Best Butcher 2007 | VG's Butcher Shoppe | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Butcher

VG's Butcher Shoppe

"Your hometown butcher shoppe, in the city" reads Greg Geerts' business card. The tiny shop isn't much to look at. It's spartan and white, with only a few old Samsonite suitcases and end tables to give it charm. But the infectiously engaging Geerts, who learned his craft at the meat counter in Huntsville after a string of DWI charges before moving on to Tom Thumb, is just the man to trim your rib eyes and New York strips. He prepares steaks marinated especially for indoor sizzling on George Foreman grills (because most Uptown apartment complexes don't allow hardwood charcoal grilling in the bathtub anymore). His fresh pork, ruby lamb chops and the sliced free-range chicken breasts look as fresh and wanton as anything you'll see—or wish you'd see—in your grocer's meat case. The Black Angus beef is mouthwateringly delicious. VG's sells Boars Head meats and cheeses and beef frankfurters and knockwurst. Geerts will sharpen your knives by hand on stone and demonstrate (more like insist on) the proper ways to care for and steel the edges. Geerts will get you anything you want. He just recently secured a 40-pound whole pig and a 20-pound whole goat for a Dallas luau. The pig had real blue eyes, he offers. He didn't say much about the goat's face, though.

Best Cajun Restaurant

Nate's Seafood and Steak House

Nate's is as plain and shamelessly effective as a good swamp cooler; a Cajun kitchen bog sweating the smoky scent of spice that haunts the spaces between the beer signs. Big slices of slick buttered and heavily garlicked French bread; deep and dirty yet exquisitely balanced seafood gumbo with clean spices discernible through grains of fluffy white rice. Fresh fish, grilled or blackened, brims with savor and is perfect in texture. Spread some live blues on that (they do), and you have a recipe for perfect moments.

Best Cheap Lunch

Sali's

Sali's doesn't have much of an atmosphere, despite the large mural of Venice on one wall, complete with canals and gondoliers. You'll see lots of big families and kids' soccer teams, usually there for the excellent hand-thrown thin crust New York-style pizza. But if you want a quick gourmet lunch and you have only a tenner in your pocket, Sali's will fill you up. Start with the salad and spicy house dressing. Peel off a piece of the yummy, garlicky bread. Then dig into manicotti, lasagna, eggplant, stuffed shells, spaghetti or fettucine Alfredo, served in individual casseroles bubbling hot straight from the oven. The bill tops out at $4.75 plus tip, $7 if you get iced tea or a soda.

Best Cheesecake Discombobulation

Little Katana Mango Cheesecake

On its face, busting things up is the antithesis of culinary craft. But Little Katana has mastered the art of creative destruction—deliciously. With mango cheesecake, Little Katana starts with the traditional sour cream-topped cheesecake, mingles it with fresh mangos, busts it up and dumps the debris into a sundae glass before topping it off with whipped cream. The beauty of it is that everything is retained: the mango tang, the graham cracker crumb crunch and the smooth velvety cheese, all in an organized mess of disorganization. Wrecking crew cuisine is the new global fusion. Trust us.

Best Chinese Restaurant

May Dragon

Good Chinese can be hard to find in the land of hedge-fund lucre and cosmetic sculpting. Sometimes the marinated chicken gizzards and pork ears and spicy beef tripe just seem so out of context; where such things are fine and good and tingle the adventure sensors, the consistency stumbles. May Dragon presents Mandarin, Hunan, Canton and Szechwan cuisines plus selected regional delicacies and elegantly coalesces them under one strip-mall roof. It has the usuals, the Ming lettuce rolls, the spring rolls, cashew chicken, kung pao shrimp and Szechwan beef, all with pert freshness and assembled with an acute eye to detail. Yet May Dragon also has assorted delicacies: the Peking-style roast pork, the pickled jellyfish, the dried fish with peanuts, smoked tea duck and Peking duck with crisped skin, juicy flesh, supple pancakes and crunchy scallions—as good as we've had anywhere. This is not a jaunt for the thrill-seeking epicure, though it may dazzle them. It has none of the manic thrills and disturbances of the rigorously authentic. Yeah, May Dragon is safe, but it's still dong gong good.

Best Ciabatta

Whole Foods Lower Greenville

We were at Central Market once this year—and we love Central Market—but we asked for ciabatta and the person behind the counter held up this big black hank of bread that looked like some old lady's work boot. And we thought, "If that's ciabatta, we gotta say notta." But that's also why the smaller, more intimate scale of the city's original Whole Foods on Lower Greenville will be so sorely missed when the store closes some time later this year or early next. The ciabatta loaves at the Greenville Avenue Whole Foods are always fresh and steamy in a little bin right off the bakery. You can tong them into that brown paper bag yourself, and the best thing is they're still hotta. We buy a lotta ciabatta there. You didn't know we spoke Italian, did you?

Best Cobbler

Houston's

For a casual restaurant, Houston's is a bit pricey ($17 for a French dip sandwich? Ouch.) And there are places that for a similar price serve a much better steak. But there's one thing on the menu that is well worth the price: the apple walnut cobbler. As one friend put it, "It was the most divine combination of fruit and nuts and crumbly topping and ice cream I have ever laid upon my tongue." That might be overdoing it (just a bit), but the dessert is good. The only downside: The restaurant is usually busy and they don't take reservations, so be prepared for a wait. But remember, you're grown up, so when you do get a seat, no one's going to tell you to save dessert till last.

Best Coffee House

White Rock Coffee

Here's how you can make a billion bucks in just a few easy steps. First, secure a good supply of cow pies (horse apples will do in a pinch). Next, char those pies or apples (apple pie?) over an open fire until they're black and crisp. When they're done, grind 'em up, force hot water through the grinds, mix the slurry with low-fat soy steam or milk froth and cinnamon, put it in a paper cup, and sell it for a few bucks 'n' change. Then compile music and sell CDs. Bingo, you got a billion. There's a company that actually did this. You may have heard of them. But if you're more into beans than burnt crap in trendy froth, stop by White Rock Coffee. They have a space-age building with rustic rafters. They have a drive-up window and free wi-fi. Instead of CDs, they host live music and open mike Tuesdays, which are more biodegradable. White Rock roasts their own coffee (on the lighter side, keeping the blowtorches at bay) in small batches. White Rock pours certified Fair Trade Coffees whereby farmers are guaranteed minimum floor prices and fair labor conditions. Behold: the ultimate self-congratulatory caffeine rush every morning. The resultant brews are heady, smooth, refreshing and righteous. White Rock also sells cool frills like scones and exquisite, richly colored Chantal teakettles. Praise the bean.

Best Cold Cuts

Nove Italiano's Salumi

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Most people are born with salty meat urges, the kind of meat with generous sequins of fat. Nove assembles them on a wooden board with timepiece precision, tiny slices of red and pink and blood black overlapping their way toward your cravings. The board hosts salamis and ruffles of prosciutto di Parma, sweet and salt tangy; mortadella folds, reeking of delicate pepper and coriander; and wedges of aged cheese with a little blot of seasoned ricotta. There's a mole, an intensely extracted explosion of cured salami musk from Seattle's Salumi Artisan Cured Meats. These slivery wafers are laced with chocolate, cinnamon and ancho and chipotle pepper gently hoisted on wisps of smoke. It comes with pizza bread. But why muck it thusly? Man can live on salted meat alone.

Best Crab Cakes

Central 214

Crab cakes are ubiquitous. Crab cakes are dull, persecuted into monotony by the terror of filler tyranny. Chef Tom Fleming conquers this heinousness. Fleming's Maryland jumbo lump crab cakes have filler, but there is a precise method to his madness: quarter-cup of bread crumbs to 5 pounds of cleaned crab flesh. To this he adds a dressing composed of brandy, mayonnaise and roasted peppers with plenty of cayenne. The cakes are seared until they form a thick mahogany coat. They're loose and topped with fried potato strings. They rest on a bed of wilted arugula and tomato relish in a lively vinaigrette. Lemon is there too, creating a stiff acidic tension that gradually dissipates in the depths of the sweet cake. Relish that.

Best Of Dallas®

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