The Bay Leaf could easily be just another one of those dark, strenuously hip Deep Ellum joints fashioned out of aging warehouse brick and smoky oil paintings. On certain nights it even has live jazz, tucked up front by the door. During non-live-music times, though, Bay Leaf jazz is like…
Inside Al’s Prime Steaks and Seafood the temperature hovers comfortably in the 70s. Wind and rain smack against the restaurant’s walls, belying one of Marx’s lesser maxims: “It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature.” It’s the same story downtown at Jeroboam, over at Brother’s Pizza or at…
Baja California Grill, the Addison Tex-Mex mayhem opened last year by businessman Ken Franklin (former owner of Jaxx Café), bit the desert sands last December. But this past March, Franklin unloaded the hapless grill to a pair of new owners who have ambitiously set out to nudge it into upscale-casual…
It’s hard to not think of Arthur’s as an icon of perseverance amid the unforgiving brutality of the Dallas restaurant scene. Owner Mohsen Heidari, in addition to grappling with the constant and typical tortures of employee turnover, spoilage, government inspectors, taxes and critics, has had to deal with asbestos, bad…
“Part of the secret to success is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.” Voltaire didn’t utter that one (Mark Twain did), but the quote might apply to events at Voltaire that climaxed with the departure of lauded chef George Papadopoulos. Running rumors say…
Chez Gerard is a crotchety old cottage born some 17 years ago on McKinney Avenue at a time when French cuisine spelled sophistication. The restaurant has changed little since then, and a French kiss might not smack of the sophistication it once did, but that doesn’t mean Chez Gerard fumbles…
Bond traders weren’t the only ones abruptly throttled by early September’s airborne spittle from hell. Food pros as well as one of the most lauded restaurant idols were also vaporized in the maelstrom. Windows on the World, that famous 40,000-square-foot feedlot in the sky perched on the 106th floor of…
The Burning Question crew returned from a vacation our editor described as “long-overdue”–a compliment, we presume–just in time for football season. Football is a confusing sport. To some it’s a metaphor for war, satiating our bloodlust in a confined space–a Coliseum for the modern world. To others the sport reflects…
Richard Chamberlain is the type of food pro who has a history studded with jewels. Starting with proletariat food training at El Centro College, Chamberlain went on to apprentice at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. He was credited with developing a cuisine christened American alpine cooking while in Aspen, was…
A study conducted by researchers from the Danish Epidemiology Science Center in Copenhagen has found that wine consumption may be associated with higher IQs. Not only that, but the Danes found that higher education levels, an elevated socioeconomic status and optimal functioning on personality scales and health-related behaviors were also…
Tom Fleming graduated from a top cooking school, Kendall College in Evanston, Illinois. He now serves as executive chef at Lombardi Mare in Addison. Marc Cassel cruised through El Centro’s apprenticeship program then gained fame at the Green Room, a Deep Ellum hot spot. Christopher Short, sous chef at Crescent…
Zen den is a big deal. On a Monday evening when it isn’t even open for dining, a manager escorts groups of people through the passageway into the dimly lit room generously draped in gauzy curtains. “This was AquaKnox?” asks one zen den tourist in amazement. It’s hard to believe…
Cabo Grande has been pushing chicken this August. Sorry to be so late conveying this PR puffery (the flier picture of a leg and thigh is very yellow), but chicken (even when slow roasted with Southwestern seasonings for $7.95) is hard to get excited about. What is interesting about Cabo…
It didn’t take more than a couple of bites before dining at York St. got me thinking about Lloyd’s of London. Lloyd’s, founded in 1680, is the venerable insurer that was brought to the brink of ruin by asbestos litigation, among other things. It’s also the company that famously wrote…
It wasn’t too long ago that Frankie Carabetta was set to operate a McKinney Avenue sports bar with his name on it. That was when Tracie Barthlow, owner of Bridges Gourmet Coffee, was his business partner. But a bitter rift and a lawsuit forced an end to that partnership. Now…
That Rocco’s was once Highland Park Cleaners is not hard to imagine. This tiny hut could have been little else, save for a hotdog stand or one of those mailbox places that charges you double to ship fruitcakes at Christmas. It’s easy to imagine plastic bags stuffed with suits and…
There once was a place in Fort Worth’s Sundance Square called Ellington’s Southern Table. It wasn’t long after the place opened and it was mercilessly skewered by the reviewers (not us…we pricked it politely) that it became Ellington’s Chop House. After that, the name was edited down to Chop House,…
Here’s a riddle: Take away the fine dining establishments that define Dallas nightlife. Remove the bright clusters of familiar chain restaurants that enliven Plano, Lewisville and Frisco. Close all liquor stores in The Colony and board up Addison’s strip. Do all this and what will you have? Mull it over…
It’s funny how people in Dallas refer to everything north of LBJ as some kind of untamed wilderness. They call it “way up north,” or “Oklahoma,” even the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But that’s just silly. Plano and its less civilized siblings Frisco and Allen aren’t populated simply with feral…
Barring a sudden Ice Age or, less likely, a burst of energy by city inspectors, Dallas likely won’t see 36° in August. It looks like the month will come and go without the opening of seafood restaurant 36, chef Chris Svalesen’s restaurant named for the optimum holding temperature of fresh…
Sometimes in our daily lives we unwittingly explore the fuzzy boundaries between brutishness and sophistication. It’s a tricky path between refined and plebeian, really. Purchase a steel frame chair with a cheap canvas seat from Wal-Mart, and you’re just some slob from The Colony. Call the same piece a Bauhaus…
It’s not hard to stare across the turbid ripples of Lake Ray Hubbard and imagine romance. Lake Ray Hubbard spans 22,745 acres, so it looks like an ocean through a slightly sozzled night squint. And though Lake Ray reaches a maximum depth of only 40 feet, there is still plenty…
