Kinda Fair, Sorta Balanced
Red or blue? Donkey or elephant? Cowboy or Francophile? Decisions, decisions, decisions. Really, who needs them? What we all need now is a good drink, some comfort food, a night on the town or maybe a little retail therapy to soothe nerves jangled by a long, long, so very long political season. Well, calm yourself, citizen. The Dallas Observer¹s Best of Dallas 2004 guide is here to help. We¹ve combed the city looking for the greatest in entertainment, shopping and dining and compiled it all into one neat package available here for you on the Web. So sit back, fire up your browser and get searching. We¹re sure you can find something to help this year¹s political losers console themselves and the winners celebrate. The rest of us can just go looking for a little fun. And you won¹t even have to flip a coin. Just get clicking.

The governor of New Jersey got more national pub with his Gayo-American speech, but in local terms Laura Miller's public coming-out confessional before the North Dallas Chamber in June was every bit as riveting. The feisty former journalist who ran for office on a pledge of back-to-basics--she waged red-meat political campaigns against "the boys downtown" and their "big-ticket projects"--told the Chamber her husband had called her "stupid" and she was switching over to the boys' team. Yup. Just that simple. Miller said her husband, state representative and asbestos lawyer Steve Wolens, "is a lot more mature than me." Apparently Wolens had told the little lady to ditch that populist thing, put on some big fat pearls and cozy up to the downtown dogs. So now that's her plan. Instead of the streets and gutters she promised the voters when she ran, she told the Chamber she is now focused on the dogs' main deals, like the Trinity River project and redeveloping downtown. One of the most exciting things about Miller's personality makeover is that it comes barely a third of the way through her first full term as mayor. At this rate, we'll get to see at least three more totally new mayors before her term is up.

The governor of New Jersey got more national pub with his Gayo-American speech, but in local terms Laura Miller's public coming-out confessional before the North Dallas Chamber in June was every bit as riveting. The feisty former journalist who ran for office on a pledge of back-to-basics--she waged red-meat political campaigns against "the boys downtown" and their "big-ticket projects"--told the Chamber her husband had called her "stupid" and she was switching over to the boys' team. Yup. Just that simple. Miller said her husband, state representative and asbestos lawyer Steve Wolens, "is a lot more mature than me." Apparently Wolens had told the little lady to ditch that populist thing, put on some big fat pearls and cozy up to the downtown dogs. So now that's her plan. Instead of the streets and gutters she promised the voters when she ran, she told the Chamber she is now focused on the dogs' main deals, like the Trinity River project and redeveloping downtown. One of the most exciting things about Miller's personality makeover is that it comes barely a third of the way through her first full term as mayor. At this rate, we'll get to see at least three more totally new mayors before her term is up.

Ayo doesn't sound like a DJ, and we mean that as a compliment. He's funny without being shecky; personable but not self-obsessed; and enthusiastic but never phony. He sounds like a guy who loves music, and that's endearing, since the dial's full of slick-voiced, self-promoting, station-hopping sycophants. He wears Converse and band shirts, laughs at his own goofy jokes and plays drums in the KDGE cover band, The Ronnie Dobbs Band. And now more people will get to know Alan Ayo. He recently moved from the midday shift to the Edge of Night position from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Readers' Pick

Kidd Kraddick

Ayo doesn't sound like a DJ, and we mean that as a compliment. He's funny without being shecky; personable but not self-obsessed; and enthusiastic but never phony. He sounds like a guy who loves music, and that's endearing, since the dial's full of slick-voiced, self-promoting, station-hopping sycophants. He wears Converse and band shirts, laughs at his own goofy jokes and plays drums in the KDGE cover band, The Ronnie Dobbs Band. And now more people will get to know Alan Ayo. He recently moved from the midday shift to the Edge of Night position from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Readers' Pick

Kidd Kraddick

The guy writes three times a week; he doesn't have Mike Royko's research staff; he's not going to be Mike Royko, OK? Besides, look what happened to Royko. He's dead. Steve Blow is alive, if not edgy. With a laid-back, easygoing, yarn-spinning style, he can also be a darned good reporter when he feels like it. And if he had done not one other good column all year, he would have earned a Best of Dallas award just for the one he did on the Muslim couple who got jeered on the Jumbotron at Cowboy Stadium. In one short piece, Blow weaved together a tapestry of themes about bigotry, football, the hopes and fears of immigrants, and the newly diverse nature of the region. Not many scribblers can do all that in an 800-word column. Blow provides Dallas with something it sorely needs--a familiar and authentic voice. And by the way, in case you never noticed, this ain't Chicago.

If you want columns about the latest b.s. fads in corporate-speak or the 118th column about how a North Texas CEO is putting his company on the right track, you read The Dallas Morning News. If you want to find out the real reason the CEO of Southwest Airlines stepped down (he'd lost face in labor negotiations because of his "meddling chairman," Herb Kelleher) or if you want to know one of the unspoken reasons Arlington will overpay for the dubious promise of development around a new Cowboys stadium (because "among the nine biggest cities in the metroplex, Arlington had the largest increase in poverty in the 1990s"--and it has no other way to revitalize itself), then you read biz columnist Mitch Schnurman in the Star-T. Schnurman is a rarity--a smart, tough reporter who understands business and can explain how boardroom decisions affect a city and its citizens. You'd say that it would be great if he were a city columnist, but he already offers more insight into the way Fort Worth works than any columnist at the DMN has ever done with Big D.

Readers' Pick

Steve Blow

The Dallas Morning News

The guy writes three times a week; he doesn't have Mike Royko's research staff; he's not going to be Mike Royko, OK? Besides, look what happened to Royko. He's dead. Steve Blow is alive, if not edgy. With a laid-back, easygoing, yarn-spinning style, he can also be a darned good reporter when he feels like it. And if he had done not one other good column all year, he would have earned a Best of Dallas award just for the one he did on the Muslim couple who got jeered on the Jumbotron at Cowboy Stadium. In one short piece, Blow weaved together a tapestry of themes about bigotry, football, the hopes and fears of immigrants, and the newly diverse nature of the region. Not many scribblers can do all that in an 800-word column. Blow provides Dallas with something it sorely needs--a familiar and authentic voice. And by the way, in case you never noticed, this ain't Chicago.

If you want columns about the latest b.s. fads in corporate-speak or the 118th column about how a North Texas CEO is putting his company on the right track, you read The Dallas Morning News. If you want to find out the real reason the CEO of Southwest Airlines stepped down (he'd lost face in labor negotiations because of his "meddling chairman," Herb Kelleher) or if you want to know one of the unspoken reasons Arlington will overpay for the dubious promise of development around a new Cowboys stadium (because "among the nine biggest cities in the metroplex, Arlington had the largest increase in poverty in the 1990s"--and it has no other way to revitalize itself), then you read biz columnist Mitch Schnurman in the Star-T. Schnurman is a rarity--a smart, tough reporter who understands business and can explain how boardroom decisions affect a city and its citizens. You'd say that it would be great if he were a city columnist, but he already offers more insight into the way Fort Worth works than any columnist at the DMN has ever done with Big D.

Readers' Pick

Steve Blow

The Dallas Morning News

As the promise of the Morning News' "revolution" fades, it becomes more and more apparent that you can't change a corporate culture unless you (warning: bizspeak coming) hire peak performers and empower them. When the paper hired Keven Ann Willey to be its editorial page editor, it did just that. The editorials under Willey continue to be sharp and sensible. Even when we disagree with their conclusion, at least we know what the conclusion is--a marked improvement from the past 85 years or so. She has a vibrant, ideologically diverse staff that she allows to take the page in many different directions. It means that for the first time perhaps ever, you can open the editorial and op-ed pages of the DMN and be surprised.

As the promise of the Morning News' "revolution" fades, it becomes more and more apparent that you can't change a corporate culture unless you (warning: bizspeak coming) hire peak performers and empower them. When the paper hired Keven Ann Willey to be its editorial page editor, it did just that. The editorials under Willey continue to be sharp and sensible. Even when we disagree with their conclusion, at least we know what the conclusion is--a marked improvement from the past 85 years or so. She has a vibrant, ideologically diverse staff that she allows to take the page in many different directions. It means that for the first time perhaps ever, you can open the editorial and op-ed pages of the DMN and be surprised.

Lemonade. That's what Iris is. Here are the lemons: a space that has been home to dreadful or dreadfully performing restaurants over the last decade; a restaurant owner (Susie Priore) who fled to California to get a master's degree so that she could join the Peace Corps and teach English in Morocco; a Peace Corps mission that was soured by the prospect of a blond American woman in a Muslim country post-September 11; a Dallas restaurant mission spawned to pay off the loans used to acquire the master's degree to service the Peace Corps mission. What kind of person opens a restaurant to get out of debt? Someone who knows that the best restaurants are comfortable, engaging neighborhood haunts with food that intrigues but doesn't frighten. Chef Russell Hodges is a down-to-earth chap who comes up with dishes like a shrimp cocktail composed of two shrimp as thick as sumo wrestler thumbs surrounded by bread points, salmon carpaccio and a cleaved hard-boiled egg. Delicious foie gras, too. And rack of lamb. Don't forget the pan-seared sea bass with cannellini beans.

Readers' Pick

George

7709 Inwood Road

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