Hawaiian food is having a moment in the local culinary scene. The tiki bar Swizzle on Lowest Greenville serves traditional Hawaiian plates alongside rum-laden drinks adorned with purple flowers. There are Hawaiian doughnuts, malasadas, (the doughnut for people who don’t like doughnuts) at the Dallas Farmers Market. And it was…
Running a restaurant or any food industry business isn’t for the easily fatigued. The competitive nature requires an exhausting amount of diligence. Social media can be a cruel monster. Business can turn on a dime. It can also be a beautiful way to connect with people, share a passion, be…
Normally during the springtime Dallasites are thigh-deep in galas raising money for nonprofits. It’s a local pastime of sorts. But as we’ve written so many times in the past 12 months, things have turned. Alas, there are still essential nonprofits that rely largely on fundraising and are crucial to the…
FireHouse Gastro Park opened along Main Street in Grand Prairie almost two years ago and seems to have flown under the radar, maybe because of COVID. As the name implies, the multifunction space is built in an old fire station and includes a coffee shop, restaurant, two outdoor areas (one…
After the Valentine’s freeze, it’s hard to imagine that a farmers market could endure right now. “Mother nature just keeps punching us in the gut,” says Bobby Bever of Highway 19 Produce in Athens. Just this year he’d slid all his chips to the center of the table to become…
A new food truck park has opened at 1716 N. Hall St. in Old East Dallas. Chuckwagon Park will host a revolving lineup of food trucks, and to kick things off this weekend they’ll be giving out free beer from Celestial Brewing with any $10 purchase. And that, my friends,…
Remember last December when we all looked back over 2020 and told ourselves that surely 2021 couldn’t be any worse? Try not to mention that if you stop off for smoky brisket at Heim Barbecue, where February’s winter storm damage was followed up this week by a visit from a…
This past Sunday, Picadera, a local Dominican street food pop-up set up shop in the courtyard of Deep Ellum Distillery. A DJ played Latin-inspired hip-hop as customers, most wearing at least one piece of clothing with the Dominican flag, worked through paper boats of ginormous chicken sandwiches. They were celebrating Dominican…
The last time I’d gone to Serious Pizza, in before times, I recall there was a birthday party spread across the dining room. Two huge silver helium balloons, “1” and “2,” bobbed at the head of the table. There were light pink accents spread around. Any question of whether the…
Almost a year ago Mark Cuban tweeted, “How companies treat employees during this pandemic will define their brand for decades.” While we don’t agree with everything he says, the local basketball fan hit the nail on the head here. This statement endures. Flags are being flown as Texans sail into…
So, who needs a beer? One silver lining of Gov. Abbott’s “I’m so over this mask thing” announcement is that taprooms can now open. And while some local breweries applied for a food and beverage permit allowing them to operate as a restaurant over the past years, others have been…
It’s been almost an entire year since someone has cracked open a beer and sat back to watch a soccer game at Peticolas Brewing. Well, except for last week when owner Micheal Peticolas, riding out his frustrations on his skateboard, wound up at his brewery. “A friend texted me and…
We’ve taken a lot of angles on AllGood Cafe over the years. We’ve talked about their breakfast, their burger and their place as a pioneer for the Deep Ellum music scene. Plus, Nick Rallo says their chicken-fried steak is the best in town, “no argument about it.” AllGood Cafe is a music…
In perhaps the most scrumptious sign that things will, in fact, get back to normal soon(ish), The State Fair of Texas recently put out the all-call for our craziest fried food concoctions. From now through March 31 they’re accepting applications from anyone interested in becoming a food or beverage vendor. The…
It was a worthy and fitting musical ode to a woman who fought for years to get a six-story mountain of shingles removed from her backyard. The gesture was the work of a trucking company owner with a propensity for opera. Crows cackled from the trees while Marsha Jackson and…
Very few positive things have come out of the past 12 months. Some hard lessons have been learned. Perhaps a few new hygiene habits could help us all stay healthier in the long run, which is certainly not a bad thing. However, there was one sparkly item highlight on the…
Last year when we met Brandon Howley at Happy Hollow Ranch in Willis Point, the birds were chirping, a red fox burrowed in the pasture and cattle hid from the sun under trees lush with leaves. Howley inherited this land from his tough-as-nails grandfather, former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Chuck Howley…
The Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) is an independent, non-profit healthcare intelligence organization affiliated with Parkland Health and Hospital System that studies health specifically as they affect vulnerable populations. On Tuesday PCCI released a statement forecasting that Dallas County could reach “herd immunity” in late-June based on the total…
In a bit of good news, COVID-related hospitalizations are down. That means fewer people are critically ill. It also means that our frontline medical workers can perhaps catch a breather. Last October, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued Executive Order GA-32 mandating that any Trauma Service Area (TSA) that had seven…
Despite a great crop of mudbugs last year, COVID-19 restrictions crippled the industry as a whole; restaurants were slapped with COVID mandates, and packaging the crustaceans to-go was difficult. Last March, crawfish producer Gerard Frey of Acadia Parish told the LSU AgCenter they were only able to sell 10 to…
CocoAndre, the family-owned chocolate shop in the Bishop Arts District, has been open for business only eight days this month. COVID forced them to close the last week of January, so they set their sights on every chocolatier’s busiest day, Feb. 14, to help pull them through the winter. “Then…
To say it’s been a tough year for restaurants is putting it hysterically lightly. After a year of transitioning to COVID-19 mandates and all that entailed, to finally seeing a glimmer of hope with the vaccine rollout, only to being walloped by a weather event of historical proportions, which included…
