“The superfluous, a very necessary thing.” — Voltaire. Scott Ginsburg rejected an earnest request to bring a photographer. No pictures capturing the momentous opening of his multimillion-dollar restaurant, Voltaire. Then again, this isn’t really an opening. It’s a dry run, a complimentary private viewing, a guinea-pig tasting, as Ginsburg calls…
In 1981, when Laura and Oscar Sanchez opened their Mexican restaurant in an old house on 12th Street in Oak Cliff, few people traveled to the neighborhood, recalls Jesus Sanchez, Laura’s brother. Still, La Calle Doce (Spanish for 12th Street) mowed a certain swath of culinary distinction, even if it…
Emerald Mist seems little more than an Irish pub that’s been homogenized and stuccoed; stuffed with burgers, Caesar salads, and pastas; and slapped into the ‘burbs. Yet it’s more than that, though you’d never know it from owner Patti Russell. Wedged into a former Street Talk Café location at Campbell…
It was Scout Day at Old City Park. Lots of kids were running around in uniforms, and ugly ones at that. Why do we make kids dress like soldiers from a third world Junta and then force them to sell us cookies and garbage bags? No wonder they’ve discovered lawyers…
One of the most successful dishes served at Susie Priore’s restaurant Suze (it rhymes with ruse) was pilfered. “I stole it from this restaurant in Santa Fe,” she admits. She figured she had no choice but to lift it, once pleadings cloaked in compliments didn’t work. So she wrestled a…
Michael Cox is 40 years old, and that’s hard to swallow. His face is full and smooth, his movements infected with adolescent bounce. He shows none of the harsh etchings the restaurant business often mercilessly carves with its acidic stresses and pointed pressures. It seems there should be at least…
Those swashbuckling servers briskly pacing Texas de Brazil’s dining room with huge sword-like skewers and vicious knives may as well just pike you with one of their weapons and get it over with. This would, it seems, be preferable to the creeping coronary carnage wrought by 14 cuts of slow…
If this third link in the Nuevo Leon troika is any indication, this “Mex-Mex” restaurant is getting a little tired. Fatigue first strikes with the chips. Sure, they’re warm, which is more than you can say for most Mex or Tex-Mex spots. But they’re thoroughly uninspired. They’re bland. There’s no…
There’s a seminal point reached in life’s greatest endeavors — art, sex, drinking Miller High Life — where the experience is so profound, so touching on so many levels, it becomes transcendent. The act and the actor become one, and the interplay dissolves into something greater than the sum of…
Is Italian Café a contemporary hole-in-the-wall with red-and-white checked tablecloths serving superlative Italian grub, or is it a sports bar? It doesn’t take many chews to score this one. Once you’re finished gnawing on the basket of fresh, moist knot bread, it’s evident that the best thing this place serves…
Like everything in Dale Wamstad’s “III Forks Territory,” Buttermilk Café & Market is a puzzle. Is it a down-home country café pitching platters of chicken-fried steak and liver and onions? Or is it a Park Cities estate sale? Whatever it is, it’s curious to behold. Buttermilk is joined at the…
You’ve got to hand it to Gilbert Cuellar. He sure knows how to make a venture reek with the sweet smell of success. A former El Chico Corp. executive, Cuellar is the brain behind Texana Grill, the massive new Texas memorabilia lodge in Arlington that doubles as a restaurant. And…
Don’t expect to drink here, because there’s no beer or wine. Though there is, kinda. Bihn Mihn Market next door sells both, and they opened the place up for us one night, drawing back the steel gate barricading the doors so I could get a sixer of Tsingtao (Chinese brew)…
Jean-Michel Sakouhi leans against one of the murals in his new restaurant. He’s wiry, with a relaxed demeanor that’s rippled by seemingly nervous laughs that leak past his thick French accent. Though he appears even-tempered, he has an independent streak. Maybe that’s why chef Dean Fearing dubbed him the Parisian…
If there’s anything Texans like to do it’s revel in their history, jubilate in their provincialism, bask in their brashness. In short, they like to brag. “We wanted a name that sounded epic,” says Brinker International restaurants alumnus Tye Phelps when asked why he named his new restaurant Love &…
When I first told a friend over the phone I was hitting an Irish pub called Slattery Rand’s, she came unglued. “Why the hell would anyone name a restaurant that?” she asked. “That’s disgusting.” It’s not so much a restaurant as it is a pub, I said. “So what?” she…
There was a mustachioed man in shorts, wearing thick plastic glasses and sitting on a chair propped against the back wall. On the table in front of him, two TV remotes were parked next to a phone book. The remotes worked a large television tucked behind the counter. The screen…
It twirls around once every 55 minutes, like clockwork. And you can time your meal and thus the quality of service to its creeping revolutionary swirl. When we put in our order at Antares high atop Reunion Tower, we were staring deep into Dallas’ downtown core. It wasn’t until we…
Scott Ginsburg leans forward in the booth and tears a piece from the crisp white butcher paper covering the table. He has left his wallet in the car, he explains to the waiter, so he asks whether it’s OK if he just writes out his American Express card number to…
Years ago, in faster times, my friends and I frequented a Thai restaurant on Chicago’s North Side, a place I’ll never forget, though I can’t seem to remember the name. But the decor and ambience stick in my mind. Seat backs loosely attached to the chrome chair frames were gouged,…
Thai Garden has a one strike against it from the outset: It doesn’t have a liquor license. That makes it difficult to enjoy some dishes to their fullest. It makes others hard to swallow. Take the lunch buffet ($6.50), for instance, which mingles Chinese and Thai fare. Under normal circumstances,…
The asphalt stretch from Dallas to Fort Worth is long and hard. Also brutal, at least judging by the wreckage littering the highway recently. Angled on the shoulder was an old Chevy truck with a tall makeshift cargo box fashioned out of lumber scraps. It’s right front wheel was missing,…
