I hadn’t had a very good Monday. My computer was threatening to lock me out of my e-mail, nobody was returning my calls and my dinner date canceled on me, sending my carefully crafted review schedule into a tailspin. Staggering under the weight of my 9-to-5 troubles, I wandered into…
I heard Pope’s Fried Chicken was a rundown, super-sketchy chicken place near Carroll Avenue that even some grown men are openly afraid of approaching. You had me at “Pope’s.” The guy is super angry old and he’s pretty busy being the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but the pope…
Victoria beer, touted as “Mexico’s best-kept secret,” makes it debut in Texas today, months after its first stateside release in Chicago. While publicists call its Illinois launch “successful,” Chicago brewhounds are slightly less enthusiastic. “I hadn’t heard of Victoria beer before your mention of it,” the Chicago Beer Society’s president…
A recent City of Ate post announcing Food Network’s upcoming Dallas casting call has been hanging around in the most-viewed story list this week, so y’all are probably keen to learn about another chance for TV stardom. MasterChef, the latest cooking competition show from the ubiquitous Gordon Ramsay, is seeking…
Now that we’re into December, Christmas beers, winter warmers and other special seasonals are showing up in stores and beer joints. It is truly the most wonderful time of the year if you’re a beer lover, and year after year, Anchor Christmas Ale, also sometimes called “Our Special Ale” (and…
A celebrated experiential food-and-drink festival kicking off tomorrow in London will include a “Texas-style slammer,” where attendees will have their mug shots taken, receive prison jumpsuits, drink tequila sunrises from urine sample cups and feast. But the food served at the “Shoreditch State Penitentiary” is unlikely to seem familiar to…
Chef Daniele Puleo and his fiancée are having dinner when we arrive at Daniele Osteria. When I called to let him know we’re stuck in traffic, he tells me to take my time. “We’ll go ahead and order,” he says. I don’t know who he’s talking about at the time…
Beam Family master distiller Fred Noe, the seventh-generation bourbon maker whose mug graces every bottle of Jim Beam, isn’t bringing any samples of the soon-to-be-released Knob Creek single barrel reserve to a pair of tastings in Addison this week. But Noe will no doubt be happy to chat about the…
Daddy dates. Not to be confused with Sugar Daddy dates. I really mean those dinner outings a girl goes on with just her dad (or for this review those dinners where the name of the restaurant coincidentally has the word “daddy” in it). Before my dad passed away two years…
The capital of our neighbor to the south isn’t all kidnappings and cheap telenovela settings. Mexico City (D.F.) is cosmopolitan city en par with New York, Paris and Tokyo, with a culinary tradition to match. Heck, the entire of culinary tradition of Mexico is so important that the United Nations…
Deeply rooted in the rich traditions of the Jewish people is the potato latke. Born of the shtetl and carried to this country on the taste buds of immigrants, the potato latke, a.k.a. the potato pancake, is a Chanukah celebration side dish, a distant cousin to the hash brown –…
I had occasion to amble through a McDonald’s the other day (the occasion being the closure of the bathroom at the gas station next door), and noticed there was a serving of Chicken McNugget sauce on almost every table. But nobody was eating nuggets. McDonald’s customers, it appears, are co-opting…
T.S. Eliot proclaimed that April was the cruelest month, but we would argue that November has been particularly unkind to some restaurants. Top Chef fan favorite Tiffany Derry found herself without a gig after Go Fish Ocean Club shuttered its doors this month, and Sharon Hage closed York Street, long…
In-N-Out’s local opening may still be months away, but fast food fans willing to drive to Austin can feast on a sandwich being touted by burger bloggers as an Animal Style alternative. 4×4 Animal Style a contributor to the website GrubGrade who presumably knows his In-N-Out patties, is calling the…
A recent Truluck’s promotion intended to celebrate customers’ joyous events could send anxious mothers-to-be into a nutritional tizzy. Through tomorrow, the Uptown seafood restaurant is offering free stone claw crab appetizers to women who show their servers a sonogram performed that day. But shellfish consumption is a touchy topic among…
Maybe tackling JS Chen’s prodigious crab fried rice the day after Thanksgiving wasn’t such a great idea, after all. Wanting to refresh our palates from turkey and stuffing bombardment, boyfriend and I took a breather from our half-hearted Black Friday shopping to pay a visit to Plano’s JS Chen for…
I wasn’t able to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year, but my brother made sure I didn’t miss out on the heated squabbling that always accompanies the Millers’ post-dinner board game session. “Mom wants to play ‘hot dog’ as a type of sandwich in Scattergories,” he texted me on…
As a writer, I always keep one Internet tab tuned to Merriam-Webster’s website, which is the best source I’ve found for the precise meanings of words (and the correct spelling of “simultaneously,” which I regularly butcher so badly that Microsoft Word can’t help me.) I imagine it’s the scribbler’s equivalent…
It seems even marketers are getting in on the food-truck fever that has infected every major U.S. city. In yesterday’s New York Times, Tanzina Vega wrote an excellent article about corporations jumping on the mobile food vending bandwagon, among them HSBC. The international mega-bank wrapped some of New York City’s…
December’s the last month for culinary civilians to have a say in who takes home a James Beard award in 2011. The James Beard Foundation has been accepting online nominations for its restaurant and chef categories since October, but promotional campaigns mounted by restaurant owners who’d like to see their…
It’s always hard to go back to work after Thanksgiving, especially if you spent the last few days chilling out in your Snuggie like we did. Before you polish off that cherry pie, check out what’s happening this week at these restaurants. We also have suggestions for how to dispose…
For as long as I’ve lived in Dallas — off and on for five years now — I’ve put off going to the Dream Cafe because the name strikes me as powerfully lame. The whole “eclectic” and “global” shtick sounds like the kind of thing that Ian guy would be…
