“You can’t go wrong with chocolate!,” a satisfied volunteer crowed upon exiting the Big Tex Choice Awards. Except, it seems, at the State Fair of Texas, where savory resoundingly trumped sweet at this morning’s awards ceremony. Fried beer claimed the “most creative” prize, while Texas fried Frito pie won the…
Williams-Sonoma doesn’t want me to tell you this. But having recently sorted through 4-year-old wedding gifts that were still unopened, I feel compelled to point out you really don’t need all the kitchen gadgets bridal magazines and store consultants insist you add to your registry. Honestly, leaving a gift off…
According to some studies, sales of spicy products have septupled over the past two decades. Chicken chains are paying heed, releasing spicier versions of their already spicy recipes. In August, Church’s rolled out its Spicier Spicy Chicken, a chicken marinated for 12 hours in a heat-packed brine and then battered…
Spending Hatch chile season in Santa Fe means eating plenty of green chile cheeseburgers, a topic of intense debate among New Mexican food lovers. Who makes the best version? Is green chile really a better burger condiment than red chile? And should there be anything on a burger besides green…
A Keller resident who’s entered an online essay contest sponsored by Anthony Bourdain is hoping he understands good writing as well as he gets good cooking. Otto Borisch has collected more than 1,000 votes for his essay on “What does it mean to cook well?,” making his entry the 16th…
The official participant packet for the Association of Food Journalists’ annual conference in Santa Fe this week includes a list of restaurant suggestions to supplement the included meals from more than a dozen local eateries. All of them specialize in chiles and blue corn. That makes sense, since that’s what…
For cynics wondering whether the hype surrounding Hatch chiles is justified, here’s the Santa Fe School of Cooking’s culinary director’s take on the pepper: “I’m not saying they’re better, but they are to me,” Rocky Durham told members of the Association of Food Journalists at a meeting in Santa Fe…
As someone who gets everywhere on two wheels, I was intrigued when Nova, the latest addition to Oak Cliff’s vibrant restaurant line-up, proclaimed itself a “bike-friendly gastropub.” There’s an endless list of entities unfriendly to cyclists: elected officials who can’t find money for bike lanes, planners who hook towns together…
Our vintage game show point man, Adam Nedeff of gameshowutopia.net, unearthed a few early culinary celebs in his archives. Here, three American food icons at their most confounding: 1. What’s My Line? (1969) Rudolph Stanish was so well-known when he appeared on What’s My Line? that two judges were forced…
Now in its seventh season, Top Chef is still breaking enough ground to have scored an Emmy this weekend in the “Outstanding Reality-Competition Program” category. (Then again, the award may not be a fair gauge of innovation: The Amazing Race has won it seven years in a row.) But a…
Labor Day used to be a really big deal. Back when a minimum wage was considered radical and child labor was the norm, workers turned out in fearsome numbers to march for their rights. More than 10 thousand workers joined the first-ever Labor Day parade in New York in 1882,…
Slow Food Dallas is planning to use a portion of the proceeds from its upcoming $100 per plate benefit dinner to help launch a community garden in a Vickery Meadows area apartment complex. The local chapter has traditionally raised money to send delegates to the biannual Terra Madre conference in…
Dallas’ first permitted custom-built food truck will serve its inaugural breakfast burrito tomorrow morning. City Street Grille, housed in a truck wrapped with an image of the Dallas skyline, will be parked in the lot of Bob’s Steak & Chop House on Lemmon Avenue from 6:30 a.m.-9 a.m., Monday through…
If you think Texas belongs in a documentary about Southern food, now’s the time to say so. The Southern Foodways Alliance is asking folks to submit, via its Facebook page, “the one dish/ingredient/food event/restaurant/etc. from your home area that you’d like to see in a documentary abt Southern food.” The…
Paula Lambert’s Mozzarella Company had another strong showing at this year’s American Cheese Society competition, the artisanal cheese industry’s version of the Academy Awards. Nearly 1,500 cheeses were entered in the annual competition, which includes 110 hotly contested categories such as “cheeses flavored with whole or crushed peppercorns” and “cheddar…
Texas A&M University-Kingsville has become the latest institution to clamp down on tortilla tossing. “Over the course of the past year, I wrestled with a difficult issue related to the spirit of the institution,” President Steven Tallent explained in a recent statement banning the practice at football games. Tallent called…
Americans have a habit of co-opting and recreating global cuisines, arbitrarily assigning ethnic labels to dishes unknown in their purported homelands. In the process, of course, they’ve created some very good – if inauthentic – food. Is a deep-dish pepperoni pie any less delicious for being a purely American invention?…
A license plate design approved yesterday by the Department of Motor Vehicles could pave the way for tags adorned with sliced brisket and cheese enchiladas. Mighty Fine Burgers, a restaurant with three Austin-area outlets, is the first for-profit food business to issue a novelty plate through Texas’ specialty plate vendor…
Ozman Kazan, outreach coordinator for the Dallas Islamic Center, isn’t planning any political discussions for tonight’s interfaith Iftar dinner at Congregation Kol-Ami in Flower Mound. “There are things going on, and we are aware of those things,” says Kazan, obliquely referencing the anti-Islamic rage that’s swelled around a proposed Islamic…
UrbanDaddy, a free daily e-mail service, touts its ability to suss out the “single thing you need to know every day about your city.” What many subscribers don’t know is the magazine’s also in the business of creating the screwball foods and drinks that populate its hot list, including a…
Figuring omnivores shouldn’t have all the greasy fun, DallasVegan.com is hosting its own fried food contest at The Phoenix Project, 406 S. Haskell Ave. “I would expect some of the same, off-the-wall type of foods you see at the State Fair of Texas,” says James Scott, organizer of the Texas…
The group of Oak Cliffers that’s been busily remodeling the former Vitto’s space today revealed just what’s in store for the space at 316 W. 7th Street at Bishop Avenue. Aliza Shier, who previously handled pastry duties at Local, will serve as executive chef of Oddfellows. According to the release…
