Best mussels 2000 | Daddy Jack's Wood Grill | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best mussels

Daddy Jack's Wood Grill

Are you looking for a briny sweetness from your mussels, as our food critic always does? Or is that a sweet brininess? Your sacred seafood quest has ended. Daddy Jack's in Deep Ellum serves these mollusks up right. Besides being tender and, yes, chewy, each little fella is coated in a tangy garlic-tomato sauce. When this appetizer is placed on a generous slice of sourdough bread, you can make a meal of it, unless you are forced to share with others, which makes eating alone an attractive alternative.

Best fancy restaurant

Abacus

If chef Kent Rathbun's brilliantly orchestrated Abacus is anything, it's fancy. Its rich elaborateness is accomplished in thoroughly fresh ways, both on the plate and in the dining room. The food is complex with lots of influences meticulously merged in a loud, well-creased ascot sort of way. The dcor is...well, it's a futuristic rendering of poshness. The interior is filled with dramatic angles, jarring plunges, and hard surfaces softened by sloping ceiling soffits and rounded points. It's rich with deep, bright reds and dark wood and lighting that add delicate sparkle. If the Starship Enterprise were retrofitted in red velvet and paneling, Bones wore a corset, and Kirk was called madame instead of captain, the bridge would look like Abacus. Warp speed.

Best spaghetti & meatballs

Raneri's

The pasta is firm and tender. The sauce is tangy and rich. The meatball, shaped like a downed sparrow, is bulging with flavor. When you eat it your face gets messy, as messy as it does when you spill too much Chianti down your throat.

Best chocolate chip cookie (tie)

J.D.'s Chippery & Great Harvest Bread Co.

Alex Scott
JD's cookies are big, crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, and warm from the oven. One of these suckers can keep you going on a sugar rush for an impressive stretch. Then, in the throes of a nasty jones, you'll come back and buy another one. The snickerdoodles aren't bad, either.

The Great Harvest Bread Co. gets our nod for "best" because of their huge cookie size that's bursting with chocolate. It makes other cookies paltry by comparison. This is a chocolate chip cookie specially designed for chocolate lovers.

Best romantic restaurant

Lola

This ivy-covered frame cottage with mustard-colored walls, handsome wall sconces, and hardwood floors has the feel of an aging domicile embracing all of its coziness and lyric sparkle. Not only does Lola dish out inspired New American cuisine and well-priced wines, it does it in a collection of snug, intimate dining areas woven throughout. If this isn't the perfect place to seduce or propose, it's at least the perfect place to hammer out a prenup.

Best apple turnover

The Mixing Bowl Bakery

Finely fluted layers of delicate pastry encase a juicy apple stuffing far removed from the leaden, tough-skinned clumps on most bakery shelves. Do not attempt to eat while driving, or you will emerge a pastry-flecked frump. Better to have a seat in the small caf and check out the collection of vintage baking tins and eggbeaters while indulging.

Best wine list

Jeroboam

Though it's written in French, the list at Jeroboam is one of the most intelligently organized and readable we've seen. The first eight pages serve as a table of contents, with wines categorized under regional headings along with bottle and by-the-glass prices. There is also a bin number that cross-references to pages in the list with regional descriptions, tasting notes, and wine specifications. Fifty-six pages of maps showing districts and villages help describe the wines' origins. The prices aren't bad either.

Best home cooking

Traci's Restaurant

We're constantly amazed to discover how many of our so-called friends have yet to eat at this charming restaurant, located next to Texadelphia. It really is one of the best restaurants in town, and one of the most cozy; it's one of those converted old homes that's lost nothing in the translation. And the food is exceptional: We're always torn between the buttermilk-fried chicken and the macaroni and cheese, the latter of which is served in the skillet in which it's baked. The former is soft and tender, the latter is smooth and creamy, and combined, they made us wish Mom had learned how to do more than turn ground round into a ball of "meat loaf" when were kids--how much we missed out on. The sugar snap peas made for an exceptional side dish, the mashed potatoes are a dollop of southern-fried heaven, and we'll even take a side of wilted greens when the mood hits us. And there's always dessert: The crème brûle is the best in town. Try it. It's all the proof you'll need.

Best cinammon roll

A&J Bakery

It's hard to resist licking off the decadent half-inch of real butter cream icing before taking a bite of the dense, rich, cinnamon-infused pastry the size of a saucer. But resist you must to get the wicked, out-of-body experience when the icing fuses with the pastry in your mouth.

Best sushi

Yokohama Sushi

Kathy Tran
Love raw fish? We mean, do you really love raw fish, the kind so fresh it still wants to school? The sushi at Sushi Yokohama is so cool, silky delicious, and fresh, your neck will start fluttering like gills as it goes down. The tuna and hamachi lay across the rice pads like thick little wet tongues, and if you squint real hard, they'll flick at you, which makes them doubly good. The octopus is firm, tender, and tasty. For the heartfelt sushi lover, this is the stuff. The California roll-loving faint of heart will just faint.

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