The prime…
It’s not unusual for men to hit on Missy Kutzor. But when a guy walked up to her during lunch at The Olive Garden, it caught her off guard. “He looked me up and down and said hi,” Kutzor recalls. “I just ignored him.” The strikeout artist remains unknown (and…
Americans consume too much fat. Or so we’re told. Yet no less an authority than The Joy of Cooking contends that “avoiding it altogether is neither beneficial nor desirable.” Each gram of fat contains about nine love-handle-enhancing calories. But each gram of fat also offers such necessities as vitamin K,…
Ron Ferguson wrestles with the hard realities of economics every day. The general manager of the Coppertank Brewing Company in Dallas needs three or four wait staff and a few other people. “It’s pretty tough to hire right now,” Ferguson says. “There are a lot more restaurants and clubs than…
The restaurant’s press kit says that when you discover Jimmy Lu’s, there’s no turning back. Apparently, that’s not exactly true. Jimmy Lu’s Chairman and CEO Chris Harrison has sold out of the roughly 4-month-old North Dallas restaurant serving Asian collision cuisine, leaving the reins in President Jimmy Lu’s hands. Harrison…
Great questions confound the greatest of minds, forcing even legendary figures to shrivel up and crawl away in pure defeat. How do you untie the Gordian knot? That one frustrated Alexander the Great so much that he hacked at the thing with a sword. What is the meaning of life?…
The interesting thing about Baja California Grill is that it was never meant to be named after that tendril of Mexican desert jutting out of the end of California. It was supposed to be called Hotel California Grill. But this got the panties of the band The Eagles in an…
We guess there’s more than one way to get burned in the restaurant business–even if you’re a nameplate that’s been floating around the Dallas digestive tract since 1948. But somehow, this one just seems a bit more, how shall we say, tear-provoking than the typical scorch, even for our cynical…
One day this summer, a thief walked off with a giant plastic sculpture from a restaurant in Tarpon Springs, Florida. The sculpture weighed 300 pounds and resembled a large rock formation–rather useless to the outside world, in other words. No one in the restaurant industry was surprised. “If it’s not…
At some point in time, humans discovered sugar, salt, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, high-fructose corn syrup, and all of the other ingredients that make those hours between meals worthwhile. Only a few infallible individuals–the pope, Al Gore–or those of exquisite taste can ever hope to avoid the millions of empty…
What’s most surprising about Thai Tango is not the food, or the décor, or how snazzy the logo looks in lights illuminating its own little corner of a strip mall still under construction. It’s how far the place is from Dallas. Compost heaps and dung berms aside, when I think…
Sugarcane is rampant in Cuba. The primary agricultural commodity in that country has, over the years, pushed other vegetation out of existence. Land once covered with palm and banana trees is devoted to the succulent grass. Sugarcane is the basis of that most Caribbean of spirits, rum, which in turn…
