Porchetta, when it’s done right, is the Sistine Chapel of the pig. It’s a Roman canvas, labored over for hours in tight quarters, primed with brine and seasonings, skin crackling after some light aging. Like the Apostolic Palace, there should be tours and respectful whispers while one gazes into sun-stroked…

All-American is a series that looks at beloved, longstanding North Texas eateries and examines their histories while exploring how the food has changed — for the good or bad — over the years. Once you’re in the dark embrace of the Cock & Bull, other than yanking out your phone…

Don’t call Fernando Barrero a chef. He’s been in the restaurant industry for two decades in positions ranging from dishwasher to manager, and he jumped into a couple of cooking classes at Brookhaven College but quickly refuses the title. He prefers to keep the cooking at home, he says. Barrera…

It started with something called flour salt. BrainDead Brewing chef David Peña’s powers of food deductions are acute, preserved after years of shellacking his mind with Whataburger cheeseburgers and hot, salty french fries. In order to reconstruct the A1 Thick and Hearty Burger from the ground up — he recently…

It was the only burger on his mind. It was also the most important stop on regular trips to his parents’ house from college in Norman, Oklahoma, and in a way, a beacon that indicated he was home: the bright Whataburger sign that punctuated the highway outside Lewisville, a 20-minute…

Chan Park takes a quick, deep breath behind his drive-thru window as another car wheels away. The landline rings, and Park snaps it up. “Tender basket? About 10 minutes, please,” Park says. He hangs up and yanks a basket of chicken out of the fryer, which wafts the scent of…

Chili-smothered cheeseburgers aren’t usually sandwiches that feel restrained. They’re usually loud, insane messes, like a bad school marching band. Picking up a torrentially drenched chili cheeseburger stains your hands and your shirtsleeves orange, and clumps of mystery meat taste like a metal can. When Texas chili is hurled on burgers…

In 2013, a grim portfolio by Brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves made the rounds on the internet. Called “No Seconds,” it featured the birds-eye-view re-creations of the death row inmates’ last meals. Hargreaves’ photos were unabashed, stark visions of what the final meal truly looks like when you order it. John Wayne…

When they’re made right, sliders are a flawless food. Contrary to the lackluster sliders you’ve been burned by before, they are not lazy, brunch versions of a cheeseburger. They shouldn’t be throw-away sandwiches, carelessly fired on the grill until they taste like charred hockey pucks. When they’re great, sliders are…

All-American is a series that looks at beloved, longstanding North Texas eateries and examines their histories while exploring how the food has changed — for the good or bad — over the years. There was one thing on the menu. Just after Y2K, Mahbub Zaman’s taco stand was a solo…

There’s a moment of surprise when you enter the Mockingbird Diner. The ceilings are sky-high and vaulted. There are no winding hallways; it’s an open-concept floor surrounded by clean, sharp white walls. Up high on the south wall is a long, thin rectangle of a window. This new restaurant —…

Pun intended, there’s no showboating at 20 Feet Seafood Joint. Cod is fried until it’s encased a golden orb of batter. Most things are served in a foil-lined plastic basket because some of the best, most emotional food is served in a basket that’ll never disintegrate from the Earth. Chef Marc…

Twenty-eight years after he opened Dodie’s Cajun Diner on Greenville Avenue, Charlie McGuinness was required to change its name. McGuinness moved to Dallas in the 1970s from New Orleans, and he’d opened up a Cajun-classics spot in a city where it wasn’t easy to find grandma’s gumbo recipe. Now, McGuinness…

On one of the coldest days in Dallas, the diner in Oak Cliff feels too warm to be real. Chicken-fried steak, big as the sun and shimmering with pepper gravy, steams visibly; it’s ready to go in the kitchen window like a pie in the windowsill of an old cartoon…

American cheese should be the unofficial flag of Dallas in 2017. It could hang in the sky like a glittering yellow square, stiff and proud as the American flag on the moon. American cheese is the sigil of house Dallas, and it symbolizes, all jokes aside, a real movement in…

It’s nearly impossible to detect when a seismic shift in your life is approaching. You must watch yourself and your surroundings carefully, and there may be coincidental signs. On a normal morning in Sanlitun, a bar district in Beijing, chef Andrew Dilda would walk out of his 40-story apartment building,…

Construction ruptures the ground on Davis Street. Near its corner at Bishop Avenue, workers are standing in a carved-out rectangular slice in the middle of the road, and a massive crane reaches into the sky above Stock and Barrel. North Oak Cliff is, for better or worse, changing. On this…

All-American is a series that looks at beloved, longstanding North Texas eateries and examines their histories while exploring how the food has changed — for the good or bad — over the years. On an icy Christmas in Dallas about 34 years ago, Jesse Moreno Sr. scoured the neighborhood, looking…

It is no accident that this has been a stellar year for sandwiches in Dallas. From the boom of bars to skyrocketing construction, the city inflates with restaurants as if we’re inside a bubble made of butter. The byproduct of our little food boom is a growing movement throughout the…

Just after Thanksgiving, you might have seen a sign on the door of Food From Galilee that caused a gravity-drop feeling in your gut. Under a red “help wanted” sign, a handwritten note on a sheet of yellow legal paper read, “Dear Customers: We will be closed due to a…