The malling of America is a fact. Malls aren’t just off-centers for the suburbs; city downtowns are dead, small towns have been shattered by Wal-Marts, and malls are the new middle of modern American communities. They’re not mere shopping centers, they’re cultural (such as it is) centers, social centers, recreational…
Deadlines can have a disastrous effect. I speak from experience, of course. I’m sure all writers think deadlines are disastrous; certainly they feel like impending doom. (Why do you think they’re called deadlines?) Deadlines put an artificial end to the creative process and can force you to sacrifice quality for…
Soup of the evening: the wonderfully therapeutic effects of the tom kha gai in last week’s review of Royal Thai made me think of other great soups around town, because it’s the season for soup-slurping. So don’t forget the smoked chicken and grilled corn chowder at Beau Nash, the canh…
‘Tis the season when the food media go nuts trying to offer you diet plans and ways to remedy your supposed holiday excess. Just to do my bit toward alleviating anxiety, I’d like to point out Rodolfo’s, the Italian restaurant in Preston Royal that first brought you “Ital-Lite” cuisine and…
To pick up a recurring theme of these reviews, I’d like to remind you once again I’m a snob. This week’s example concerns snobbish preconceptions: I expected to hate The Italian Oven. I’m sure most of my high-falutin’ foodie friends would hate it, and I’m glad I didn’t invite any…
There are several criteria I use when judging a restaurant, but I don’t use all of them all the time. Food, setting, service, atmosphere, and wine selection are all important but not necessarily equally important. Sometimes one thing is more important than another. After all, there are different expectations and…
I am a city girl. I grew up in cities–Southern cities, but definite metropolises. I did not grow up eating greens, red beans, or okra regularly, and my Mama, a wonderful cook, refused to fry chicken–unless we were going on a trip, when she served it in the car accompanied…
Restaurateurs have one goal. Not to cook the finest food, but to make a living. To do that, they have to make you want to eat at their place. And not just once–simply because it serves the trendiest cuisine or is owned by the sexiest athletes. The trick is, they…
I’m as tired of fruitcake jokes as I am of fruitcake; they’re as endless as the stuff itself. This year, forget the fruitcake. Send them cheesecake instead. The jokes aren’t really any better, but you don’t have to douse cheesecake with liquor or serve it with hard sauce to make…
The big deal about Cafe Express isn’t the concept – we’ve seen upscale fast food (as if that weren’t an oxymoron) before – but the fact that its owner is Robert Del Grande, a real big deal chef, the owner of the renowned and illustrious Cafe Annie in Houston. This…
I’ve expressed loudly and often my general distast and ill-will toward Cajun food outside Cajun country. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – I don’t think it works, and I resent people continuing to try. Let Muhammad go to the mountain, I say. Most Cajun…
It’s getting to be that time of year when partygoers start working overtime, often covering several invitations in a single night, not to mention a limited number of days between now and New Year’s to hit the clubs. End your night out with Avanti’s “moonlight breakfast”; the restaurant on McKinney…
We’ve got a Green Room, we’ve got a Blue Mesa. Of course we’re curious. Why Yellow? “It’s the word, the color–I don’t know, it just felt right,” says Yellow’s chef-owner Avner Samuel. In other words, the only reason is why not? A refreshing reason–it opens your expectations. When every business…
Chip’s new location in the former International House of Pancakes on Lovers is bound to give Harvey Goff across the street a run for his money–the burgers are better, the French fries are better, and the atmosphere is free and easy, a little less like an outpost of the Citadel…
One exciting night at Cafe Expresso, the patrons sat politely, patiently smiling, ordering more wine and more foccacia while their dinner took as long as 45 minutes to arrive from the kitchen. At another establishment, these people might have walked out–might have lost it, might never have returned–but this is…
There is an unofficial but generally accepted rule that critics aren’t supposed to visit a new restaurant until it’s been open at least six weeks. Obviously, it is a rule invented by restaurateurs, not reviewers. In theory, that cushion of time gives the restaurant time to “iron out the kinks”;…
Eighteen (count “em if you can) different herbs and spices go into the crust at In the Red. They say the recipe came from a pizzeria in Rome–that In the Red’s owner stood outside the back door and bribed a waiter for the formula. It could have happened, I guess…
When I moved to Dallas at the age of 10, we lived way up north at the edge of town, near Forest Lane. Back then, you could catch crawdads and find fossils in the fields by Marsh Lane, LBJ was just a ditch, and Addison wasn’t even a gleam in…
When you drive by The Dallas Farmers Market, it looks like a gourdfest this time of the year. But there’s more than pumpkins in those sheds. My favorite find is Mark, the mushroom man. Mark sells caviar, smoked salmon, and other luxury foods during regular workdays, but every weekend or…
That’s a haunted house there on Maple across from the Crescent. You can’t tell by looking–the place still has plenty of drive-up appeal, the bushes are trimmed, and the porch is painted–but it’s inhabited by ghosts. Not the spirits of the people who used to live there, but ghosts of…
Mai Phom opened the first popular Vietnamese restaurant in Dallas. She deserves a medal. Those were the days when ethnic food meant Mexican food, unless it meant Szechuan. Now Vietnamese is practically mainstream and even has at least one almost upscale representative. Mainly, it has become habitual; many of us…
Location is important, food is important, atmosphere is important. Restaurateurs and chefs and critics love to argue about which is the most important, but no one would argue that one of the three had better be good. People will eat good food in lackluster surroundings; they’ll eat ordinary food in…
