Lazare Fashions A Grand Opening

A couple of months, two chefs and a little bit of blog angst behind them, Lazare is ready for its Grand Opening…unless something happens, of course. Ramping up for Saturday’s event, the restaurant at 6 p.m. Thursday will be the site of Fashion After Hours, a Dallas fashion industry mixer…

Clearing Out the Mailroom: Tuesday, June 2, 2009

We’ve got quite a backlog of CDs we’ve never gotten around to, so we’re going to try to chip away at the pile with this regular feature. The plan: to take four or five at a time and play each CD for as long as I can stand it.The Jones’…

Baker’s Pitmaster To Cook At Big Apple Barbecue Block Party

Joe Duncan of Baker’s Ribs (aka “that place next to Angry Dog that smells good but always looks closed”) will participate in the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party June 13-14 in Madison Square Park, New York City. Baker’s Ribs is, of course, a Dallas Observer favorite, earning the Best of…

Cafe Italia To Close August 29, Reopen As…Something

Restaurateur Scott Jones announced that August 29 will be the final day of business for Cafe Italia, at least in its current form. But fans of the Tex-Italian eatery need not despair: he plans to “end this chapter and begin fresh with an exciting new concept” in the same space…whatever…

Bonus MP3: Little Black Dress — “End Film”

This week’s print supplement to DC9 includes my review of Little Black Dress’ debut album Snow In June. Little Black Dress, as you’ll recall, is a collaboration between Nolan Thies and Toby Pipes and is the first release from Idol Records imprint Exploding Plastic Records. Though he has a respectable…

Five Sixty Offers Five- And Seven-Course Tastings

Wolfgang Puck’s numerically named fine dining phallus, Five Sixty , is now offering five- and seven-course tasting menus to showcase the Asian-influenced fare that just might rescue Reunion Tower. The five-course meal features family-style dim sum, calamari salad, king salmon, Kobe beef short ribs and dessert. It’s $68 per person…

Poster Of The Week: The Atoms and The Drams at Club Dada Saturday

This week’s featured poster was designed by Rick Hill, lead singer of The Atoms, which will headline Club Dada Saturday night; opening the show are The Drams. I loved the cartoon bird with its jug of moonshine, which looks like it stumbled right out of some Prohibition-era cartoon … until…

Hophead: Ephemeral Stardom At The Social House

There are few things Lady Hophead loves more than beer, but singing is one of them. So naturally, karaoke–which combines those two loves–is like heroin for her. If you were to offer her the choice of concert tickets for a double bill of Blondie and Madonna or the chance to…

Sullivan’s Says ‘Let’s Do Brunch’

Can’t wait till dinner to scarf down a slab of prime rib, New York Strip or hamburger? Come Sunday, you won’t have to. Five of Sullivan’s Steakhouse’s 19 locations, including the Dallas restaurant (17795 N. Dallas Parkway), are rolling out a brunch menu available from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m…

Texan Treats

Fancy desserts are nice, but something simple and sweet–without the need for seasonal berries or a blowtorch–usually suffices. The Triple-licious Dessert Tasting for Kids doesn’t offer gourmet treats, but chocolate-covered Rice Krispies treats, cupcakes, M&M brownies and more should satisfy any sweet tooth 6 to 9 p.m. Thursdays at the…

Lowest of the Low

To my dismay, it turns out the Lowbrow movement doesn’t have anything to do with the kind of masterpieces I considered lowbrow art. Rather, it’s an “underground visual art movement that began in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and now is a widespread populist art movement that has been…

Little Black Dress

Maybe it’s time to forgive Toby Pipes for Deep Blue Something and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” It’s been more than 13 years since that insipidly catchy song gave a completely unrepresentative impression of Denton music—and even the band that wrote it—to audiences all over America. Little Black Dress, Pipes’ new project…

It’s Official: Jack Ingram Is One Of Country’s Hottest Guys

No less an authority on hot guys than People has declared Jack Ingram–who started his country career here in Dallas while studying at SMU, and who has recorded live albums at Adair’s and Billy Bob’s–one of Country’s Hottest Guys in a cover expose on the subject. In its interview with…

Dude Food: Chubby’s Family Restaurant

Chubby’s Family Restaurant7474 S. Cockrell Hill RoadDude Factor: 8, or “Jack Palance in City Slickers” on a scale of 1 (“Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones And The Crystal Disappointment”) to 10 (“Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven”)Of all the billboards on the way to and from work, Chubby’s Family Restaurant has my…

The Paper Chase Gets Literal With New Video

While we’re on the subject of music videos, let’s go ahead and make it a trifecta with something even cuter than the Deheza twins and more kid-friendly than the JoBros.The Paper Chase’s new album Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1–which is awesome, my favorite from the band by…

Belmont Hotel Offers Five Days Of Savings

Hot dogs aren’t the only way to save on food during tough economic times. Oak Cliff’s The Belmont Hotel–which has a fantastic skyline view, by the way–recently announced that Bar Belmont and Cliff Cafe are offering five days of drink and food specials. Sunday through Thursday, the Belmont happy hour…

Wanz Dover Offers Free Download Of Blixaboy EP

Stereo On Strike’s Wanz Dover is on pace to digitally release six EPs of his dub-influenced Blixaboy project in advance of a planned June album release for The Geek. They’re all available for purchase through Amazon, iTunes, Digital Tunes and Emusic; the album will be released as a CD and…

RA Sushi Donates Some Proceeds To St. Jude Next Week

I don’t know what you been told / It ain’t the butterfly, it’s the tootsee roll –69 BoyzThe 69 Boyz are correct, as usual. It ain’t the butterfly–RA Sushi doesn’t even list the shiba, takuan and cucumber roll on its menu–but rather the Tootsy Maki–or Tootsie Roll–a few other items…

Poster Of The Week: Zoroaster, Mouth Of The Architect, H…N

Von Dada designed this poster for Sunday night’s Club Dada bill of riff-metal masters Zoroaster, the sludgy build-up stoner rock of Mouth of the Architect and local twin-guitar experimental act H…N. I like how the poster mixes creative and original psychedelic touches (like the black splotches in the background and…

Cork Offers Wine Course Tonight

And when you told me your merlot need more grapes / I said, ‘Honey, you never had wine before’ / And if you did, that’s not how you act at all / And no, that’s not how we rock in Theodore. –Ghostface Killah, “Tooken Back”If only Ghostface lived in Dallas…

Songs in the Grass

I have a vague memory of attending one of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s outdoor performances at Flagpole Hill as a little kid, though it’s possible I’m conflating the memory with some other grown-up thing my parents dragged me to at the city park. All I remember is that I spent…