Best Place to Eat Till You Explode 2007 | Maxim's | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Place to Eat Till You Explode

Maxim's

Why is it that even long-timers here don't know about Chinatown, just north of Dallas off Main Street and Greenville Avenue? Sure, it's a strip mall, but it boasts the best Asian grocery store in town, some of the best Chinese food in three states (you ain't lived till you've soaked up the garlicky, greasy goodies at Mandarin Garden, which, alas, we hear isn't as good as it used to be) and a huge row of bubble tea dispensaries. But we come up here, thanks to the advice of Royal China's owner Kai-Chi Kao, for one specific reason: the dim sum at Maxim's, which is served seven days a week—rare enough, as most Chinese restaurants bust out the dumpling, noodle and soup carts only on weekends. Do yourself a favor and make sure you order the Pu-Erh tea, which cuts the grease and keeps you from feeling a little bloated, sage advice for those who, like us, can't get enough of the shrimp-and-scallion dumplings, easily the best thing on the menu for those who like their Chinese food a little less risky. For those who do, there's the thousand-year-old-egg soup; tried it once—not bad, but never could go back for seconds. Eat, eat and eat—then wonder how your bill's only $49 for six people what with all that food.

Best Prix Fixe

St. Martin's Wine Bistro

One week a month, St. Martin's Wine Bistro, an East Dallas staple, offers a four-course dinner paired with wine for $39.95 per person. Chef Georges DuBoeuf dreams up a perfect meal: for a starter, seafood Newberg, paired with a Côtes-du-Rhône white wine. The second course: country French with herbs and apple-wood smoked bacon-infused corn cake on mixed greens, accompanied by a nice Pinot Noir. And for the entrée: tournedos of beef à la bourguignonne, au gratin potatoes and haricots verts, washed down with a Côtes-du-Rhône red; and finally, for dessert, French chocolate mousse paired with Champagne framboise. You don't have to think, just eat, which is good planning after that second glass of wine.

Best Restaurant for Kids

Bin 555 Restaurant & Wine Bar

Here's a swell parlor game: try pairing a nice full-bodied red wine with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Notice how the tannins complement the evil darkness enshrouding the land of Hyrule; revel in how the rich ripe cassis notes harmonize with the young farm boy Link as he awakens his hero and rabid inner animal. Also, don't the subtle acids and nice long finish complement a frontal charge on the dungeon boss as you pound him with clenched fists and open-palm blows? This is just one of the culinary escapades you and your family can enjoy at Bin 555: a post-modern entertainment centaur that is half wine bar, half video smorgasbord. While you savor sips of Byron Pinot Noir, Santa Maria Valley, in between bites of rustic Italian asparagus Milanese—as dangerous as Zelda since asparagus murders red wine—your kids can savor Xbox 360, Wii and Playstation amusements in the "Kids' Lounge," or the wired play space with Net Nanny-filtered Internet access and ever-changing movie showings. It's a nutritious playground for post-toddler first adopters and midget attention span development. So while you glory in the Bin's rustic Tuscan cuisine on small plates coupled with a wine list featuring 55 bottles for $55, your kids can digest Zelda and Link. Feel the family inner animal stirring?

Best Rotisserie Chicken

Golden Chicken at Ali Baba

Taryn Walker
Ali Baba serves a succulent, melt-from-the-bone golden chicken with a spicy garlic sauce and pita bread, or you can ask for hummus instead of the garlic. If you're like us, you eat too much rotisserie chicken anyway, because you tell yourself it's not as bad as fried chicken, and that's true. And fried chicken is not as bad as fried beef. But no matter what Ali Baba's golden chicken really does for your cholesterol, it's a refreshing break for the palate—a hint of the Middle East, a whiff of barbecue, what could be better? Ali Baba has lunch hours, a midday closing and then evening hours, but it gets a little complicated. Best is to call ahead. Or live large and take a chance.

Best Salad

Kitchen 1924

This classy neighborhood eatery turns out down-home cooking with an upscale flourish, and the menu changes with the seasons. You can count on delicious entrees such as the tender and juicy grilled pork chop, as well as unique sides like smoked Gouda grits and warm blue cheese potato salad. The salads are especially masterful. The 24 Chopped Salad, with tomatoes, shallots, blue cheese and avocado has a delectable fusion of flavors and the perfect amount of poppy-seed vinaigrette, and you can enjoy all of it in a cozy, upscale atmosphere complete with a bright mural of Lakewood on the far wall.

Best Salsa

Taco Diner

Some like it hot. They're sissies. We normally want our salsa spicy enough to serve as a paint stripper in a pinch. The salsa verde at Taco Diner, however, is a different animal. We're not sure exactly what they put in this magical sauce, but it's unlike any salsa we've had in Dallas, creamy smooth and iridescent green, with a tangy flavor that's great on the restaurant's mouth-watering tacos. It's flavorful enough to satisfy fans of heat, yet mild enough to appeal to even Yankee palates. Luckily, the service is top-notch, so if you want to go through four or five bowls (and you will), it's not a problem.

Best Salt Lick

Central Market Southlake

Among pleasures we've missed in our long adventures in gluttony is the joy of pink salt from the Himalayas. Say what? Yeah, the pink unrefined fossil marine salt formed some 200 million years ago in the mountains of the sherpas. It has a pinkish shimmer, a swell granulometry and crunch, and a slightly bitter flavor on the finish—everything you want from the pink in your life. This is just one of the many wonders to be found at Central Market Southlake's Salts of the Earth salt bar. There's hibiscus salt and salt with Mediterranean herbs, black olives and Sri Lanka curry. There's fleur de sel, hand-harvested sea salts from the Mediterranean and Atlantic. There are various grades of smoked salts, including one smoked from incinerated Chardonnay oak barrels. There are red clay salts that seal in meat juices when roasting, Hawaiian black lava salts and Cypress black sea salts with activated charcoal to provide relief from flatulence, among other things. The Central Market salt bar has 23 salts that you can taste, buy in bagged bulk or purchase in small plastic samplers if you're worried your blood pressure may launch your cerebral cortex through your nostrils. It's history, one lick at time.

Best Seafood Restaurant

The Oceanaire Seafood Room

If it swims, it flies. The Oceanaire has fresh fish—arctic char, Shetland Island trout, barracuda, red mullet, smoked sturgeon, thresher shark, blowfish—flown in from every conceivable global spot, including Iceland, the East Coast, New Zealand, Panama, South America and Hawaii. The menu is driven by freshness and reshuffles daily—even hourly—as the market dictates. Have your catch prepped the way you want: simply grilled, broiled, sautéed, steamed or fried. There's a raw bar jammed with marine-misted lobsters, crab, clams and shrimp; an oyster selection of Wellfleets from Massachusetts, Malpeques from Prince Edward Island and Kumamotos from Oregon, or whatever else can catch flight. No other Dallas restaurant does seafood as varied or as fresh or racy and unbridled. And so far it seems no one ever will.

Best Sister Act

Barbara Woodley and Natalie Woodley

For much of the last couple of decades, two sisters "of a certain age" have been serving meatloaf and attitude to customers at competing diners. In the process they have won fans and even a bit of fame. Barbara Woodley, 70, in her signature oversized sunglasses, works the crowd at Mama's Daughter's Diner, while little sis Natalie, 66, in oversized barrel-curl up-do, serves the masses at nearby Original Market Diner. The fare is similar at both spots: chicken-fried steak, mac and cheese, biscuits and gravy, etc., but the girls are definitely different. Everyone agrees that Barbara is the more conservative sister, while Natalie is the more flamboyant. Both have legions of admirers who eat with them daily. Expect a wait if you want to sit in either of their sections and also expect to hear their banter dotted with "hon" or "darlin'" or "sweetheart." The girls are comfortable financially, but both have decided not to give up their day jobs. Lucky for us. Big smiles. Big hair. Big hearts. Come on, who doesn't need to be called "hon" every once in a while?

Best Sommelier/Wine List

Rudy Mikula, Hibiscus

There's a reason why, shortly before this writing, Rudy Mikula was poached from Nove Italiano by Consilient Restaurants to become wine and beverage director for Hibiscus, among other Consilient duties. No surprise. Mikula is a walking comfort zone, a wine geek whose easy style and bone-dry wit melts inhibitions, making diners susceptible to Mikula's unique brand of vino evangelism. Listen to him. He plumbs and probes for the world's great sacramental blessings like the best of them. He'll pour you sips of his favorites. Like a particular wine and want to avoid the painful restaurant mark-up flaying? He'll soak off the label and secure it in a Ziploc so you can bring your bagged prize to your favorite retailer. Mikula is an intensely sincere steward, at once discerning, eager and shrewd. He'll usurp your finger and lovingly lug it through the wine list, helping you pinpoint the hidden ones that won't scare the Quicken out of you. If he can do this with Italian wines, with all of their confounding indigenous grapes and regional obscurities, imagine what craftiness he'll pull with the far more mainstream Hibiscus list. Just wait. And watch.

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