Best Meat Purveyor 2010 | Jimmy's Food Store | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Meat Purveyor

Jimmy's Food Store

Lauren Dewes Daniels

You can stock the Italian kitchen of your dreams from the imported pastas, wines and cheeses lining the racks at Jimmy's, but the real show's in back, under the bright industrial lighting over the meat counter. This is where Jimmy's works its magic, manned by a crew that knows and appreciates the edible animal. Take a bite of the Italian Stallion, a sandwich fat with seven kinds of meat and two cheeses, and there'll be no doubting this 50-year-old family joint's credentials as a meat-lover's paradise. How else do you explain the pig's head in the display case sculpted entirely of ground meat?

Best Discount Designs

The Consignment Solution

When we've already blown our budget on furniture groups, window treatments or limited-edition prints by local artists, then the first place we start our hunt for reasonably priced accents to properly round out a room is The Consignment Solution. The shop's large showroom always seems to be filled with new treasures. On its website is the boast: "We sell 85 percent of our pieces within 60 days." But, other than the fantastic deals we've found on mirrors, lamps and vases, the main reason we frequent the Lakewood spot is that it isn't nearly as cluttered as most consignment shops. They've left plenty of room between the bars, chairs, chests and desks, so that you're not falling over a couch just to get a peek at the price tag on a table lamp.

Best Health Food Store That No Longer Sells Health Food

Sundrops Vitamins and Nutrition Store

This August, Dallas mourned the passing of its oldest and most iconic health food store with the closing of Roy's Nutrition Center in Preston Royal Village, caused by the retirement of founding guru Roy Beard, who put terms like wheat germ and bean sprouts in the vocabulary of folks in these here parts. So what does that leave? Whole Foods, the mega-giant health food store whose bigness in size, number and price, seems to defy human scale. Whole Foods does have the Whole enchilada, from organic produce to grass-fed beef to vitamins and nutritional supplements. But it's in this last category that we must defer to a David facing this Goliath. Remember Sundrops on Oak Lawn? You've probably been there at some time or another over the last 35 years. Owner Mark Herrin has kept the thing going since its infancy, and along with other nutritionists and a dietician, will dispense vitamins, supplements and advice for the ills that haunt modern man and woman. Sans café for the last 10 years, there is no produce and no overabundant salad bar, just a high-quality array of substances as well as counseling from those officially versed in the complexities of nutrition. They can recommend stuff to get your diet supplemented, your bones moving and your metabolism off slow burn. Sundrops offers a "30 Minute Free Nutrition Consult" with a professional nutritionist. And in an era where personal service means do-it-yourself, the small, intimate store is a rarity and a gift.

  • 3920 Oak Lawn Ave., Dallas, 75219 Map

Best Odd Things

Curiosities

The shop in Lakewood takes eclectic to a whole different level. Run by Forbidden Books and Video founder Jason Cohen and his antique-dealer mom Terry, this quaint repository of collectible treasures mixes antiques, folk art and delicious finds they've culled from flea markets and estate sales. We've wasted—make that invested—hours investigating what's between the walls here. You can find Mad Men-era chairs and lamps or marvel at the weirdness of the found art, tramp art and bizarre religious items (think Jesus framed in bottle caps). When you're craving a strange objet, this place is the answer to your prayers.

READERS' PICK BEST WOMEN'S SHOE STORE

Electrique Boutique

Electrique Boutique

READERS' PICK BEST HAIR SALON

Avalon Salon

Avalon Salon

Best Furniture Store

Z Gallerie

Our critics—i.e. people who read us regularly—often talk as though the Observer staff was composed entirely of weed-smoking, band T-shirt wearing, consignment-store-shopping hippie hipsters. In reality, that description is only true for about 85 percent of our staff. The rest of us are Pottery Barn-catalog-reading, overpriced-shoe-wearing, shiny-bauble-loving consumerists just like most of Dallas. Frankly, we don't want to pay good money for that scuffed-up, rump-sprung couch that your Uncle Fred farted into for years, even if it does resemble something from the set of Mad Men. That's one reason we furniture shop at Z Gallerie (the other reason being that we're married to a grown-up). Sure, it's a chain, but it's a chain that offers modern designs in cool, calm, tasteful colors and materials. No cheesy plaids, no ridiculously overstuffed chairs with handles sticking out the sides. Just sleek, comfortable furniture and a wide variety of accessories to dress up your grown-up home at prices that won't make you pass out—much. The hipsters may snicker, but a least we're not stealing postal crates to build bookshelves anymore.

Best Camera Repair Shop

Garland Camera

There's no helpless feeling quite like bubble-wrapping your $3,000 SLR camera, dropping it in a mailbox and hoping for the best. With any luck, the package won't be lost, soaked through in the rain or smashed to pieces when some pill-popping long-haul driver bites it careening downhill through the Rockies. Easier, then, to drive yourself to Garland, explain what's wrong and get your camera back in one piece the next day. You'll have to lean over the counter and crane your neck for a look at the mysterious repairman in the back—the man works with machines, not people—but the staff up front will be friendly enough, chatting about their latest photo exploits or one of the antique cameras in the glass case, so it'll hardly even hurt to hand over your camera.

Best Gear Repair Stuff

REI

For that funny super-sticky clear tape you need to fix a tear in a tent ("Tenacious tape"), for tubes of seam sealer or replacement buckles for your webbing, that spare hank of no-see-um netting—all those little niggling emergency camping items you really wish you had when you don't have them—REI has the best selection. Of course, you have to be careful you don't fall prey to REI disease and accidentally buy a tent or something when you go in there. The store is in a spot on LBJ that just seems harder to get to the more construction they do in the vicinity. Best plan is to get off LBJ at Dallas North Tollway and try to find your way westbound on the LBJ service drive. REI is between the Guitar Center and Haverty's. But stay off that cell phone or you'll wind up in Coppell, and somebody might sell you a whole house.

Best Babysitter For Your Teenager

NorthPark Center

Your kid just turned 13 going on 16, and he or she walks 20 feet in front of you in the mall, if still willing to be with you at all. The Xbox will keep them down on the farm for a while, but once the hormones begin to rage—and they do younger than ever before—your Max or Grant or Peyton or Mia will want to go one place and only one place: the mall. It's a silly suburban rite of passage, allowing your kids to go to the mall by themselves, and nowhere do parents seem to trust that transition more than at NorthPark Center, the oldest and best-kempt mall in town. You kid yourself by thinking there is security in numbers; there are certainly plenty of Paul Blarts roaming the majestic corridors of this place. And the AMC movie theater can keep them occupied if the food court doesn't, or they may actually want to shop, but mostly they want to be away from you and with their friends. NorthPark may not welcome this kind of clientele, but it certainly makes itself accessible to them. And where would you rather have your teenager learn about the interplay of consumerism and sex–on the streets or in some fancy-schmancy mall, against the beckoning backdrop of Neiman Marcus, the Apple Store and Journey's?

Best Of Dallas®

Best Of

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