On Main Street in Rowlett sits a florist and other storefronts, a few park benches, a grassy median and Big Star Burgers. The town square vibe is lost out on the pavement—it’s forced and a bit awkward. Only once the Big Star’s large glass and wooden doors are breached does…
Lunch special: Wednesdays, get two beef enchiladas plus rice and beans for $4.25 or two fajita tacos plus rice and beans for $5.55 Sweet-ass wooden chair count: 50 Taco Loco Late Night Taqueria attached to the side count: 1 I recently had lunch at Taco Diner in West Village. What…
Every once in a while—not often, but often enough to prompt a sensory readjustment—you come across a dish with a glaring hole in the flavor profile that somehow fills itself. The sharp edges are there—a razor line of salt or a burst of sour or the balm of sweet—counterpoised with…
Big orange fish count: 12 Empty table count: 10 Lunch Special: $5.99 buffet Vietnam Restaurant on Bryan Street isn’t very inviting from the outside, but the sign painted on the dark window says “$5.99 buffet.” And the parking around the place is always totally filled up at lunchtime, so I…
Lunch Special: Two pieces of rotisserie chicken, two sides, a wheat roll and a drink for $4.99 The good kind of peppermints count: a million Hot sauce in a Coke bottle count: 1 Wedged in between the Condom Sense and Condoms to Go, the Cowboy Chicken at Lovers Lane and…
The things about Tradicion that stick in the mind are the remnants, the leftovers. Tradicion is the work of Ricardo Avila. Avila grips the reins (along with his mother) of Avila’s, a Tex-Mex staple on Maple Avenue for more than 20 years. Tradicion penetrated the odd space that was once…
Olivella’s is outrunning its headlights. Its mouth can’t keep pace with the speed of its mind. Or is it vice versa? It’s not hard to pick up the flavor of chaos. Step into the restaurant. Muscle a path between the people seated at tables and on plush stools at the…
Lunch Special: $3.95 for an entrée and two sides. A/C count: 0 Rumor that Bonnie and Clyde met here count: 1 I almost walked right past the Record Grill. No, not because it’s so scary from the outside that you think crossing the threshold of the building could give you…
Specials: Wednesday is Burger Day with a burger and drink, plus fries, tots or a cup of soup for $5.89. “Sweetie” count: 3 Booth count: about 6 or 8 Grease-up paper napkin count: 2 Generally, I’m really un-OK with people calling me “sweetie.” I swore to myself that I’d beat…
Kavala is like a finely chiseled face with a crooked nose or a chipped tooth or maybe a misshapen beauty mark. There’s a lot to love here. The trick is to separate those things that will make the casual peruser swoon from those only a mother could love. Though the…
Lunch specials starting at $5.29 Small margarita: 99 cents Monday-Friday Free chips and salsa count: 1 Hairy eyeball count from the hostess: 3 “Do you want some more water?” count: 22 I was driving around Oak Cliff looking for a place to eat for cheap (I know Oak Cliff is…
I admit it. For approximately one month, every time I have driven by the new Dallas Saltwater Willy’s Seafood & Steakhouse location I’ve laughed…for two reasons. For one, it’s the name. Another, I like to imagine Willie Nelson replacing the “shotgun” of his iconic “Shotgun Willie” with “saltwater.” This was…
There’s something about good ol’ American traditions like co-ed sporting leagues and state fairs that lend themselves naturally to ingesting copious amounts of the grilled, griddled and fried. We here in the land of grand portions enjoy our concessions, our tailgating and our comfort food. Like a good neighbor, Tilley’s…
Vern’s Place looks exactly like the kind of place my mom doesn’t want me to visit. So, I went. Well, I drove past it for a week and then I went. With some friends. For some reason, the barred windows made it seem a little unwelcoming. But the sign on…
To fully plumb the pleasures of tapas, it is essential to begin with a small cylindrical glass of fino, just a couple of ounces. Fino sherry (Domecq La Ina, $3.95) is a liquid throb that inflames and focuses the taste buds. Sherry sipping is a neglected gustatory ritual. This is…
I’ve been eyeing the Mr. BBQ bus in the convenience store parking lot at Maple and Wycliff avenues for a while. With its American flag and “2 for $2 sides” signs painted all over it, it’s pretty awesome-looking. And cheap-sounding. As I walked up, I noticed pretty quickly that nobody…
“Strip mall” used to mean a massive parking lot, a grocery store, a nail place (with some obvious name like “Nails Here”), a wacky wing place and a Blockbuster Video. Then there might be some labor-of-love restaurant that went under in three months, unless it was a buffet, and then…
There’s a certain lethargy to Stone Horse Bistro, a stiffness. It doesn’t completely unravel the place, but frays are visible through its gaunt earnestness. It appears on the appetizer menu, on the right side, under the heading “charcoal skewers.” Note four selections: lamb, sweetbreads, chicken gizzard and beef tongue. Enticing?…
To understand The Porch, you need to understand the legend of Steve Stodghill. Stodghill is the humble Batman fanboy turned top fuel litigator who got rich investing in Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com. He rubs elbows with George Clooney, Jerry Hall and Elizabeth Hurley. Stodghill is the superconducting super-collider of the Dallas…
Sandra Lee was the oldest of five siblings and, according to her Web site, helped fashion quality meals for her family on their welfare budget. Thus began her Semi-Homemade empire of cookbooks, life and style guides, Food Network show Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee and various other projects that laud her…
Make your way to SushiSamba, even if it’s just for one thing and one thing only. If you can stand the thick swatches of bright pink, saturated red, pureed mango and searing green that merge and flood until diners are capped in bordello halos, if you can raise your threshold…
Maybe you’re a mutant. Maybe you’re the kind of bloke who wants to waddle down to Victory Park—noting the cognitive dissonance of the Blade Runner-esque Victory Plaza big-screen flicker dry-humping the art-deco American Airlines Center—and enjoy a relaxing nosh in a neatly trimmed banquette. Maybe you’re so creepy you even…
