I earned my culinary education south of the Mason-Dixon Line, so my insufferable food snobbery centers on slaw dogs and sorghum syrup. And bourbon. Especially bourbon. While I’m not a stickler for fancy, small-batch bourbon — I think Evan Williams’ Black Label is terrific — I do care more than…

Don the Beachcomber, the Dallas restaurant whose hazy history I wrote about last week, was a relatively late arrival to the region’s Polynesian dining scene. Kevin Tucker and Dennis Haberkern, two local tiki aficionados, are busily chronicling the stories of a few DFW bars that plugged into the tiki trend…

I recently went to dinner with a friend whose least favorite server expression is “Are you still working on that?” He’d just wrapped up his screed about the essential wrongness of equating work with eating when a server stopped by the table and uttered the offending phrase. I thought my…

Two San Antonio companies have partnered to create a distinctly Texan breakfast taco, now available at dozens of area drive-through windows. Taco Cabana last week started serving tacos made with Kiolbassa country-style sausage; the item will remain on the menu through mid-October. While DFW’s not suffering a sausage taco shortage,…

Mad Men didn’t exactly blow its reputation for verisimilitude when Don Draper and his lady friend wandered into Benihana on last night’s episode, but it sure seems like one of the restaurant-goers would have mentioned the shrimp sauce. Hibachi fans have been infatuated with the uniquely American combination of mayonnaise…

Kroger has pulled out as a wine garden sponsor at the State Fair of Texas, taking its West Coast wines with it. With the Texas Department of Agriculture left as sole sponsor of the wine tasting and teaching space, all of this year’s featured wines will come from Texas. Jeff…

While plenty of masochistic local eateries are gearing up for a second consecutive Restaurant Week, the charitable promotion officially ended last night. And according to the comments posted here and on other local food blogs, the event was again exasperating for diners, servers and chefs. With rare exception — I…

While supermarkets do a remarkably good job of stocking various noodle shapes, most restaurants serve a pretty narrow range of pastas. Beyond Italian restaurants that have made a specialty of pasta, noodle geometry is largely limited to macaroni, linguine and penne. That’s a shame, because there are so many great…

When my husband and I chose a wedding date, we thought about the weather. We thought about football schedules. We didn’t think about Restaurant Week, which didn’t exist back in 2006. Unfortunately, our anniversary this year fell smack in the middle of the festivities. And being new to Dallas, I…

BRC, the gastropub with the naughty name that’s been a sensation in Houston this summer, failed to impress Houston Chronicle critic Alison Cook. In her review this week, Cook declined to give Big Red Cock a single star. But the restaurant’s response was pretty classy by food-and-beverage standards: In a…

Tiki history hobbyists — a remarkably serious and disciplined group, considering its members like their drinks served in coconuts — are on the hunt for photos of Dallas’ Don the Beachcomber. Open at the corner of Meadow Road and Greenville Avenue from 1974 to 1982, the Dallas outlet of the…

Gefilte fish, perhaps the most maligned food on the traditional Jewish High Holiday table, encodes its maker’s ancestry as surely as hand-me-down stories and immigration papers, a local fishmonger says. Jon Alexis of TJ’s Fresh Seafood Market in Preston Forest Village claims he can almost always pinpoint where a customer’s…

Hole in the Wall, a proud burger dive that lived up to its name, is slated for temporary closure. According to a tweet this morning from owner Tom Ford, the 28-year old restaurant will shut its doors Monday “for a short time. New location soon! RT!” While Hole in the…

Bon Appetit has selected Ellerbe Fine Foods in Fort Worth as one of its top 10 best new restaurants nationwide. Ellerbe, which opened last year on West Magnolia Avenue, has charmed critics and chefs alike with its stylish spin on traditional Southern cooking. Chef Molly McCook’s fresh, local and seasonal…

Far be it from me to meddle in other people’s hydration techniques, but I was surprised this weekend to come across an overheated valet chugging a gallon of frozen apple juice. I like apples, but I always figured there was an age limit on enjoying apple juice. I’d no sooner…

Here’s a romantic scene: Two wine connoisseurs in love pack a basket with cheese and crackers, roll down the roof on a rented convertible and spend the day zigzagging the scenic, hilly roads between Texas’ newest wineries. But by the second or third stop, the young couple begins to grow…