have seen the metamorphosis, the changes in customer behavior.” –Dante Picazo Before Dante Picazo began his quest to tickle American tongues with a full deck of Latin flavors, he was running a small bingo room and a couple of blackjack tables at Station Casino Hotels in Las Vegas. This taught…
For most of the 19th century the most common ill-luck superstition was 13 at a table: If 13 people sat down together at a table, one would die within a year. So what happens if 13 people sit down at a table in a restaurant called 13? Does the solar…
Partial transcript from group therapy session, Baylor University Medical Center, March 15, 2006. …screamed in agony. It was like someone, you know, some weed-smoking, tie-dyed vegan took a pair of tweezers and ripped the veins right out of my epidermis. Bibb lettuce: You mean they burn us and breathe the…
Excerpts from a telephone chat with famed former Mansion maitre d’ Wayne Broadwell on his new position. What’s up? I’m blessed with opportunity…I’m a very fortunate person. I’m the director of operations for Riccardi’s Restaurant in the Quadrangle. What does that mean? I oversee the daily operations, and I’m in…
Parking is hard, so this tells you something. Every slot contains a car–Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and so on. A manager in a crisp suit strolls out onto the patio to direct. No valet on weekdays. But it’s OK to park in the dim strip mall across 7th Street, he says…
After just a few months in operation, Positano, the Italian restaurant in the spot once occupied by Mediterraneo, has a new owner: chef Antonio Avona, who, with Luciano Cola, created Antonio Ristorante in Addison and La Trattoria Lombardi in Dallas. Will anything change? Not much. “I love the name Positano,”…
Centuries before it was a place to down lobster shooters or short ribs ringed in heirloom red potato hash, a restaurant was a thing to sip, not a place. A restaurant was a restorative broth, a tiny cup of bouillon or, more likely, a thick meat essence of partially digested…
McKinney’s culinary culture has had a couple of peculiarities over the recent years. Witness the Prison, circa 2000. The Prison was a New American restaurant fashioned out of the circa 1880 Collin County jail. Frank James, brother of Jesse, booked a room there, as did Raymond Hamilton, a member of…
After evacuating the kitchen earlier this year over operations and contract disputes with Go Fish owner Mike Hoque, former Go Fish chef Chris Svalesen has already lit his burners. Svalesen has taken over the Inwood Quarter Café–which was stoppered and bolted last month–and plans to open, along with former Go…
The most significant challenge in restaurateuring has little to do with fortunes big or small, lost or stolen. That comes later, maybe after décor. Café San Miguel has a deep blue marine bar with a porthole housing a metal star. Christmas lights are strung from the ceiling. The barstools look…
Perhaps this is not intentional, but Cosmo Rouge Bistro & Lounge feels like The Black Lodge. You remember the Black Lodge? It was tucked in thick Pacific Northwest woods in a dream tucked in Twin Peaks. You remember Twin Peaks? Twin Peaks was the surreal David Lynch murder mystery television…
Chef Joseph Gutierriz wants more quality Tutto time. That’s why the Tutto founder just sold his tapas restaurant Rouge to a pair of cousins with whom he once worked at the Voltaire/Bamboo Bamboo evolutionary progression before it morphed into a highly stylized bank. “The food will be the same. I…
The loon is known for its forlorn calls and deep plunges into lake water in search of fish. The Loon is known for acrid tobacco mist, punchy drinks, pizzas and boob-tube-flicker lighting. It’s also known for Alessio Franceschetti–or will be. Franceschetti is set to scupper his lengthy The Loon Bar…
Sitting in Steve Fields Lobster Lounge is like being in a lava lamp. Not because of blobs floating and bumping to the muffled sounds of Jefferson Airplane, The Troggs or a Floyd fugue. (Right now a bar pianist is tinkling a rendition of Coldplay’s “The Scientist”–a solid entry in the…
Barfly catcher Frankie Carabetta seems to have a Big Apple fetish. Sure he has Industry Bar in Addison and Knox Street Pub on Knox. But he just opened a McKinney Avenue watering venture called Tribeca, named after the famed New York neighborhood. This after his Manhattan Bar & Lounge on…
“Do you think Dallas is ready for this?” Imagine Dallas’ most successful chef–an icon firmly embedded in television, cookbookery and Dallas cultural history–mulling such a question. But Stephan Pyles looks worried. His ceviche is languishing. It’s hard to discern the reasons, except that perhaps culinary adventurism hibernates during the holidays,…
To discover the essence of a restaurant, you often must probe beneath the covers and mine for subtexts. Do this with Café Japon, and what do you discover? A carnival of lips. Lips grace publicity materials. Lips part and loll on the Café Japon Web site. There they are, dabbed…
Are you willing to die for what you believe in? French composer Francis Poulenc explores this wrenching question, grappling with sacrifice through the eyes of the martyr, in his opera Dialogues of the Carmelites. Based on a true story, Dialogues begins at the close of the French Revolution and the…
Back in the day, after restaurants were ravaged by bursting equity market bubbles and brutal terrorists kicking in New York City’s architectural teeth, wine drinkers went downscale. Go-go ’90s expense accounts were pinched. Travel slowed to the speed of Web conferencing. Wine lists sloughed off the perpetually allocated cult cabs…
Hard to see what dry-aged prime steak and hand-thrown pizzas have in common, but there must be something. Maybe pizzerias are customizing steak house iceberg lettuce wedges with bone-in pepperoni. No matter. Tristan Simon has poached former Dallas Pappas Bros. Steakhouse GM Judd Fruia to shepherd the expansion of Consilient…
The focal point in Salum is a circa 1940s buffet captured at auction in New York. It is both an obstacle and a hem loosely defining a spacious portal spilling into the kitchen. This is not an open kitchen in the ordinary sense, where chefs can only be observed from…
Former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse CEO William L. Hyde Jr. is swapping broilers for rotisseries. Hyde, who resigned from his post of the then-89-unit steakhouse chain in late 2003, has teamed up with former City Grill (Atlanta) chef Roger Kaplan to license the Zea Woodfire Grill concept from a New Orleans…
