But the bar's minor flaws are made up for by a brilliant bar snack: Beef jerky, supple as fruit leather and engraved with the most pleasing sweet heat. The tender strips are better marbled than most jerky, and so exude a wonderful beefiness.
Official starters are more elaborate, including fried green tomatoes with disconcertingly cakey breading and a trio of pulled pork sliders sprouting tentacles of fried onion and speared with pickle-topped sticks. The handsome sandwiches are perched on a brick. They're not bad: The pork's fairly bland, but a crisp slaw of carrots and purple cabbage provides a nice snap.
Sara Kerens
Whiskey Cake gets a lot more right than just booze and dessert.
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Whiskey Cake
3601 Dallas Parkway, Plano, 972-993-2253, www.whiskey-cake.com. Open 11a.m.-midnight Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-2 a.m., Saturday and 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday.$$
Beef jerky $6
Fried green tomatoes $8
Deviled eggs $5
Hummus $6
Mussels $12
Pork sliders $10
Bacon and egg salad $9
Hot pastrami melt $11
Holmes farm bird $14
Top sirloin $18
Whiskey cake $7
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Whiskey Cake's at its best when it sticks to basic bar food. A sirloin steak was drowned out by the stench of mesquite smoke, while a much-touted roasted half-chicken was terribly dry (although the sweet potato fennel hash that accompanied it was a wintry revelation).
I much preferred a rather manly rendition of steamed plump mussels, tossed with smoked chili butter and hunks of Cajun ham. While house-cured pastrami had a strange, pickling lime tang, the sandwich was nicely proportioned, and featured a forthright whole grain mustard that could ennoble most any cold cut. Mustard also played a supporting role in the vinaigrette aboard an excellent frisee salad topped with hunks of bacon and a sunny-side up egg.
For dessert, of course, there's whiskey cake, a stout, pecan-studded toffee cake that tastes like something Dickens might have eaten to celebrate the publication of Punch Magazine. I mean no offense when I say the cake has the texture and appearance of meatloaf, bathed in bourbon Anglaise sauce and crowned with whipped cream. I really liked it. I generally don't care for sweets, but it's nearly impossible to avoid succumbing to the charms of whiskey cake—and Whiskey Cake.
