Garden Cafe is part hipster, part hippie. It’s as if all the people in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle had consensual big-city sex and made a restaurant baby. Inside, Garden Cafe’s booths are filled with skinny, black-shirt-and-Jeggings-wearing dudes who come here to work on their short stories and hang out…
It’s the rare restaurant that announces its intention to satisfy every possible segment of its customer base with its sign. But for The Office Grill, open since March off a clamorous expanse of the Dallas North Tollway near Trinity Mills Road, its placard says it all: “The Office: Sports, Stocks,…
In 1940’s Belfast, Ireland, there lived the Magee family. Six daughters were born one after the other, followed by five sons all squeezed into a two-bedroom row house. The neighbors on one side were the McCormicks, who had 10 kids. On the other side were the Dunnigans, also with 10…
A few years back, Mario Alfano and Sabino Valle took the old Casa Blanca space on Lemmon Ave. and transformed it into Mario Sabino’s Mexican & Salvadoran Restaurant. Upon entering the first set of doors, we were greeted by a giant dry-erase board that read “Try our new strawberry swirl…
Driving up to La Hacienda Ranch with my mom, all its theme-y ranchified decor made me think for a second that I might be walking into a strip club. I figured, what the hell—there’s nothing like horking down a cheese enchilada with the woman who birthed you while someone sanitizes…
“In here, life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful!” The line from Cabaret pops into my head as we drive up to impeccably manicured Hotel ZaZa, home to Dragonfly restaurant. The valets appear out of nowhere and graciously help us from the car. “We’re here…
The month of May has proven to be an eventful one. The Californian mega-chain In-N-Out Burger made its Texas debut in Frisco and Allen, The Cedars Social finally celebrated its grand opening, and plenty more new culinary establishments have popped up along the way. Not to mention, a few have…
I’m skeptical of the value of pepper spray and sending people to the hospital, two things that appear on the resume of capsaicin, the active component in chili peppers. So when I found Prometheus Springs Capsaicin Spiced Elixir, a bottled tea whose quirkiness and individuality hinges on the shock of…
Spiral Diner is a vegan diner in Oak Cliff. Every vegan cliché is there: massage therapist business cards; dreads; a flier suggesting that we all get together and build a dog park; good-for-you-smelling air mixed with patchouli stank; employees who are all totally, sincerely, Jehovah’s Witness nice all the time…
What a difference a hostess, a knowledgeable waiter and a month can make. I first visited Asador almost two months after it had opened, and I left that evening concerned for its future. After all, there were high hopes. The Renaissance Hotel had undergone a $3-million renovation and much of…
The folks at Jamba Juice have a gimmick up their sleeves. While the smoothie bar is known for its fruit and veggie smoothies, freshly squeezed juices and healthy snack options plastered across their colorful menu boards, turns out the California-based chain has a not-so-secret, secret menu. All one has to…
The first rule of ordering pizza from Serious Pizza: Read the menu. And when you read it, notice that the large pizza is 24 inches. (For reference, a Domino’s large is a mere 14 inches.) The large from Serious Pizza does not, how you say, fuck around. It’s so big,…
Indian food can be a challenge to the unadventurous diner. Too spicy. Too gloppy. Too exotic with its bevy of sauces and fantastical sounding names. But Vijay Sadhu’s new restaurant Sutra seems to have remedied that problem by mixing the old with the new and creating a modern, user-friendly version…
With all the excitement surrounding the grand opening of In-N-Out Burger last Wednesday, it’s only natural that competitors are looking to capitalize on the hype. That’s exactly what local burger joint Twisted Root Burger Co. is trying to do anyway, as we received a press release late last week stating…
The adult cupcake. No dirty pictures on these. It’s the ingredients, not the decorations, that make these for the 21 and over set only. They’re tequila cupcakes from Elizabeth’s Cakes in Plano. And I don’t know if it’s just the power of suggestion or not, but I would swear that…
The sound of the word is gustatory TKO, fit to play the role of an exclamatory bubble in a classic Batman episode: Pambazo! And eating Tortas La Hechizera’s rendition of a pambazo, a Mexican sandwich of white bread traditionally dipped a red chile sauce and stuffed with potato and chorizo,…
It’s 8 a.m., and it smells deliciously of cooked meats, fresh bread, and sausages. It wasn’t my nose alone that brought me here at this hour, though; Kuby’s was first and most-often mentioned when I asked around for places to purchase sausages in Dallas. Inside the store-cum-restaurant on Snider Plaza,…
Not too far west on Interstate 20, past the last of Fort Worth’s low-slung homes and on the road to Weatherford, farm country suddenly replaces all that suburban sprawl. Also fading into the rearview mirror are such distinctive Fort Worth eateries as Del Frisco’s, Reata, Angelo’s Barbecue and Bonnell’s, all…
Here at City of Ate we heard murmurs that, despite not having it on their menu, Chipotle can actually whip up a pretty darn good quesadilla, and we had to see and taste it for ourselves. We awkwardly asked for a quesadilla, and the staff happily obliged. The woman behind…
Inside Weinberger’s Deli in Denton, pinned to a yellow counter is a sign explaining something along the lines that they reserve the right to be rude. If customers can’t take it, they’re probably in the wrong place. I normally can’t take it, but I was definitely in the right place…
Just when you think cupcakes are over and done, Samantha Rush, of Rush Patisserie, undoes them. Or, perhaps redoes them. Either way, she’s retooled the cupcake by creating the Un-Cupcake ($7). It’s basically a miniature cake in a jar. The benefit? It’s adorable for starters, and, as Rush herself explains,…
What’s left to say about Il Cane Rosso that hasn’t already been said? The name and product were Dallas institutions long before the new Deep Ellum storefront opened for business this year. Il Cane Rosso was Dallas’ esoteric floating pizzeria, setting up shop at Chocolate Angel and Times Ten Cellars…
