Best Fancy Restaurant Where You Can Take the Kids 2003 | Cafe on the Green | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Fancy Restaurant Where You Can Take the Kids

Cafe on the Green

Our 3-year-old was greeted enthusiastically at Café on the Green, and the staff really meant it. They immediately brought out a basket of colorful building toys and an Etch A Sketch, more than enough amusement to sustain the tyke through four courses of nearly flawless Asian-accented cuisine. Café on the Green has a surprisingly good children's menu with fare that's healthier than the usual, including a grilled chicken breast served with spaghetti noodles and marinara sauce. Café on the Green also has another attractive option, available for children 6 months and older--the Kids Club baby-sitting service at the hotel, which costs $5 an hour per child for up to two hours. The service is offered to Café on the Green guests with confirmed reservations every evening except Sunday.

Best Mexican Restaurant

Desperados

We hesitate to point this out because Desperados, the longtime Tex-Mex hideaway on Upper Greenville Avenue, is one of our favorite weekend haunts. We hesitate because part of the reason we love it so much is that it never seems too crowded. Sure, it gets full, but it's not like one of those trendy Dallas spots where you know you'll wait an hour and a half every Friday evening. You may have trouble parking, as the lot is fairly small, but after that it's smooth sailing. The service is fantastic, the food is top-notch (everything from the "awesome nachos" to the puffy, crunchy Desperado tacos to the more expensive specialty dinners is worth putting in your mouth) and the desserts are sumptuous (the flan is worth the trip). Top-shelf 'ritas ain't too shabby, either. Desperados has fine North Dallas and Garland locations as well, but if you want to stay close to the Friday-night action without too much hassle, start your weekend here.

Best Wine 'n' Dine

"Feed Me, Wine Me" at The Green Room

A few times a year, we ship the kids to the baby sitter, dress up like the hip kids (plus 30 pounds) and go out for a grown-up meal. Good food, good wine, good times. Our favorite place in which to do this, as it has been for about a decade, is The Green Room. Hip enough to be fun, serious enough for sophisticated tastes, head chef Marc Cassel's restaurant continues to impress every time out. When we arrive, we always ask for the "Feed Me, Wine Me"--four courses chosen by the chef and four glasses of wine picked to match each course. The result is mesmerizing and instructive: wonderful dishes perfectly prepared, matched with always-interesting vino choices. The best part: We usually end up loaded, take a cab home and make out like teenagers. Sure beats counseling.

Best Jazz Dinner

Watel's

The Observer's Mark Stuertz suggests you "feed your culinary soul" at Watel's, a French restaurant that is one of Dallas' top eateries. But we suggest you experience your fine food with some aural ambience. Chef-owner René Peeters (one of the nicest guys who'll ever confit your duck) offers $29, four-course jazz dinners every other Monday or so. (Check www.watels.com for updates.) With your music you get a soup of the day, salad, one of eight entrées (such as crabmeat lasagna, spinach ravioli with chardonnay and walnuts or petit filet mignon grilled with herbed jus) and a choice of dessert. Music to our ears.

Best/Worst One-Two Punch

Krispy Kreme opening next to Central Market

Lord, how we try to keep healthy--hard to stay that way when the last time you saw the inside of a gym was in sixth-grade P.E. But, hey, Central Market's expansive produce section--some 4,312 varieties of radishes alone, at last count--was gonna help us stay trim. For months we cruised the asparagus like horny frat boys at a sorority mixer; we guzzled the green-veggie mystery swirl, ate only fresh chicken and the still-twitching seafood, bought nuts in bulk and fat-free milk by the gallon. And, man, were we ever getting fit, lean enough to fit into our senior-prom tux, still a lovely hue of blue. Awesome. Then they had to go and open a Krispy Kreme right next door, and eff it if our jeans didn't suddenly look one size too small for Kate Moss. What were we supposed to do? Ignore the red sign, taunting and daring us with its promise of fresh, hot doughnuts right off the assembly line? No. No. No. Our car full of healthy goodness, we inevitably steered just inches and gained feet on our waistline, and we couldn't help it; we're junkies in need of the hot, sugary fix. But every now and then we do the guilt-free thing and get the doughnuts before they're doused in sugar; surely, that's the diet version, innit?

Best Hot Bagel

Bagel Chain

On a recent Saturday, we stopped by our regular bagel provider for a dozen of the everythings--garlic with poppy and sesame and the wondrous addition of sunflower seeds--and were told there won't be a batch ready for 10 minutes. So we waited patiently, like Job or his second cousin, and were greeted by a bagful of the hottest, softest, moistest round of bread we've ever put between two (scorched at this point) lips. We devoured half our dozen before walking out the door--this is to bagels what Krispy Kreme is to the hot doughnut, the closest thing to nirvana since Dave Grohl was just a drummer. So beg Herschel, the owner, for fresh ones when you walk through the door. Wait if you must--skip school, ditch work, put off writing Best of Dallas entries, whatever you must to get those bagels before they cool a single degree. Cream cheese is for wussies.

Best Cachapa

Zaguan World Bakery & Cafe

OK, granted, we don't know anywhere else you can actually get a cachapa in Dallas, but even if we did, we would still think this is the best one in town. This South American bakery is one of our favorite lunchtime hangover spots, and that's primarily because of said dish. The cachapa, the big corn pancake with cheese and your choice (or not) of meat filling, is the perfect big, heavy, sumptuous meal you crave after a night out. Add that to some of the outstanding teas and coffees brewed here, and you have a lunch worth scarfing.

Best Butter

Gumbo's Louisiana Style Cafe

A friend suggested this as his favorite spot for butter to put on bread, and so on a day we were feeling particularly decadent, we gave it a shot. ("I'll have just butter and toast, please. And my friend will have four fried chickens--and a Coke.") We agreed. Not for the reason he said--"Because it tastes good, and I like to put it in my mouth"--as that could apply to a dozen categories of food, drink and lascivious miscellany. No, we appreciated it because it's herbed and spicy. We do this to our butter at home, but why do so few restaurants do so? A few flecks of green, a bit of piquant flavor and then butter becomes not just a condiment but a meal.

Best Vietnamese Restaurant

Mai's

Taryn Walker
We make the trip over to Mai's at least once a week for the clay pot, a devilishly hot (in every sense of the word) mixture of rice, Asian vegetables, rice noodles and, in our case, tofu. (It works just as well with chicken and shrimp.) We'll accept no arguments when stating that it is, without a doubt, the best thing we've ever eaten, Vietnamese or otherwise. Seriously, don't test us on this one. The only strong competition comes from the other items on the menu; may we suggest the supple spring rolls, or perhaps a bowl of spicy chicken soup? Whatever you get, remember to wash it down with a tall glass of the finest iced Vietnamese coffee in town, which deserves its own award. Mai's doesn't look like much, inside or out, but the kitchen is the only place that counts.

Best Late-Night Restaurant

Cuba Libre

You can get something to take the edge off a hangover anywhere. A meat-and-potatoes plate of, well, meat and potatoes? Nothing special. There are plenty of places that'll hook you up. In a pinch, there are also half a dozen 7-Elevens on your way home. But if you're sober enough to want real food, something you can (and want to) remember eating the next morning, look no further than Cuba Libre. Chef Nick Badovinus mixes ingredients like a good DJ, giving well-worn ideas (say, tacos) a brand-new taste. Bonus: Thanks to the beautiful-people spillover from nearby Sense, you still have an outside shot at hooking up before you head home.

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