Like most contemporary Asian outlets, Green Pepper is replete with high-tech touches, subtle though they are. Plastic chairs in black and yellow surround dark tables. Walls washed in subdued yellow hover over dark wallpaper wainscoting imbedded with Chinese characters. And Green Pepper has a motto: “We are a BYOB restaurant…and…
Like the burger and onion ring, Tex-Mex has become a tavern staple, and it’s no surprise why. It’s salty, which generates the thirst that generates the cash from drink sales. This cuisine is highly absorptive, which means it serves as a stomach-lining hurdle: a bean-cheese-tortilla-salsa speed bump that keeps your…
Henderson Avenue nightlife necromancer Tristan Simon–whose Cuba Libre Cafe and private club called Sense have been generating more buzz than a two-speed nose hair trimmer–has purchased a big chunk of Genghis Grill, a Dallas chain of create-your-own-stir-fry Mongolian barbecues. Consilient Restaurants L.P., Simon’s command and control umbrella, picked up 50…
Hibachi Rock’s vestibule is crammed with Japanese dolls, and Polaroids paper the wall. A manager says these photos were shot some three years ago when this Allen restaurant opened. There was a steady racket rumbling just beyond the dolls and snapshots. As we moved toward the glass inner door, it…
When Voltaire opened in 1999, it was billed as one of the most expensive restaurants ever devised in the city of Dallas. Owner Scott Ginsburg never disclosed the total cost, but it most certainly ran into the several millions considering the chandelier by famed lighting designer Ingo Maurer valued at…
Jeanie Laube wasn’t sure what her father was up to in India and Pakistan in the late 1960s. He was almost never home, and he wasn’t in the habit of calling, she says. That’s why she was stunned one morning in 1970. While listening to her car radio in Wisconsin…
The name Noodles Kitchen is a jarring composite of a plural and singular noun. It sounds more like a culinary lair for a Dick Tracy nemesis than a peddler of doughy strands. The décor takes that tiny jar and amplifies it: art deco new age Asian contemporary with a huge…
Not everything Phil Romano touches turns to gold. We Oui slipped off the landscape on a trail of French kitsch greased with red lipstick. Lobster Ranch got caught in a chowder undertow. Eatzi’s nearly succumbed to a vicious bite by the Big Apple. But gold isn’t what’s important. What’s important…
It’s no surprise that a North Texas bedroom community would turn a California fascination into a viable business. After all, California is the American birthplace of dreams, fantasy and personal computer wizardry. Everyone wants to touch its gloss, to be a part of its vanguard, to have a grab at…
Peter Tarantino, who with the help of his brothers tried to plant his sophisticated brand of Mediterranean cuisine near Fair Park with Tarantino’s before that project was undone by a backed-up and bubbling sewer line, is champing at the bit to get CAVA launched. CAVA is Tarantino’s traditional Spanish restaurant,…
Pub is a word derived from the term “public house,” which is “an establishment licensed to sell alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises and often serving meals as well,” according to Webster’s. It’s touching to consider that proprietors who make their living with liquor licenses are so concerned about…
Corporate public relations often highlight the unending sweaty grunt work involved in key personnel search and acquisition missions. Makes for good copy. That’s why Rosewood Hotels & Resorts no doubt called attention to its “lengthy search” when it announced it had come upon a replacement for Jeff Moschetti (now at…
There’s a prominent sign on the wall in the rest room foyer at Duke’s Original Road House. “Coming soon,” it reads, “brand new, bigger, better restrooms just for you.” Now it may seem strange to generate excitement by pre-announcing an impending john remodel, as you might an upcoming Rolling Stones…
Shannon Wynne, reformed night crawler extraordinaire and founder of such long-gone nightclubs as Fast and Cool and the “o” haunts (Nostromo, Rocko, Tango and Mexico), once had an uncanny touch for detecting the faint pulse in Dallas’ mediocre nightlife. But who would have thought Wynne also possessed an uncanny prescience…
Celebrity chef Stephan Pyles, who was recently tapped by Hotel ZaZa to oversee the development of its restaurant Dragonfly (a beast that feasts in-flight), has grabbed Crescent Court Executive Chef Jeff Moschetti to take hold of the kitchen. The California Culinary Academy graduate, who has also held positions at The…
“Hole in the wall” is a sort of dining Holy Grail; the object of a fervent quest for hidden culinary riches dressed up like a Hee Haw extra. Like Rousseau’s noble savage, the true hole in the wall glimmers with irresistible romance and beats with the myth of primeval superiority…
According to the cafe’s menu, a Zaguán “is the elaborate entry-passage in the grand old colonial homes of Venezuela, Spain and Colombia.” This entryway is carefully carpeted with a pebble-stone mosaic, it adds. Indeed, the motto for this cafe is “a mosaic of tastes.” And Zaguán is that, as varied…
Sometimes fresh seafood just isn’t enough to keep a restaurant afloat, even when the main course is dressed like a cowboy and the joint’s interior looks as if it were pilfered from a Sesame Street set. At least that’s what Phil Romano (Macaroni Grill, Eatzi’s, Fuddruckers, Cozymel’s) may think about…
“Miss America ate here.” This is a swell publicity claim for any restaurant, especially one planted among the sticks in a tiny town named for an itty-bitty tree with a fungus problem. Miss America combines all the things that make for good promo sizzle: beauty, talent and sex–or the lack…
At this point on the dining timeline, Avanti Ristorante is perhaps better known for its longevity than its food. After all, more than a handful of restaurants execute its brand of Nor-Ital Mediterranean fare, often with better results. But Avanti has been doing it for 14 years; that’s a near…
National prune breakfast month was in January. National egg salad week was April 12-16. National roast suckling pig day is December 18. Every scrap of kitchen fodder has a day or month devoted to it, from bicarbonate of soda (December 30) to cheese balls (April 17). So why shouldn’t Texas…
Venezia is a slice of institutional cafeteria ambiance done up in Italian red and green, with a heavy emphasis on the green. It has a counter up front and a dining room with tables covered in green and white checked tablecloths. An awning hangs over the semi-open kitchen with Christmas…
