The general trend in imbibing these days may be summed up as less, but better. According to the people who tally such things, we’re not drinking as much as we used to, but we’re drinking higher quality stuff; sales of single-malt scotch are up; jug-wine sales are down; high-end bourbon…
Arc-en-Ciel has been one of our favorite Chinese-Vietnamese restaurants for a long time. We had heard its Arlington branch was something, if we could find it. So we spent last Friday night in the depths of darkest Arlington, wandering around looking for a branch of a restaurant based in Garland…
A cross between the Farmers Market and a grocery store, Fresco’s sells only produce in the original boxes. The retail space at Skillman and Live Oak is warehouse-bare, dim, and empty, except for the stacks of crates and the cash register. The mountains of lettuce, peppers, onions, potatoes, and all…
Speaking of coming around again, that’s what’s happening to Oak Lawn. Once a hot dining neighborhood in Dallas, where all the the most chic and newest restaurants were clustered–Old Warsaw was at the corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, Mario’s and Spanish Village were nearby, Jamie’s Hamburgers was just…
Yeah, this is just the thing. Drop by an uptown joint to watch the Magic play the Knicks, hunker down at the bar, grab a brewski, and lay into…a veggie burger? Everything about the Uptown Bar & Grill seems like a typical after-work stop-in bar: its dimness, its dull decor,…
There’s been a whole lotta coffee talk going on during the last few years. Mainly, it’s been about beans and that’s what it amounts to. Bad coffee used to be a hallmark of the cuisine of America, home of the percolator. Now, on every block, there’s a place where you…
So, what do you think they teach them over in the business school at Southern Methodist University–if they’re not going to work for dad’s law firm when they graduate, I mean? I can’t help wondering, because we just met this guy, Scott King, who graduated, went into real estate, and…
I wondered, last week as I explored the eponymous cafes of Addison and Highland Park, whether I would find in them any essential “Addison-ness” or “Park-iness,” some quality that linked the places with their food and towns. This week found me at Plano Cafe (or rather, I found Plano Cafe…
One of the noteworthy features of John Kenyon’s new bad-boy Red Jacket Nightclub is the mezcal boutique in the bar. Mezcal, the cactus-based liquor from Oaxaca, has always been a bad-ass drink: harsh going down, hallucinatory in its effects. As if to prove what a bottom-of-the-barrel drink it was, there…
“You’d better get on down here,” my friend said, calling from her cell phone. “It’s a real pop festival.” She was talking about Eatzi’s, the new store with the ridiculously bad name we’ve all been watching and waiting for on Oak Lawn. Everyone knows Eatzi’s is a new Brinker “concept,”…
On a recent Thursday night, we enjoyed a glass of wine, a cup of soup, and a delicious goat cheese, avocado, and vegetable sandwich on herbed wheat bread while we listened to the Arthur Riddles Jazz Quartet playing oh-so-cool jazz against the gorgeous backdrop of incredible glass flowers created by…
Cafe Highland Park and Addison Cafe are siblings, but it’s another kind of cafe society out in Addison whose cafe is subtitled “Le French Bistro.” If Highland Park society has delusions of old New England, Addison is strictly New World in its aspirations, at least as far as you can…
It’s my impression that Highland Park is populated largely by people who like to pretend they live in Connecticut and commute to the big city. There’s the perfect little park with its gazebo and ducks (and tennis courts). There’s an old-fashioned annual Fourth of July parade, full of children, Sousa,…
A lot of people have told me lately that I need to take notice of Dallas Affaires’ cakes, but it’s hard to notice some things until they’re shoved in front of your nose, which is exactly what happened a Super Bowl and birthday party. Two moist, velvety cakes from the…
These days, you can get strawberries all year long, but there are only a few months out of the year when you can get Girl Scout cookies. The only seasonal food left is now on sale door-to-door, but if you don’t know a Girl Scout, you can wait for the…
I was asked recently by a neighbor what standards I use when assessing a restaurant. This is the question that comes right after “what qualifies you to be a critic?” as the top-three most commonly asked. (No. 3 is “How often do you go out to eat?”) If I’m not…
More news from the pizza front. Not long after responding professionally to the growly-sounding phone call recommending Al’s (“best pizza in town”), I received another message on my voice mail also sounding like Harvey Keitel with a head cold. “Ya keep eatin’ pizza but you don’t come to Al’s,” the…
Szechuan Pavilion used to be the hottest Chinese restaurant in town. The original place in Preston Center was hip and snappy-looking, with colorful Chinese kites, soft lights, and none of that Chinese kitsch. The Pavilion was fast-paced and stylish and lots of fun with good food. But in the life…
I went down to Austin last weekend to waste time and eat Mexican food. That’s only a slight paraphrase of one of my favorite motivating sentences in fiction–the one that starts the whole chain of nonevents in Larry McMurtry’s book, All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers–a favorite because…
The Cotes du Coeur fine-wine auction and dinner takes place this year on February 10 at the Hyatt Regency. The event, expected to gross $500,000, was founded in 1992 by a Dallas physician, Dr. James Hillert, a true believer in the heart-health benefits of wine. Wine aristocracy from around the…
It’s a culinary Frank Capra script. Call it downright heartwarming. The lovely old house that used to be home to Routh Street Cafe has been through some changes since the famous restaurant closed, as has Russ Hodges, who worked in that stellar kitchen with the first talented team under Stephan…
It’s Wednesday evening–still almost afternoon–and it’s cold, but the line snakes out the door almost to the street anyway. It will still be there when you’ve finished eating. Inside, the place, though just remodeled, still has the bustling, noisy atmosphere, kitschy murals, and plastic plants of original Tex-Mex palaces. It’s…
