Throughout the year Celebrity Bakery does these great seasonal and holiday iced cookies, always fresh and moist, with delicious decorations for everything from Christmas to Bastille Day. Any holiday at all is a great excuse for biting into one of these little works of art.
Metro is an old roadside slinger within spit shot of Dallas' downtown skyline. It's an archaic, rudimentary grub hut, one whose only modern amenity is a jukebox packed with CDs. Griddle sizzle is the constant din; ice machine whirs the constant hum; smoke clouds and grill gusts the incontinent weather. Booth seating is covered in deep red vinyl embedded with metal flake: an homage, perhaps, to all those jacked-up, candy apple red Chevelles and Chargers of years past. The menu's got a kind of hum to it, too, and maybe a rattle. Metro porky dinner has two pork chops and a pile of hash browns that feel like they were dragged through 40-weight (best to eat with a spoon). Home boy is a double-meat chicken-fried steak. This is the kind of meaty one-two punch that has horrified the health professions for decades. There's also stewed potatoes, fried catfish, eggs galore (even with a chicken-fried steak), pancakes--and refreshing lemonade, which serves as a kind of Drano to remove some of the excess lipids lining your plumbing. Most of us think that, anyway.
It's not every day you come across a good burger. Much less a non-meat burger. Even rarer are the chances of it being a good burger if it's made out of beans. But we're here to tell you the best bean burger in the city limits, maybe in the state, is found at Legal Grounds. Served on a toasted, cracked-wheat bun, this black bean patty is dressed up with a sauce any hungry Texan would be proud of: sautéed corn and onions mixed with barbecue sauce and melted cheddar cheese. The calorie counters and vegetarians among us will be proud, too, knowing it has just 6 grams of fat, 18 grams of carbs and 13 grams of protein.
Crisp, crunchy, cool, hot and soft are all words that can describe a banner bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich. But the bacon is the clincher for a good BLT. It has to be two things: perfectly crispy with no chewy parts and hot. One without the other just won't cut it. The lettuce must offer a cool, thin crunch against the bread, and the tomato must be firm and fresh. These all sound like obvious requirements, and ones easily met, but most anywhere, a BLT is hit or miss. Except at the Lakewood Landing. The Landing stands out time and again for the toasty goodness. The mayo has appropriate zing, and the toasted bread doesn't overwhelm the sandwich innards. The Landing's BLT is blue-ribbon material.
Nothing fancy here. No avocado, no chutney, no heirloom veggies. TABC just creates a good, honest bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Their only nods to upscale pretension are homemade bread and apple smoked bacon. So whence the accolades? Well, unlike most restaurants, which pile on lettuce and tomato then lay a couple of greasy strips across the top, these guys stack the thing with bacon while skimping on lettuce. Oh, and not limp, soggy bacon either, but thicker pieces fried to a near-burnt crisp state of perfection. They understand the only thing that matters in a BLT is the B part. Want a pile of lettuce doused with mayo? Order a salad at any DISD lunchroom. .