Best fusion foray 2000 | Chow Thai Pacific Rim | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best fusion foray

Chow Thai Pacific Rim

There's a curvaceous bar with a top made of stained concrete. The sector containing the bar is separated from the dining area by a screen made of chain mail, which kind of makes you wonder what the staff does with the cutlery when the barflies get riled. Chow Thai Pacific Rim also has a natty little entrance chamber, a kind of acclimation zone to help your body transition from the stylized asphalt strip-mall wasteland into this fusion fashion. Chow Thai Pacific Rim is a mishmash of Asian influences embellished with...God knows what. Slipped in there with the Pacific Rim rolls, ahi tartar, miso soup, and Hoisin-marinated chicken are New American dishes such as grilled lamb chops and frog legs with chilies. What's surprising is the number of thrilling risks they'll take.

Best ceviche

Ciudad D.F.

This is hands-down the best bowl of lime-seared seafood in Dallas. Scraps of tender, firm octopus, conch, and shrimp are crammed into a margarita glass with key lime, cilantro, diced tomato, papaya, pineapple, and mango. The flavors are prodded with vanilla and a little clump of pickled onion that adds a jagged edge of raciness. It's as sexy as it is satisfying.

Best pancakes

The Landmark at the Melrose Hotel

Want the best pancakes? You'll have to go to a four-star hotel to get them. The 92-seat, award-winning Landmark Restaurant in the Melrose Hotel serves the best stack--tall, fluffy, and never mushy, with indescribably light and aromatic fruit flavors. To those further inclined, check out the restaurant's breakfast, lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch, featuring foods from Asia and the Americas.

Best seafood restaurant

S & D Oyster Company

Nothing fancy here, just basic ocean livestock. It's fast, simple, and indelicate. But it's the best fast, simple, and indelicate you'll find. The oysters--at just $6.95 a dozen--are clean and firm. Servers whip up a sauce right at your table with ketchup, horseradish, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, and a squeeze of lemon. If we tried that, we'd end up with a batch of Braveheart special effects. Peel-and-eat shrimp are succulently lush. Broiled fish is extraordinary: fresh, moist, and well seasoned. Plus, they have gumbo and oyster loaf sandwiches. Tip: Mix in a little tartar sauce and Tabasco with that oyster loaf, and you've got a swell hair gel.

Best wrap

Wall Street Deli

The best thing about a wrap is that they are healthy (or so goes the perception). Bread has somehow become the enemy for dieters, and the flour or spinach wrap has taken its place as the vehicle for sandwiches. No one makes wraps as tasty (and, if you like, unhealthy) as Wall Street Deli, which boasts a dozen stores in the metroplex. Some staffers call the wraps "belly-busters," and with good reason. The chicken caesar features meaty chunks of processed fowl cubes resting in a soupy bed of ranch dressing and feta and mozzarella cheeses. A roasted veggie wrap is a healthier, but not smaller, option. Of course, Mexican food has dominated the wrap world for centuries. Fajitas and burritos cornered the gastronomical market until people renamed tortillas "wraps." But why complain? Since when has wrap been limited to one language?

Best gnocchi

Mangia e Bevi

In most places they come out like little gum grommets--or transaxle grease curds. But at Mangia e Bevi, they look like green little scallops (they're drenched in pesto). These potato dumplings are tender, fluffy, and consistent--like a brood of cloud puffs. Plus, they're safe for most dental work.

Best produce (tie)

Farmers Market & Groceryworks.com

The city keeps meddling with its venerable Farmers Market, trying to figure out ways to fix something that ain't broke, but those trusty farmers from East Texas and South Texas and Oklahoma just keep on truckin' in, bringing those great tomatoes, fresh-shelled pintos, pattypan squash, peaches, and watermelon. Shop there often enough, and you'll get good at picking out the choicest stuff. Prices are often good to great. You may forget what vegetables ripened under a chemical spray in the refrigerated trailer of an 18-wheeler taste like.

As if to prove all the skeptics wrong, Dallas-based Internet food retailer Grocerworks.com apparently insists on making sure its customers get produce from the Web as high-quality as if they squeezed the little peaches and plums themselves at the store. The first time you place an order with Groceryworks.com, you get a bag of produce gratis. And after that they only deliver fresh, plump, and ripe vegetables and fruits. Go ahead, try it, the delivery staff won't even accept gratuities. "We aren't allowed to accept tips," they'll explain. "Our company doesn't want buying from us to cost any more than the grocery store."

Best middle eastern restaurant

Basha Mediterranean Restaurant

This restaurant serves inspired saj (a thin, flaky tortilla-like bread), smooth hummus, refreshing tabbouleh, and tangy labni. Plus there's the "tent room," where you can sit on a low couch and stuff yourself with kabobs or maybe some sauted lambs brains. Think about that.

Best burritos

Chipotle Mexican Grill

Now that we think about it, it might not be fair to call what Chipotle Mexican Grill serves as "burritos." It just seems to diminish the restaurant's bigger-than-a-baby's-leg concoctions, full Mexican dinners wrapped in a flour tortilla. Too-big portions of rice, black beans, steak or chicken, guacamole, sour cream, and hot sauce that's actually hot--all assembled in a few seconds while you watch. We're getting hungry just thinking about it.

Best patio

Patrizio

In Dallas, restaurant patios are usually the places where the natives go to watch Michelins kiss parking-lot abutments. You can do that at Patrizio's too, if you squint. Furnished with marble-topped tables and padded wrought-iron chairs, Patrizio's patio is more inviting than the typical cement slab. It's cordoned with an iron gate tangled with ivy. A big tree grows from the center of the space to create shade and target-practice perches for birds. It's well-equipped with heaters in the cool months, fans in hotter months, and other little details that make you feel like you're someplace else, yet enough Highland Park Village energy seeps through to keep things interesting.

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