Fish has always been a funny fin. It could dazzle you with its scaled wonders, then turn around and disappoint you with a few beached blunders. But it would always hook you with a hefty check for the trouble. Launched in 1996 by businessman Steven Upright and chef Chris Svalesen,…
Right there, in a glass case just as you walk up to the counter at Chipotle Mexican Grill on McKinney Avenue is a T-shirt (for sale) with a clever maxim. “Usually, when you roll something this good, it’s illegal,” it says. This statement refers to Chipotle’s massive 20-ounce burritos, which…
Bizu kisses off It’s long been rumored that Bizú, Alberto Lombardi’s Dallas-French bistro on McKinney, was sluggish. But the folks at Lombardi’s Inc., including Lombardi himself, have for weeks denied that any change was afoot. Then Bizú, which means “little kiss” in French, closed its doors this past Saturday. The…
It sounds more like a garage than a restaurant. From somewhere more like Toledo, Ohio, than Vancouver, B.C. A place that sends its management on culinary swings through Oklahoma and Iowa instead of Bordeaux, Italy, and Napa. But earl’s is no ordinary dinner chain. In 1955, Earl “Bus” Fuller, a…
Anzu plunge Anzu, the hip Pacific Rim restaurant with hundreds of little origami birds hanging from its stark black ceiling by little strings, just snapped its tether. The spot at McKinney Avenue near Knox named after the Japanese word for “apricot” filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy February 10. The company…
Two days before Casa Del Lago opened in February 1999, chef-owner Hector Angeles was looking for something Italian to slip onto his menu, but he didn’t want pasta. He wanted something divergent, maybe twisted. He was stuck. “I saw a contest in a magazine about what you can create with…
As a rescue effort, Fishbowl isn’t bad. In fact, this retro lounge fitted from the stuck-up bar affixed to the Stephan Pyles and Michael Cox’s AquaKnox would be a swell place to nibble and sip even if it weren’t next door to the hyper-upscale restaurant. What Fishbowl proves is that…
A shokado is a type of bento box, a high-sided black container divided into four equal compartments into which tiny portions of meticulously crafted food are placed. Ino Japanese Bistro mimics the shokado bento, taking its minimal elegance to engaging extremes. Walls are bare and white, trimmed with dark dusty…
Hot spot goes to pot The question isn’t why it happened. It’s why it took so long. After a yearlong decline marked by key employee exits, bankruptcy, legal spats, canceled lunch service, and a period without a liquor license during which booze was dispensed for free, Toscana on McKinney Avenue…
Drink up In a move that’s sure to titillate cork dorks and inflame Texas liquor wholesalers and retailers by potentially pestering their profit margins, U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon in Houston ruled late last week that a Texas law prohibiting direct wine shipments to consumers was unconstitutional. In a 43-page…
Machu Picchu is Dallas’ first Peruvian restaurant. It’s named for a mysterious ancient Inca town set on a spectacular precipice nearly 8,000 feet above sea level on the eastern slopes of the Andes. The place was essentially unknown until an American archaeologist stumbled across it in 1911 under a blanket…
“You speak Hindi?” asked our server. Our eyes were glued to the television screen. Our mouths were chewing bits of lamb samosa ($3.95), delicious flaky fried pastry pockets jammed with ground lamb, cashews, cilantro, and onion. “No,” I said. “Then how you know?” he asked, waving his hand toward the…
Still fishing Former Fish partner and executive chef Chris Svalesen is still struggling to reel in his own Dallas restaurant after exiting Fish last summer. First he tried to pull one together in the former San Simeon space on McKinney Avenue called Copper River. But his partner took a hike…
Maybe this is an evolution of some sort, the kind where the mutations and variations creep at such a slow pace that you barely notice. But Tramontana, a cozy little restaurant in Preston Center with the walls painted to look like the poster-infested bedroom of a café-cultured Francophile, is changing…
You would think the decision would have been a minor blip on the food-industry radar screen. After all, Plano-based Frito-Lay, the huge snack-food unit of PepsiCo Inc., uses just 1.2 billion pounds of corn, or about one quarter of 1 percent of total U.S. corn production, for its snack chips…
Guts from the old sod Though Tipperary Inn general manager Mark Daniel swears he isn’t simply duplicating O’Dowd’s Little Dublin on McKinney Avenue (which had its Irish-pub innards wrought in Ireland and shipped to Dallas for assembly), Tipperary Inn will shut down for 10 weeks just after St. Patrick’s Day…
It’s hard not to like Z Café. Then again, like the sleepy forward coast of a comfortable marriage, it’s hard to like it without working at it. But you will put forth the effort, because Z, with its sloppily stained black tables, azure trim, black Zs plastered on the walls,…
Make no mistake. A captivating veranda is a big deal in Dallas, not something to be sniffed at or choked on in the wake of Mercedes Benz exhaust. When you think about it, Dallas is perhaps the most unfriendly patio town in the world, outside of Grozny in Chechnya, or…
In the corner pocket C.J. Wiley scanned the landscape, saw the roaring success of joints such as Cool River Café and Fox & Hound, and decided he needed to get in on the action. And who is C.J. Wiley? He’s the former ESPN world-champion pool player who owns C.J.’s Billiard…
Every now and then life hands you a perfect moment, one of those spaces of time when everything stops, turns beautifully epiphanic, and suddenly you find yourself babbling the goofy prose found in that Shirley MacLaine tree-climbing book. I have had a few perfect moments: watching the sun set in…
It’s hard to know what to make of Via Real, a restaurant that’s been around for roughly 15 years, including 10 years in Las Colinas. But it sure makes a lot of its “Mexican cuisine with Santa Fe style.” Santa Fe is known for its fiery food, torched with lots…
Thai food in Dallas is typically lumbering and uninteresting. The sauces are flabby, the textures tired, the flavors muddled. In this city, Thai cuisine lacks searingly distinct flavors or exotic subtlety. Tucked amid Addison’s swath of strip malls, Thai Orchid is one of the precious few Thai restaurants that skirts…
