It takes a lot to make the best version of a Southern dish. Everyone is willing to fight to the death to preserve the honor of their grandmama’s hot water cornbread or collard greens, which means that saying that something like fried okra is better than something your Granny would…
Catherine DownesLike this, but with pepperoni. If Khanh Nguyen is known for anything at his pho restaurant DaLat, it’s his rampant and sometimes unconventional creativity. This is the person who decided to serve ceviche on Doritos, turn egg rolls inside out and serve mimosas made with Tang. Bowls of soup…
Based on the first news to trickle out about C’viche, I was expecting the bar to play significant role in the place’s vibe. The restaurant was supposed to have plenty of tequila, rum and cachaça for mojito’s margaritas and other cocktails. It was meant to evoke the wonders of Baja…
If there’s a Valhalla-like hall for great sandwiches, the patty melt should have a seat. When it’s done right, it’s a perfect thing: A burger inside a melted cheese sandwich, balanced with onions as soft as butter, built, at its best, on thick, earthy rye. Back in college, one of…
Follow the Cheap Bastard as she scours the city, looking for a good — or at least non-lethal — lunch for less than 10 bucks. Dollars you pay for a parking meter right out front on a weekday in Deep Ellum: 0 People freaking out as they realize the patio…
It seemed like a gutsy play: Eureka!, a California restaurant chain, recently opened a location in Dallas, a land where restaurant owners love the word “scalable.” Even more brazen: The restaurant specializes in burgers, and hopes to out-patty the state that practically invented the cow. Step aside Hopdoddy, Liberty Burger,…
Back in May, Top Pot Doughnuts, a popular doughnut chain out of Seattle, planted its frosted-and-fried flag in Texas, opening a shop on Hillcrest Road, just north of Northwest Highway. It’s a funky location, apparently designed to entrap freeway-averse commuters, Preston Hollow families and, well, me. The shop sits directly…
Do you speak Trinity Groves? If you do, then you’re well versed in Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, southern American dialects, sweet nothings and … beer. Well, as of last night you can add Japanese to that list, because Sushi Bayashi is officially open between Kitchen LTO and Resto Gastro Bistro…
The foreseeable forecast frequently climbs past 70 degrees, with bright and sunny skies. That means it’s time for extended patio drinking, in the middle of February, just the way God and Phil Romano intended. At Romano’s Trinity Groves restaurant utopia, the massive continuous patio that spans the front of the…
Central Standard was one of the several restaurants owned by a company called Restaurants-America to open in Dallas and close not long after. Primebar, Park Tavern, Townhouse Bar + Grill, Boca Chica, Mockingbird Taproom — they all went down. Apparently they’re not doing so well in Chicago, either. Central Standard…
The Observer needs freelance writers to cover beer, barbecue and maybe other areas of culinary interest. Think you might be up for it? Read on, and read carefully…
I always feel a little out of place at brunch, if only because it’s a ritual I rarely indulge in. But when our plates hit the table at Meddlesome Moth recently, I felt downright awkward. Heavy, meaty breakfast dishes surrounded me, including a short rib hash just down the table…
My one and only experience with salsa was a traumatic one: I was on a date with a woman who wanted to take lessons at a bar in Washington D.C. They got us drunk and guided us through a progressively difficult set of dance maneuvers. I could handle the basic…
Rodeo Goat is now open in the Design District, and it has goats. There is a goat, saddled like a horse and grinning in a mid-kick, above the bar. Some of the goats look like mountain goats, and some of them, like the one glaring at me from above the…
I started with the best of intentions. After scanning the Internet for factoids about Fat Rabbit, the new gastrowhatever that opened in the old Sfuzzi place on McKinney Avenue, I walked in prepared to order some falafel sliders and a salad — you know, some real rabbit food. But there…
It’s a little hard to find, but find the new J. Crew on McKinney Avenue and, with any luck, your nose will lead you the rest of the way. Bisous Bisous, a tiny West Village patisserie, opened for business this week, and the exhaust fans are perfuming the streets and…
Some restaurants are so wine focused that they employ someone solely to procure, store and serve hundreds, if not thousands, of bottles of the stuff. Other restaurants place such value on cocktails that they’ll bring in a consulting bartender to design their drink menu, if they don’t hire a full-time…
Last Fall, the Dallas area got its very first Vertskebap. The doner kebap chain, based in Austin and spreading across Texas like a brushfire, opened a location in Addison, alongside the Flying Saucer, Gloria’s and a slew of other restaurants in that maze of a development called Village on the…
Red velvet and coffee macaroons, gold-dusted chocolate pot de crème, miniature vanilla bean cheese cakes: these are just a few of the desserts Gianni Santin and Tida Pichakron have been inadvertently using to tease potential customers at their Trinity Groves bakery. The pair opened Haute Sweets Pattisserie, a catering kitchen…
Ever move away from a place, and then come back a few years later and say something like, “man, I hardly recognize a thing?” A lot of people are going to say that about Jefferson Boulevard in the coming years; I’ll bet you a crispy taco on it. Right now,…
It would be difficult to deny that Denton’s Fry Street has a reputation. The complexity of the drinks served at its somewhat-charming, mostly-grungy cluster of college bars rarely exceeds dropping a shot of something into a glass of something else. You’d be lucky to find anything on an area food…
I’ve written about so many new burger restaurants opening I have a story template permanently saved on my desktop. All I have to do is enter in whether the meat is ground on-site or not, the address, who bakes the buns and the word “pink” here and there, and the…
