Like a phoenix, Dallas Beer Kitchen has quickly and dramatically risen out of the ashes. It closed forever on January 24, citing an inability to make money while construction tore up its stretch of Greenville Avenue. And, having closed forever, the bar reopened on Friday, January 29. In the intervening…
The New York City cultural world has heard the news that Dallas Symphony Orchestra maestro Jaap van Zweden will be taking over the New York Philharmonic, and its reaction is a resounding “meh.” Many critics are underwhelmed by van Zweden’s modest international stature, but there is also more than a…
Already one of the conducting world’s biggest hoarders of frequent flier miles, van Zweden will be New York’s Music Director Designate during the 2016-17 season, assuming the full duties of his role in fall 2017. His first full-time year in New York will also be his last full-time year in…
The Dallas pizza scene can’t get much better. Name a style, and you can find it. Neapolitan pies, Roman-style crusts, New York, Chicago deep dish and, thanks to ZaLat, even a bowl of pho on a pizza. But we want to make sure you have another of our city’s strengths…
Dallas frequently gets knocked by newcomers for its lack of a good Jewish deli. The response, usually, is to cite Deli News, the north side’s outpost of New-York-style bagels and pastrami on rye, but another North Dallas landmark offers an equally old-fashioned experience from another center of Jewish culture: Israel…
Adisil, a fast-food chain based in North Carolina, has opened its first Texas location in Irving. The chain’s goal is to be the Indian version of Panda Express, and judging from a quick lunch visit, they have the “food” part down. The “fast” part is more of a work in…
If Auric Goldfinger had been a food critic, the Bond villain might have said: One restaurant is happenstance. Two restaurants is coincidence. Three restaurants is a trend. With Filament, Dallas officially has a new trend, kitchens that infuse Texas classics with international flavors. Filament flips through the pages of a…
Welcome to How Hipster Is It, in which we try food and drink from popular Dallas bars and restaurants to evaluate their trendiness. We evaluate the establishment’s general atmosphere, plus its most hipster menu item, using the world’s universally recognized unit of hipsterness measurement, the Bill Murray. This week: How…
Grilled starch and cheese: Pupusas are a food so simple that everyone should love them. We’ve waxed rhapsodic about “the unsung heroes of Latin cuisine” before, and since that last update, the joys of griddle-fried tortillas stuffed with cheese remain bountiful. But that list of places to find pupusas focused…
Welcome to How Hipster Is It, a new series where we try food and drink from popular Dallas bars and restaurants, and ask, how hipster is it? We evaluate the establishment’s general atmosphere, plus its most hipster menu item, using the world’s universally recognized unit of hipsterness measurement, the Bill…
Larded Jack Snipe. Bermuda Potato. Hamlet’s Omelettes. They’re all real restaurant menu items from our past, and they’re all available for browsing at the New York Public Library’s dazzling new Internet time-waster, What’s on the Menu? An archive of digitized restaurant menus dating all the way back to 1851, What’s…
Google “shrimp sausage” in quotation marks. The results, you’ll find, are recipes for shrimp and sausage as two separate ingredients, not one crazy thing. After five whole pages of results for “Creole shrimp and sausage,” paella, gumbo, pasta, jambalaya, kabobs and the like, finally one hit turns up for shrimp…
The famous (and perpetually disgruntled) 19th century poet Charles Baudelaire once said, “With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.” We’re taking him at his word and skipping straight to the wine. Here’s where to get started and make the ghost of Baudelaire happy. 1…
One of the first things you learn when you’re learning about wine is to never order the cheapest bottle on a restaurant’s wine list. It’s a trap, a bottle of bad juice meant to insult the taste buds of the kind of customer who deliberately buys the least-expensive thing. Or…
Dallas is the booziest city in America. We spend more of our income on drinking than any other city, and it’s not just our thriving craft beer and cocktail scenes that are keeping the locals happy. Local restaurants have developed deep, interesting and affordable wine lists to pair with the…
There’s a wine called “The Gambler” on offer at Patrizio, Uptown’s newest Italian restaurant. The Gambler isn’t an especially good glass of wine, but it is a good mascot for the eatery, since Patrizio’s food, drinks, service and even the bill are a roll of the dice. One moment you’re…
Middle Eastern grocery stores can be pretty bewildering places, with tiny aisles, bewildering organization, frantic activity levels and products described in foreign languages. Even if you know what you’re looking for, the experience can feel, well, foreign. It’s useful to visit with the help of a guide. Like, for example,…
Food, they say, brings the world together. And in the case of grilled cheese, that’s pretty much true. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, in Greece, Turkey and the Middle East, they even have a cheese meant for the grill. Halloumi has a firm texture and an extremely high…
FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR. The menu has been erased from Whisk Crêpes’ chalkboard, replaced by this defiant Latin phrase, written all in capital letters. It was originally the motto of French riverboat traders, and is now the motto of the city of Paris, meaning, roughly, “She is tossed by the waves,…
The Falafel Invasion has begun. Vertskebap, at the intersection of Walnut Hill Lane and Central Expressway (plus three locations in the suburbs) is the first of a series of fast-food falafel joints opening in Dallas. And the food at Vertskebap sets a high bar for its followers, while still pointing…
“Brisket-stuffed onion rings.” They sound like the State Fair’s idea of an unholy miracle. Or like a mad scientist decided to start randomly mashing together all your favorite unhealthy foods. “Cookie dough pie! Bacon grilled cheese tacos! Sriracha guacamole lasagna!” But brisket-stuffed onion rings are a real thing. They’re a…
November is National Novel Writing Month, when writing geeks and repressed English majors everywhere (such as this author) shut themselves in their houses and attempt to write an entire completed novel in 30 days. Don’t tell us we’re crazy. We know who we are. But fellow novelists know eventually the comforts of…
