Indian food has had a tough time here. The land of steaks as thick as phone books and spuds the size of VW Beetles is inhospitable to cuisine more complex than a T-bone. Stripped down to its basics, Indian grub incorporates some two dozen herbs and spices, including coconut, chilies,…
So much public health concern, so much smoke. Earlier this month a horrified New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg reportedly dispatched the NYPD to Madison Square Garden to halt a Rolling Stones concert. It seems guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were puffing onstage in violation of the city’s strict no-smoking…
The really profound thing about 36 Degrees, longtime Dallas chef Chris Svalesen’s newest venture, is the appropriateness of the name. Not simply that the name represents the optimal holding temperature for fish, but also that it perhaps describes the number of stages Svalesen’s vision will pass through before it is…
Former Sfuzzi co-founder Patrick Colombo, developer of the Italian restaurant Ferré and the chic wine bar Crú, both in the West Village, says he is close to consummating a deal on the space that was most recently Alvin Granoff’s Eccolo Ristorante and Enoteca before it was Alvin Granoff’s Ecco Italia…
We always run into trouble at Paris Vendome. We’re not sure why, really. It’s a classy place, and people often use the word “class” when describing the Burning Question crew. Of course, they attach the word “low” to it, but still. Last time we visited the West Village bistro, a…
Brewpubs have had a hard row in Dallas. When a measure passed the Texas Legislature in 1993 permitting the brewing and sale of beer at the same site, some 40 brewpubs popped up in Texas within just a few years, eight in Dallas alone. The corpses–Coppertank Brewing Co., Moon Under…
For a downtown groundbreaking, it was a little rickety. It opened with a video presentation highlighting the milestones of Dallas nightclub impresario Keith Black. But sound for the video, projected from twin screens and featuring a leggy nightclub minx spewing breathy descriptions of the Black legacy encompassing clubs such as…
The military has a wonderful habit of turning simple concepts into incomprehensible abbreviations or ironic juxtapositions. Lunch, for example, becomes MRE. That’s short for meals ready to eat. Perhaps this explains how officers learn quickly to misstate the obvious. After getting his ass whipped in Russia, the great Napoleon rallied…
The numbers are startling, but maybe it’s only because of where we live. Judging by our contemporary fetishes of steak palaces, prime beef, Kobe beef burgers (who will be the first restaurateur to introduce a dry-aged prime sloppy joe?), pork chops that could fill a men’s club cleavage and rib…
First off, a correction: In the Dish wrap-up for 2002 published in the January 2 edition of the Dallas Observer, I mistakenly reported that Deep Sushi in Deep Ellum had closed. In fact, Sushi Nights was the Deep Ellum sushi restaurant that shuttered in 2002. I apologize for any inconvenience…
In August, Voltaire closed. And that pretty much sums up the Dallas restaurant complexion for 2002. Voltaire’s death rattle served as a worn metaphor, a symbol of what was expected to happen but didn’t–the big bang that rattled the windows and agitated the lava lamp but left the infrastructure unfazed…
How to define 2002? The most notable figures were pedophiles, Donald Rumsfeld and the Rally Monkey. Hollywood produced yet another Rob Schneider insult. Creative minds working with endless colors and fabrics from all over the world settled on bare teen-age midriffs as the year’s fashion sensation. And when Trent Lott…
Why do the munchies that are served with belts of booze have to possess culinary panache? They don’t, or maybe shouldn’t. After all, such craft is ultimately pulverized into an alimentary ooze mere moments after creation and hustled through yards of plumbing. Sure, the same thing happens during a fine…
There’s a lot of indignant rant in the culture these days over the knee-jerk, Glock-click tendency of many of us to associate anything Italian with mobster chic–and maybe baked ziti. In April 2001, the American Italian Defense Association filed a lawsuit against the producers of the popular HBO series The…
No one really knows much about the origins of eggnog. It’s difficult even for the most skilled historians to fathom the circumstances that led someone to whisk eggs, cream, sugar and ale into a mug. Nor does anyone spend much time researching the association between the spiked milk shake and…
At first glance the link between Roy Orbison and wine isn’t obvious. He did record the song “Lonely Wine,” and the tune “All I Have to Do Is Dream” does contain the line “I can make you mine, taste your lips of wine, any time…” But it’s hard to imagine…
Like the burger and onion ring, Tex-Mex has become a tavern staple, and it’s no surprise why. It’s salty, which generates the thirst that generates the cash from drink sales. This cuisine is highly absorptive, which means it serves as a stomach-lining hurdle: a bean-cheese-tortilla-salsa speed bump that keeps your…
Like most contemporary Asian outlets, Green Pepper is replete with high-tech touches, subtle though they are. Plastic chairs in black and yellow surround dark tables. Walls washed in subdued yellow hover over dark wallpaper wainscoting imbedded with Chinese characters. And Green Pepper has a motto: “We are a BYOB restaurant…and…
Celebrity chef Stephan Pyles, who has spent the past few months drafting and spit-polishing the food-service operation for Hotel Zaza and its restaurant Dragonfly (and has just signed an agreement to stay on for another year to keep the polishing spit flying), has found himself in the middle of a…
This is just an assumption, but it’s probably valid. Chicken-fried steak played a key role in President Bush’s recent policy victories at the United Nations. Without the Texas delicacy, inspection teams would still be idle and Saddam Hussein, that old nemesis of the Bush family, would be doing whatever it…
Hibachi Rock’s vestibule is crammed with Japanese dolls, and Polaroids paper the wall. A manager says these photos were shot some three years ago when this Allen restaurant opened. There was a steady racket rumbling just beyond the dolls and snapshots. As we moved toward the glass inner door, it…
Henderson Avenue nightlife necromancer Tristan Simon–whose Cuba Libre Cafe and private club called Sense have been generating more buzz than a two-speed nose hair trimmer–has purchased a big chunk of Genghis Grill, a Dallas chain of create-your-own-stir-fry Mongolian barbecues. Consilient Restaurants L.P., Simon’s command and control umbrella, picked up 50…
