Sea Grill is an old seafood restaurant that moved from its Plano environs on Central Expressway to new digs on the North Dallas Tollway near Trinity Mills. This might have been just a boring location change, one sparked by a group of restaurant owners trying to beat the clock on…
Over the last few years, millions have been marching to Washington and other places for a variety of reasons, swarming the Mall and pestering the media for attention. Let’s see, there’s been the Million Man March, the Million Woman March, the Million Family March, and the Million Mom March. But…
Eating at a churrascaria is eating by wandering around. Or at least having many people wander around and pester you with weapons while you try to eat. Because it often seems there isn’t much eating at all to go with all of that wandering around. Once you flip the coaster…
Isola Gozo, that tiny Northern Italian restaurant next to Tiffany’s and adjacent to Neiman Marcus in NorthPark Center, is gone. The once cozy restaurant is nothing more than a terra cotta-tiled, mahogany-paneled storeroom holding stacks of chairs, dishpans, marble tables, and other assorted food-service detritus. Named for the tiny Island…
Ajiya manager and sushi chef Ray Lin stands behind the sushi bar and slaps a flounder down onto the cutting board. It’s an ugly fish, like a mutant beetle that impels itself via belly flops, the kind of insect you might find under a rock or a pile of rotten…
The front door of Samui Thai Cuisine is a fascinating contraption. This is a good sign for a restaurant, because if the front door is compelling enough to stop you and invite you to fiddle with it, think of what the food must be like. The huge 500-pound red oak…
It seems Tom Landis, one of the founders of the Dallas Texadelphia chainlet, reached his student recruitment goal for the food-service English classes he has developed in conjunction with El Centro College and the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association. To make the classes viable, Landis says he needed a minimum of…
It might have been a tip-off when general manager Karim Alaoui packed it in for Lombardi Mare in Addison. Then again, maybe not. But just a few weeks after Alaoui skipped the “swank” Venus Steakhouse & Supper Club, a message on the restaurant’s phone suspiciously stated that the phone is…
Mignon postures as a Yankee’s notion of Paris during the ’60s: Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve, hip American jazz, and pill-bug Citrons that would look way cool in 21st-century Plano if they didn’t have the reliability and durability of communist-bloc concrete. Just portside of the hostess stand, above a cabinet that…
Maybe I’m dim, but I recently found myself doing endless Central Expressway service-road laps–not to outrun the white Ford pickup I cut off exiting onto Campbell, but to find Rasoi, an Indian restaurant hugging Central Expressway. It’s not that the preparations weren’t in place. I had the address. I had…
Dallas Texadelphia founder Tom Landis seems a little annoyed with his fellow Dallas restaurateurs these days. The burr? He’s underwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which they’ve embraced his 3-year-old pet project: food-service English-as-a-second-language classes for Spanish-speaking restaurant employees. Landis calls the project Gringo Lingo, a coinage that may have annoyed…
The best thing about India Palace, aside from some of the food, is that the press kit contains a sheet of “frequently asked questions,” or FAQs in contemporary parlance. No fooling. There’s this question about owner Pardeep Sharma: Q: Is Mr. Sharma from India? A: Mr. Pardeep Sharma is an…
Restless chef Marc Haines has a new spatula gig. He has vacated his post as executive chef of Cuba Libre and has assumed the task of giving Fish restaurant a face-hoisting. (The place has been without an executive chef since George Greiser departed for The Prison–that’s a restaurant, not a…
If there’s one thing Caribbean Red does with exhausting ardor, it’s play with its name, at least the latter part of it. Stroll into the place, under the blazing scarlet neon sign, past the little vestibule strewn with litter, and you’ll enter an expansive bar-lounge-dining-room hybrid so saturated in hues…
Will it slump or bump? Will we be dining on caviar and burping through silk hankies, or chewing Velveeta sandwiches and picking our incisors with plastic straws? The pessimists are getting delirious. The heralds are all there. Alan Greenspan failed to cut interest rates. Gas costs more than a pound…
Taqueria Cañonita’s publicity propaganda makes a lot of the fact that this superstar taqueria was hatched by Dallas star chef Stephan Pyles and his younger sister Alena. The blurbs tell how the pair developed the restaurant over the course of 10 or so years during many trips to Mexico, where…
What is it about steak that seems to turn this town into a one-note culinary tuba? It’s cliché to say that every time you turn around there’s another steakhouse. The mystery is where all these steak houses are getting their steaks. Steers are not bunnies, though some people consider themselves…
Just like that, the steak and the sizzle have been plucked off McKinney Avenue. Angelo & Maxie’s Steakhouse, a Manhattan-based red-beef meat market roping 24- to 35-year-olds with the ploy that you’re “never 2 hip” to tuck into a 24-ounce T-bone, has canceled plans to go into Chateau Plaza in…
What does a daringly beautiful and sleek lounge do when it wants to evolve beyond watering-hole food? It sautés quail. We ordered Zúbar’s sautéed quail with new potatoes and asparagus, and we threw the kitchen off its footing. The chef made an emergency visit to our table and explained the…
If nothing else, Rear Window is a view or, rather, a collection of little views tucked away in portals wrought into the interior architecture. The effect is handsome, cozy, plush, and off-center. Rear Window is neatly divided into two sections–restaurant and bar–separated by a wood-paneled wall harboring a number of…
It appears Bosque Café, the restaurant composed in the arts district by longtime restaurateur Edgar Watson, has closed after its doors had been open for just a week. Watson, who launched a small string of restaurants in the Dallas area over the years including Adriano’s in the Quadrangle (where Dream…
It’s difficult to decide what to like best about Big Buck Brewery & Steakhouse. Is it the 360-degree jet-black audio speakers that look like charred beehives hanging from the ceiling? Or is it the Big Buck urinals? The latter, a steakhouse innovation soon to be copied in every segment of…
