Remember when I brought some Sichuan peppercorns into the office to try out on the rest of the Observer staff? I’ve been looking for fiery Sichuan cooking on and off ever since. At the end of that blog post I mentioned Royal Sichuan, a small Chinese restaurant on Greenville Avenue…
This week I took a break from judging the finer points of food construction to talk with Tizeta Getachew. We sat in her restaurant last week as she told me about the events that led up to her quitting a promising career at a domestic violence shelter so she could…
“Should I turn on the sign?” Yemi Lemma asks. Months of preparation have led up to the opening of Desta, an Ethiopian spot far up Greenville Avenue, just inside Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway. Co-owner Lemma was well prepared for her first night of business, but still she was nervous. The…
This week is a doozy. Students are either starting or ending spring break, there’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities, Savor Dallas, blossoming farmers markets and (thankfully) ambitious chefs. What to do? What to do? Let’s evaluate the options. See also: 10-Point Plan for St. Patrick’s Day Thursday, March 14 Savor Dallas…
Beer is a lovely word. We can all agree on that. Beer. There it is. If you had to add an adjective in front of such a glorious noun with the aim of improving it further, what would it be? Delicious? Cheap? Gold-plated? What about free?! FREE BEER. That is…
This year the luck of the Irish is upon us in glorious fashion. The real St. Patrick’s Day is on Sunday, but we prefer to do things like parades and concerts on Saturdays, so we get two days of celebration! Here’s your 10-point, two-day plan: Saturday morning Well, of course,…
It hit my desk Monday — the galley of Daniel Vaughn’s upcoming book, The Prophets Of Smoked Meat. For more than 300 pages Vaughn lays out stories about his travels across the great state of Texas interspersed between so much meat porn I’m blushing while I type this. The book…
If you spent some quality time with The Dallas Morning News on your couch this Sunday, you likely stumbled upon the BBQ Posse’s latest piece, which lists a group of journalists’ favorite barbecue places in Texas. And if you saw the map and noticed all of their spots were tightly…
Craft brewers had one week to reach a compromise with the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas (WBDT) regarding five pieces of legislation recently introduced through Senate Committee on Business and Commerce. Senate bills 515, 516, 517 and 518 were a set of bills carefully crafted after a year of work,…
Food & Wine recently announced that Matt McCallister, chef-owner of FT33, and Omar Flores, who chefs at Driftwood have been nominated for the magazine’s The People’s Best New Chef award. See also: – FT33 is Now Open in the Design District – FT33 chef Matt McCallister and Driftwood chef Omar…
Happy Aloha Tuesday, Dallas. There’s a new Hawaiian barbecue place on Lemmon Avenue, and it looks pretty interesting. Aloha Hawaiian BBQ opened just last week with bamboo window treatments, a mural of the Hawaiian mountains painted on the wall, and Hawaiian radio playing over the sound system. I’d tell you…
Lark on The Park, the new Shannon Wynne restaurant that promises to anchor Klyde Warren Park, is open for dinner service this week. If you’ve been to the park recently you know that on sunny days the space is absolutely packed with park-goers, who previously had only food trucks for…
Chad Montgomery, the organizer of the Big Texas Beer Fest, says tickets to this year’s event are now on sale. Brewers from Austin, Houston and other parts of the state will be on hand this go around, in addition to the Dallas-based brewers who participated last year. Ten local food…
For a long time I didn’t love to prospect at farmers markets, if only because I had no clue how to use them. As a home cook, when I wanted to make a meal, I paged through my cookbooks looking for inspirational pictures, wrote down a massive ingredient list and…
Mark one down in the win column for Kari Gates of Plano. Actually, mark one down for all of Plano. Regardless of who gets the win, Gates is proof that sometimes determined persistence does payoff. And because of that, Plano will soon have its very own farmers market. Under new…
When I wrote of Korean fusion in Dallas last year, I spent considerable time with Janice and Terry Song. The two couldn’t seem to get a break in terms of restaurant location as their first, on Inwood Road, was plagued panhandlers who would harass their customers as they waited in…
Austin-based Whole Foods Market has announced that by 2018 all products in U.S. stores must be labeled to indicate if they contain any genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This move by the natural and organic foods retailer marks the biggest step in a growing movement led by consumers and various activist…
Dismal weather this weekend. Not the best for farmer’s market shopping but I’ll take what I can get. One of our commenters noted if you plan on hitting the White Rock Local Market this weekend you should go early. By 11 a.m. last weekend several vendors had sold out of…
Back in January we published a blog post that described some tense negotiations between Park Towers residents and the nearby Katy Trail Ice House. Condominium residents had filed a complaint with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, alleging noise from the outdoor beer garden infringed on their otherwise peaceful Park Towers…
The Austin-based nonprofit group Texans for Public Justice must enjoy a cold beer at the end of each working day. They’ve been watching the package of beer-related bills at the state capital and on Thursday completed a thorough investigation into the money behind big beer. It’s quite the read. See…
If there’s one thing Dallas loves more than a popular restaurant, it’s a second restaurant by the same owner. Side Dish has a short blog post about Richard and Tiffanee Ellman. The owners of the popular Design District restaurant Oak are bringing us another concept early this summer. Pakpao promises…
Since Il Cane Rosso opened in Deep Ellum in 2011, it has been one of Dallas’ favorite pizza spots. Guy Fieri even made a stop there for an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, which made the wait lines for authentic Neapolitan pizza even longer. As reported last week, owner…
