McKinney Avenue isn’t dead anymore; or even undead. Here’s proof: There’s a mini-scramble under way. This fall, Uptown Bar & Grill, which has been sitting off McKinney on Fairmount Street for roughly 10 years, is slipping into Severine’s Bar, the spot Jean-Michel Sakouhi opened next to his defunct Paris Bistrot…
If there’s one thing Asian Mint, Asian Fusion Café does, it is this: It takes its name seriously. You wouldn’t think this, judging from the exterior, a simple metal and glass strip mall storefront. Yet there are telltale signs, even here. Example: The word “mint” is tattooed across the glass…
By the time you read this, a deal most likely will have been struck to drop a Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House into the former Star Canyon space in the Centrum Building, which has been vacant since Carlson Restaurants yanked its plug in mid-2003. Del Frisco’s co-founder and vice…
“We left Fort Worth on Friday at 5 a.m. headed for Sturgis, South Dakota. Our destination for our first night is Clayton, New Mexico…We were very fortunate, for the weather was kind to us…While we were gassing up in Amarillo, John had his first alien encounter of the trip. Velma…
Here, the bartender is savvy. Sit down at the bar and prod him into talking about vodka. Ketel One is good; Skyy is hype. Of course, this could have been concluded without coaching. Note the extra “y.” Glare at the cobalt blue bottle. This is amusing: The Skyy Web site…
“At Pandora, a spirit of modernity gives new life to the elemental purity of Japanese tradition. Inside, find the décor is minimal, but spectacular where the emphasis is on fresh taste and artistic presentation of Pandora’s menu. Pandora offers three distinctly different dining experiences–sushi bar, robata grill, and sinfully good…
There was one peculiar thing about Kathleen’s Art Café, the Plano outpost of the original Lovers Lane installment. It wasn’t the legendary desserts. It wasn’t the famous grilled meat loaf sandwich. It wasn’t the art, framed and dangling from straps, prices neatly posted in lower corners. It was on the…
Ron Guest has cut and polished his teeth designing restaurants; swank, sharp–even garish–things from Mediterraneo in the Quadrangle and Taverna Pizzeria and Risottoria, to Aurora and the new Mariano’s Hacienda. Now Guest wants to be commander. So he’s formed Grupo San Miguel, a partnership that includes Jesús Carmona (formerly of…
Eating is a form of transport. Think about it. Close your eyes with a piece of cheeseburger from McDonald’s dollar menu skidding on your tongue, and you’re in one zone. Roll a piece of gopchang jeongol (spicy beef intestine casserole) against your inner cheek walls, and you’re on a completely…
“Join the revolution,” the Web site implores. The capstone of this movement is a 10,000-square-foot nightclub, lounge and restaurant where Costa Rican lush gardens and a dining room serving Latin cuisine pay homage to “Che,” the cultic Argentinean communist revolutionary and grist for the film The Motorcycle Diaries. Che opens…
As we exited The Cosmopolitan Bistro one Saturday evening, a manager chased us out to the curb and stuffed our fists with a stack of bright gold $5 gift certificates. He apologized because the band that was supposed to play that night stood him up for a higher-paying gig elsewhere…
The olive dominates. It’s a persistent cartoon, a huge green oval impaled by a skewer, slipping through the orifice in the red “O” in Dolce Oliva’s name as if it were a martini glass rim. You can see it above the faux granite bar, where plaques flaunting the words juicy,…
On Saturday evening, the last meal will be served at Savory. The closing wasn’t caused by the usual suspect–a lack of dollars. Heck, co-owner Joe Hickey (with Jonathan Calabrese) says they turned a profit of $6,000 to close the year. No, they were felled by a legal maneuver. Savory subleased…
Sushi in Mesquite shouldn’t be an oddity. Raw fish on rice billets is as mainstream as Vatican smoke gazing. Yet it is. What’s the best-selling entrée at Kamikaze? “Grilled chicken teriyaki,” says manager Shell Stafford. This explains why Isaac, a Kamikaze sushi chef, fawns when you sit down at the…
It was only a matter of time before the border fortified its hold on Uptown. Manny Rios, part of the family that crafted Mia’s Tex-Mex, is the culprit. Rios is set to open Manny’s Uptown on May 5–a rendition of Mia’s famed cuisine–in the former Guthrie’s/Rooster location on Lemmon Avenue…
It’s not surprising that David McMillan is not intimidated by altitude. His first Dallas stint put him 27 stories up in the sky in the Wyndham Anatole Hotel tower. There he brought maturity to a kitchen coming down from the star power of young chef Doug Brown. Maybe swinging a…
“Nothing here is spicy.” This declaration from a Little Havana server, after a question on the heat level of the beef tips, is perhaps unintentionally tone-setting. After all, Little Havana is pure poseur: A bar in search of a theme, it settles on a Caribbean Island long led by a…
Ron Corcoran says he’s finally done it. He’s rounded up the investors. He’s reached an agreement with iconic Dallas chef Avner Samuel of Aurora. It’s only a matter of time before his 11-year-old Sipango is shuttered and transformed into a Mediterranean restaurant with a menu containing inspirations from Samuel’s defunct…
Sure, you could call Deep Ellum a car wreck. Crime and petty harassment are universally perceived. Ladies–the mother’s milk of nightlife–are leery of riveting in the tongue studs, buckling on the strappy sandals and heading down there for a night of primping and puckering. Bar and restaurant owners are suffering…
There are two great things about Jaden’s: The restaurant’s Web site does not use the words “hip” and “urban.” It doesn’t use “trendy” or “chic” either, so this restaurant gazelles out of the starting blocks–at least on paper (though there is a Jaden’s talking points memo that says it’s “one…
The first entrepreneur who opens a démodé rum hole and beanery downtown will probably make a killing. We say this because every time we turn around someone is sinking a fistful of boodle into some restaurant-lounge baptized “hip.” We ask: Doesn’t all of this edgy fashionability get redundant? Look at…
Urban bistro. It’s a familiar culinary idiom, but what does it mean? Maybe Paris. Paris is urban. They love bistros in Paris, where the word means “pub.” They love dogs there, too. Sidewalks groan under the accumulated evidence. Leashes are woven through the cafe tables–kinky culinary bondage with a bark…
