Best Sommelier 2003 | Todd Lincicome (Al Biernat's) | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Sommelier

Todd Lincicome (Al Biernat's)

Sooner or later, things become too complicated. This is true no matter the arena or walk of life. When our knowledge of the human body extended no further than the four humors, any barber could apply medicinal leeches or perform annual bleedings. Now we need specialists to assist the specialists referring us to other specialists who deny our medical insurance. Such is the case in the world of viniculture as well. In the old days, there was good wine (meaning French) or Thunderbird. Today, more than a million drinkable wines from vineyards in New Zealand and Argentina and South Africa and so on gather dust on shelves around the world. Todd Lincicome can discourse for hours on everything from soil types and rainfall amounts in wine-producing regions to storage conditions of individual vintages. Yet he lacks the snootiness we seem to expect from wine experts. Ask him for a decent, inexpensive wine (he doesn't even mind if you use the word "cheap") and he'll launch into a discussion of bargain bottles. Even tricky orders--"I'm having beef and like a dry red; she's having fish and enjoys a sweet white"--never throw him.

Best Steak

Perry's New York Strip

Perry's serves only prime beef, and while prime may at times seem interchangeable with flame-proof saddle padding on the city's menus, Perry's has the real thing both on paper and between the lips. It's juicy, rich and infiltrated with lusty silk that successfully straddles the razor-thin line between feminine refinement and masculine rusticity, never delving too far into either pocket. Each bite is a fresh adventure in the annals of beef-witted delight. Yet these gnaws are plump with exquisitely balanced flavor, and therefore rife with intelligence--the kind that fills your mind with two-fisted poetry.

Readers pick

Best Waitstaff

Perry's

It's a given that a competent service staff has a deft grip on the menu, and Perry's is no exception. Yet steak generally doesn't cause a strain on the culinary memory banks. What does tax servers are the vagaries of people. Perry's staff knows people. They know how to make them feel at ease, how to serve without being a pest (never interrupt a conversation to ask if everything is OK), how to anticipate needs, how to meet them without calling attention to the service protocol. Skillful service is being in the forefront while loitering in the background.

Readers pick

Best Cup of Coffee

Krispy Kreme

Technically speaking, Krispy Kreme's isn't the best cup of coffee, if by "cup of coffee" you mean just coffee. Starbucks is fine for that, though with all its iced drinks, the chain lately seems more like an ice cream stand. (Hint: If it has lots of ice, sugar and milk and is whipped in a blender, it ain't coffee. It's a milk shake.) Krispy Kreme's brew, taken in the right combination, hits on a more primitive level. Picture this: Your soul is screaming, as it's up early for another miserable day working for the man. Gotta have something to brace the mind, and only that pitch-perfect blend of chemicals will do. First, start with hot grease and sugar from a doughnut. Add caffeine from the joe, then pitch in some sweet, sweet nicotine from the morning's first cigarette, balanced delicately between two fingertips to keep you from singeing your eyebrows as you sip the steaming brew. Does the coffee taste the best? Who cares? What's important is that deep inside your psyche, a primal, raging beast rolls over and purrs. It's the best combo since some long-forgotten stoner said, "Hey, I know! Let's put the hash in the brownies."

Best Greasy Spoon

Metro Diner

Located across from Baylor hospital, this place deserves a spot in the Greasy Spoon Hall of Fame. Waitresses balance three or four orders at once, all the while yelling good-natured chatter at one another and calling every customer "sweetie." Signs on the wall note that only "two coffee warm-ups are allowed" before you start paying again, and another politely asks that you "do not stand in front of the door to smoke." The griddle is on 24 hours, cranking out breakfast feasts (eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, breakfast tacos, etc.) anytime you get the urge. Back in the kitchen they're whipping up chicken-fried steak, smothered pork chops, pinto beans and turnip greens to die for. Their motto is "Always Cookin'," and that's truth in advertising. Don't be surprised if you have to wait for a booth or a spot at the counter to open.

Best Crab Cakes

Metropolitan Cafe

Better get to the Metropolitan Cafe early on Wednesdays, because the lunch special is crab cakes, and they sell like hotcakes, whatever that means. Unlike many Dallas restaurants that buy their crab cakes from food distributors, Metropolitan's Momma Christine makes these oval morsels from scratch, having divined her recipe from a dream, she says, as she did for many of the soups, salads, sandwiches and such that find their way onto the menu of this hot downtown spot. These babies are sautéed rather than deep-fried, loaded with fresh crabmeat rather than frozen and served up Texas-style with black-eyed peas and coleslaw. Lawyers, cops and journalists lousy for lunch turn away in tears when they learn there will be no more crab cakes until the following Wednesday. Unless, of course, they can dream up their own recipe.

Best Way to Eat a Sicilian

Cafe Nostra

Their tagline is "We'll make you a pizza you can't refuse." The logo splashed across their menu features a sextet of sharp-suited gentlemen walking toward you like a pack of reservoir dogs...and one is armed with a pizza box. The name of the joint is Café Nostra, and while they may play it up "bad," every run-in we've had with these fellas has been good. Backed by lunch and dinner choices that are available in-house, for pickup or (best of all) for delivery, the fine folks at Nostra make us almost forget that we're not around the corner from a genuine New York eatery. Appetizers to salads, pastas to pizzas, it's all here, capice? Our favorite? Start off with some garlic knots and maliciously addictive Buffalo wings, then move on to the main event: The Sicilian. Aesthetically, it's a bit like "The Big New Yorker," but the similarities end there, as Nostra's Sicilian is actually, you know, good. Each ingredient is balanced with precision in this thick-crusted rectangle of pie perfection. You'll likely have leftovers, and you'll definitely make use of them.

Best Pickles

Gilbert's New York Deli

Even though Gilbert's Deli broke the hearts of many of its most loyal patrons by leaving North Dallas and moving to Addison, there are too many things about the restaurant that make the drive worthwhile. The meat loaf sandwich, the bagels, the pastrami, the vegetable soup, the knishes--all of which cost money. What doesn't cost are the pickles, which are placed on every table alongside a mountain of crunchy bagel chips. Those deli pickles are of two varieties--kosher dills and half sours--and besides their abundance, they make the lips pucker, the mouth water and prepare the taste buds for the deli food that follows. If you ask Alan Gilbert where you can purchase a jar of these pickles, he has been known to reply, "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you." Rather than press the issue, the occasional drive north will have to suffice.

Best New Restaurant

Local

There are a lot of good things that can be said about Local, the tiny boutique restaurant that opened in the heart of Deep Ellum in the historic Boyd Hotel, one-time stopover for Bonnie and Clyde, Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter and Blind Lemon Jefferson. One of them is the Sluree, a blend of Rotari, an Italian sparkling wine, and scoops of house-made grapefruit-rosemary sorbet that quickly melt into the fizz. The Sluree is a good source of vitamin C as long as you don't fortify yourself into blurred vision. Another is the small collection of imaginative salads equipped with things like fried pears, oven-baked Roma tomatoes and strips of skillet-fried prosciutto. The cheeseburger is hearty and bursting with flavor, the fried chicken flits like a cloud and the fish is provocatively simple, letting the natural fish flavors blaze a path across the tongue (the footprint of chef Tracy Miller is ever so slight, yet undeniably shrewd). But perhaps the best thing that can be said of this restaurant is that it has no ambition to be anything other than what it is: a distinctly Dallas restaurant that bubbled up organically from the inner city's pavement. This is no New York or L.A. or Chicago wannabe posing. It just is what it is. To this spirit is stapled a tiny, eclectic and thought-provoking wine list and deliciously clean and crisp design lines (even wool shag carpet) by hotel designer and co-owner Alice Cottrell. Plans for an outdoor courtyard and wine lounge only assure that the luster deepens, carving another notch in the short bedpost of culinary experiences tasted through a distinctly Dallas prism.

Best Meal in Less Than an Hour

El Fenix

The term "fast food" does not have to describe the greasy cesspool of unidentifiable mystery meat served up at drive-through windows. Well, at least not in El Fenix's case. Quick, simple and delicious, we'd take a sit-down meal in this cozy Dallas landmark over a puck-sized burger in our car any day. The service is the fastest in town, but don't think that means they're sloppy. Orders come out perfect every time, even if you request an enchilada combo with double the rice, nix the beans, extra sour cream and no jalapeos. As partial to iced tea as we are, while dining at El Fenix, we can never pass up their sodas, which are noticeably crisper, lighter and more refreshing when consumed in conjunction with their famous tortilla chips. In less than 60 minutes you can get in, get full and get out.

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