A lot of us thought Larry Shapiro’s ears were endangered when we heard his plans for the new Marty’s: Had he lost his mind? Could Marty’s, the monolith of gourmet food in Dallas, really be so threatened by Brinker’s (admittedly brawny) baby Eatzi’s across the street that Shapiro needed to…
Ley Jaynes, the peripatetic wine dealer, has moved again, and this may be his best space yet. Tucked into the center at Skillman and Live Oak, on Oram, the latest in the series of Grailey’s offers everything the old store did and more. There’s still the big space lined with…
“Let’s do lunch.” This placebo promise usually replaces a real meal engagement–no one expects to actually eat lunch in the foreseeable future with anyone who suggests, “Let’s do lunch.” Modern lunch is a problematic meal, at best. For a white-collar working person, it’s an artificial respite–you’re just moving from desk…
Perhaps I actually just grew out of a craving for the flavor, but I consider myself a recovered chocoholic. I no longer lust for the dark sweetness of chocolate desserts, and when there’s a choice, fruit or plain vanilla are the flavors I treat myself to. Still, sometimes only chocolate…
With all the fuss about fish on the restaurant scene, it’s good to remember that some of the best restaurant seafood available to us doesn’t come from seafood restaurants. Oriental cuisines are almost all seafood-based, and Oriental restaurants have served the freshest fish available at prices considerably below most seafood…
It’s surrounded by tie-dye emporia overflowing with all the equipment you need either for inhaling perfectly legal substances or for dying your hair blue. But Anglophiles and resident Brits know all about the proper little store on Greenville Avenue stocked with all the essential British goods: shortbread, sure, and marmalade,…
“I just don’t get this cigar and cocktail trend–it’s so eighties,” a friend complained lately. It’s my theory that cigars and martinis are the cheaper, more benign version of the last decade’s vices, cocaine and champagne, but I don’t really get it, either. However, there is one restaurant that’s picked…
“Texas’ Most Historic Town.” That’s how the billboard tempts drivers on Interstate 35 to exit 401B for Waxahachie. You wind your way back under the highway, past the ramshackle burger drive-in (the specialty is lasagna–go figure), down the avenue of spruced-up old houses, and into downtown. Day-trippers come to this…
Someone has to say it, and it might as well be me: Something fishy is going on. OK, when everyone from Stephan Pyles to Gene Street is opening a seafood restaurant, you’ve landed a whale-sized trend, and you can count on swallowing as many fish metaphors and salty cliches as…
The service ranges from preoccupied to surly, the ambiance depends entirely on the light (it’s acceptable on a sunny day and drearily depressing at night, although that could change if they ever get around to replacing some light bulbs) and really, the place is utterly devoid of charm, but Ali…
The big food news a few weeks ago was all about Harry’s Market getting in bed with Boston Chicken. If you’re holding your breath, waiting for a punch line, let it out. That’s it: Harry and the Chicken. In the restaurant world, the marriage of one of the most successful…
It’s definitely the ’90s–a computer-equipped cyber-cafe that sells gourmet coffee by the pound over the Internet (with some help from the guys in brown trucks). Diedrich Coffee, a California coffee bar concern that specializes in all the by-now familiar variations of varietal coffee drinks, opened its first Dallas coffee bar…
Modo Mio tags itself as “cucina rustica Italiana,” but we could tell by the voice on the phone that it didn’t entirely fit that description. And sure enough, when we arrived we were greeted at the door by the stylish blonde attached to that voice, fashionably dressed in an understated…
“I just don’t get this cigar and cocktail trend–it’s so eighties,” a friend complained lately. It’s my theory that cigars and martinis are the cheaper, more benign version of the last decade’s vices, cocaine and champagne, but I don’t really get it, either. However, there is one restaurant that’s picked…
City Harvest is taking it slow, but every time you enter the little epicure shop that could, there’s something new. Their latest service is a month of take-out menus–a concept familiar to the regulars at Marty’s, whence most of the City Harvest staff came. Each week, the kitchen concocts a…
Lots of us lament the disappearance of regionalism in this country. The dominance of fast food, media, and the movies means that boundaries are blurring, that local differences in talk and taste are fading. It’s getting hard to tell, for instance, exactly where the North sinks into the south, or…
The man should be relaxing in a calm bath, but his hand is gripping the soap dish. There’s a coffee mug on the edge of the tub, and a bathmat spread out neatly beside it. The man is wearing a watch. There is a toaster resting on his lap. The…
Evangelists proliferate here in the Bible belt, no matter what the precise nature of the good news they’re spreading. Perhaps that’s why the chain restaurant is the only aspect of dining we’re really notable for. I’d hesitate to insult a genuine barbecue purveyor by implying it was but a link,…
“If you live to be 80 years old, you have 29,200 days to live.” That’s food for thought at the Dallas cafe that tries to combine both more often than almost anyone cares to. In addition to the blackboard menu of coffee and tea and the one listing daily specials,…
Tourist traps are supposed to be something you outgrow, like a passion for peanut butter and marshmallow creme sandwiches or a fascination with belching. Theoretically, anyone over the age of thirteen should be able to pass by a tourist trap souvenir palace like Shell City (yes, I was recently in…
Coffee bars, sports bars, home meal replacements, steak houses, bagel shops, and specialty theme restaurants–these were the hottest concepts in the food business in 1996, and it looks like 1997 will serve up some more of the same. Places like Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Cafe, and Margaritaville (a parrothead’s paradise)…
Once upon a time, there was a natural foods store called Harthomp & Moran on lower Greenville which grew and grew and grew until it blossomed into a natural supermarket called Bluebonnet and was eaten by a giant called Whole Foods. That’s no fairy tale, it’s real life in the…
