Everyone says it’s the beef. It’s the cut. It’s the animal. It’s the grade. Sometimes it’s the broiler: all 1,800 degrees worth. At N9NE Steak House, the broiler is 1,200 degrees: “1200öF: We proudly serve prime aged steaks and chops,” reads the menu. From there the choices unravel: filet mignon…
In retrospect it seems Luqa director of operations Kyle Kepner was a commander not so much of a layered urban restaurant-lounge but of construction delays and indigested ambitions. Luqa and Petrus Lounge (originally conceived as Cascades) went through years of false starts, missed deadlines and millions in design and construction…
Grace Jones’ voice spills from the lounge and hovers over the table. These are the hazards of placing a loft lounge over your dining room. The rhythms of one hijack the cadence of the other, stirring up discordant stew. On another occasion it was even more explicit. Thumps from the…
What about the dinosaurs? This is often the question posed when science wrestles with God, when empirical evidence scrums with Scripture. The big bones are clearly in the ground, but Tyrannosaurus Rex is absent from the Bible—a huge reptilian omission for a book with a reptile clearly playing a starring…
This week Trader Vic’s, the classic repository of tiki culture and gaudy cocktails, reopens to apparent anxious expectancy stoked by nostalgia. “There’s a multitude of people coming by,” says Rusty Fenton, a principal in Realty America Hospitality, which is reanimating Trader Vic’s. “It’s like a Mecca. Our PR is almost…
Beau’s is like a temporarily rearranged living room, the kind you’d disassemble and neatly refit to absorb extras guests. Sure, its setting in a quarter of the Crescent Court lobby is elegant. The glass tables are thick, with an opaque appliqué on the bottom giving them a sandblasted look. There’s…
N9NE, Park Cities Prime, BLT. Steakhouses are the kudzu of the Dallas dining industry. Sure, there’s a culling every now and again: Smith & Wollensky, GF Prime, Fleming’s, Ruth’s Chris, etc. But they come back thicker and pricier, wearing more feminized plumage. Can our gullets and bill clips sustain them?…
What’s most amazing about Little Katana, the Travis Street edition, isn’t the food, though some of it is astounding. The Asian bouillabaisse for instance, is as orange as a road hazard cone and hot enough to jiggle tonsils (more on this later). No, what’s most amazing is the Little Katana…
This trip is strange. After messing around in mountainous Breckenridge, Colorado—not skiing, but snowshoeing, camping and dropping bobbers in lakes—chef Kevin Ascolese is back in flattened Dallas. Ascolese, you’ll recall, etched his résumé in some of Dallas’ finest stabs at fine Italian—Sfuzzi, Mi Piaci, Salve! Ristorante and Ferré. Now he’ll…
Indian cuisine is an unruly knot of temperaments. It’s not easy to tame. It’s even harder to unravel and understand once it is tamed. Take curry. It’s a simple word that has multiple meanings. It’s a fragrant leafy herb. It’s a paste composed of clarified butter and powerful spices. It’s…
Gourmands make their graves with their teeth. —French proverb Bijoux is for those who hate food—hate to be away from it, hate it when it’s irresistibly beautiful, hate the poisons it sends coursing through the veins, hate the scourge of its addiction and, most of all, hate themselves for loving…
On one hand, the West End is a historic district slag heap, a once-bustling entertainment district reduced to has-been diversion rubble by obsolescence and maybe a few things named Victory, West Village and The Shops at Legacy. The last strands of has-been evidence you can count on a few fingers:…
Behind the Geisha Steak and Sushi Lounge sushi bar is a sushi clock: ticktock, ticktock. Shrimp is two, octopus is three, salmon eggs (ikura) are five and so on. Behind the Geisha lounge bar are high-definition flat screens. The first quarter unwinds: ticktock, ticktock. “I’d be better if the Cowboys…
N9NE Steakhouse is set to open in Victory Park January 18. N9NE (pronounced “nine”) is the “signature” property of Las Vegas-based N9NE Group, parent of Ghostbar and founded by Michael Morton (son of Morton’s the Steakhouse founder Arnie Morton) and Scott DeGraff, who operate restaurants and nightclubs in Chicago, Las…
Hotel Lumen bills itself as an enlightened hotel. It “illuminates its sophisticated setting” with “light-themed” artwork and a “vibrant retro feel.” Enlightened. Illuminates. Lumen. A pattern blooms. Suddenly, a contrarian element cuts through the glow racket. Social, the “swanky” restaurant tucked in the bowels of the enlightened Lumen, is dark…
We would like CHIC from Barcelona to become a welcoming oasis in Dallas. We want people to think of Chic when they think of Barcelona. We want people to think of Barcelona when they think of CHIC. Thus reads the Chic from Barcelona “vision” statement, a piece of circular thinking…
They’re relics: Stephan Pyles’ bone-in cowboy rib eye and Dean Fearing’s lobster tacos. They cling to evolving menus like vestiges from a bygone era when Texas mattered. Southwestern cuisine is dead. It went out with a wheezy whimper. The city’s SW power trio—Dean Fearing, Stephan Pyles and Avner Samuel—who were…
hither the chef-driven restaurant, the stand-alone room blossoming from a former dry cleaner or sports bar or neighborhood pharmacy? It’s a declining species, the small room crowded with tables and stone accents and a chef in pressed whites leaning at the edge of the open kitchen, wiping plates and arranging…
Gershwin’s, the 20-year-old classic that thrust its distended belly skyward last June, is about to roll over and play living. In mid-January, the former Gershwin’s space will reopen as Saltwater Willy’s—an identical twin of the casual dining concept that debuted in front of Grapevine Mills more than a year ago…
Shareholders of Wichita-based Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon approved a cash buyout late Tuesday by Dallas-based Lone Star Funds for $27.35 a share, which means Lone Star Steak will now officially emanate from the Lone Star State. The price is a boost from the contested offer of $27.10 Lone Star…
By the turn of the 20th century, the Irish saloon began to take on a mainstream role in American cities. As the great potato famine in Ireland in 1845 forced many to migrate to the States, the traditions and lifestyle of the group came with [them]. —BlackFinn Restaurant & Saloon…
Chophouse boilerplate is as follows: plush fabrics, the iceberg wedge, jewel case wine rooms cuddling cult Cabernets and pompous Bordeaux, the double-cut pork chop, magnums and jeroboams assembled in decorative huddles in banquet nooks, acres of paneling and shiny brass chandeliers and sconces set to simulate flickering candles. Servers wear…
