No, that’s not a picture from inside a kaleidoscope. That’s actually from inside a restaurant, one that is bejeweled within an inch of its life in hundreds (perhaps thousands) of strands of lights and tinsel. How festive, you say? Yeah, I took that picture last week. In what might be…

Here’s a picture of Michael Phelps at Concrete Cowboy in Uptown last night. Based on some serious investigative journalism, we learned the highly aquatic 18-time Olympic gold medal winner-winner-chicken-dinner spent yesterday at the Hank Haney golf facility in Dallas, where he took part in The Hank Haney Project. It’s essentially…

Not so long ago I suggested a rather clever weight-loss idea/fad (based no science whatsoever) called the Facebook Diet, wherein you post pictures of every thing you eat all day everyday on your Facebook page. This would let your “friends” hold you accountable for your choices. The idea hasn’t seemed…

Chef Brian Luscher of the The Grape and a flock of other great Dallas chefs are collaborating for the 5th annual Soup’s On!, which is a starched-pants luncheon featuring lots of soup. Chefs participating include Bruno Davaillon on the Mansion, Jason Maddy of Oak, Nathan Tate of Boulevardier, Randall Copeland…

There’s something fishy going down under the golden arches. In February McDonald’s will officially launch a new item on the Dollar Menu, Fish McBites, which will pair nicely with the Filet-O-Fish sandwich. In both items, the catch-of-the-day is always wild-caught Alaskan pollock. With 14,000 stores across the U.S., that’s a…

Lists are fun. They categorize our lives, serve as reminders of things to do, stack favorites and remind us of people we’re mad at. The fun part of listing is that it often serves as a launch pad for conversation and debate. Because half the fun of a list is…

Emporium Pies opened just several months ago in a remodeled 1930’s Victorian bungalow in the heart of the Bishop Arts District. It all began, however, in 2011 when Megan Wilkes, 26, and Mary Gauntt, 24, met through a mutual friends. Wilkes had hopes of becoming an independent business owner and…

It’s National Pie Day! What else do you need to know? Nothing! Well, actually, two things. 1. Norma’s Cafe is giving away slices of Oreo Mile-High Cream Pie all day. Dine-in only, while supplies last and all that good stuff. No fighting over pie. This brand-spanking-new pie is made with…

Yes, there’s pie. Lots of really really good pie. But, we want to embrace National Pie Day for every flake of crust it’s worth, including doing a little math, listening to great old Dean Martin songs and arguing about the metaphor of that tiger in Life of Pi. In a…

The new Greenville Avenue specialty grocer, Green Grocer (3614 Greenville Ave.), will host grand opening festivities from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. this coming Saturday with lots of vendor samples and merriment. They also announced via their Facebook page the store is open all week, although not at full capacity…

Yiannis “Yanni” Arestis and Bobby Mullins of Armadillo Ale Works in Denton have been trying to pull this thing together for quite some time. But, building a brewery isn’t necessarily easy. Well, backtrack. Building a brewery might actually be the easy part. Building a sustainable and successful beer brand isn’t…

Observer food critic Scott Reitz is off work being a good son this weekend, so I’ll wrap it up for the week. Stephan Pyles’ new restaurant Stampede 66 was the subject of this week’s review. Scott was disappointed cricket tacos weren’t on the menu, despite the how comical those little…

Coca-Cola has a long history of capturing our imaginations through advertising. Polar bears and the northern lights. Olympic athletes. A rosy-cheeked Santa holding a glass of the elixir. However, recently Coca-Cola has stepped up to the scale and released their first anti-obesity ad. Coca-Cola sits us down on the sofa…

Yelp is adding restaurant health inspection grades to its restaurant pages. The reports, however, aren’t based on customer reviews, but rather city-provided health score information. Yelp has already launched the new feature in San Francisco. New York is next and then it will gobble up the rest of the country…

Now that they have their checkbooks all sorted out, the boys are back in town and on Saturday night the Stars face off against the Edmonton Oilers. Or someone. I actually have no idea. When they traded Shane Churla, I bowed out gracefully (although he is still with the organization)…

Last week Top Chef contestant and chef John Tesar hired an executive pastry chef for his high-end seafood restaurant in Preston Center, Spoon Bar & Kitchen. For the job, Tesar tapped David Collier, who previously worked with him at The Mansion. Collier is moving back to Texas this month after…

Yesterday the meat processing industry’s trade magazine, Meatingplace, posted a new article for their “Activist Watch” column about a much needed communication plan for American farmers after a year of pink slime, gestation crates and slaughterhouse headlines. Certainly the industry has taken a punch. (It could be argued that it’s…

John Mackey, the co-founder and co-chief executive of Austin-based Whole Foods, has just released a new book, Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. The (trademarked) idea of “conscious capitalism” is the soul of the book and promotes embracing the “higher purpose of a business, its relationships with interconnected…