Your mama told you right: you can’t judge anything by appearances. Jade Garden has as unpromising a facade as you could hope to see. A converted convenience store, with leaky ceiling tiles, vinyl booths, cheap tables, and chairs–this place has absolutely no drive-up, and the inside is no more encouraging…
You’d think it was Six Flags in summer–the line snakes through the tables and right out the door at noon. Fairmount St. Bakery Cafe is a lunchtime phenomenon. And the question for me–as always–is why? Why is this place making it when so many restaurants are not? These days it…
I get a lot of press releases and a lot of voice mail, but I gather a good deal of my restaurant information from that most professional of sources, my car. Like everyone else in Dallas, I spend half my waking hours behind the wheel, and cue in to changes…
You don’t see wings as often as breasts, and they’re not as big here as in Buffalo, but chicken wings are a coming thing–one part of the bird that still has bones. Wingstop serves ’em hot, mild, covered in lemon pepper or garlic and parmesan, coated with Hawaiian or atomic-strength…
Maybe I’m being supersensitive about this–after all, I’m still terrified by that chapter in Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles where the earthmen climb out of their rockets on Mars and everything and everyone looks precisely as it did back home in Sioux City, Iowa. Only, of course, they’re not…they’re really Martians…
Shannon Wynne had two good ideas and put ’em together the way Lewis Carroll invented vocabulary. The Flying Saucer is Wynne’s new not-brew-but-beer-pub in Fort Worth’s Sundance Square; according to The Fly Paper, the Saucer’s newsletter and menu, it serves 60-odd draught beers and nearly 150 bottled beers. Plus cider,…
I have an electric fork at home, purchased at a New York flea market. You mean electric knife–someone always says when I tell them that. No, electric fork. There’s a space in the handle for a battery, and when you push the switch, the tines of the fork go round…
Modern is a funny word. As soon as you call something “modern,” it seems quaint. The Jetsons were “modern”; so was the transistor radio. In the last century, John Kellogg had “modern” food ideas–he invented breakfast cereals to support his creed of regularity at all costs. Health at the expense…
It is only right that institutions are slow to change. They shouldn’t be subject to the whims and wishes of fashion and trends–they should move at the pace of history. So it is really big news that S & D Oyster Company, on McKinney, has added a new menu item…
When I was a brown-bagging kid, the school lunchroom was divided into two parts: Oreo-eaters and Hydrox-eaters. Both camps regarded their chocolate sandwich cookie as the best; the Oreo-eaters, of course, were correct. Oreos were a rich, deep-chocolatey cookie, the connoisseur’s cookie of choice, whatever your age. Hydrox was a…
When Dallas Morning News music writer Michael Corcoran recently moved to Austin, his last published column listed his departing picks and pans–what he would and would not (emphasis mine, but surely he feels this way) miss about our fair city. In the latter category he mentioned the rumor–wistfully revived nearly…
I am always asked where to get good Chinese food in Dallas, and I always say New York or San Francisco. That’s still true if you’re looking for one of those deeply “authentic” Chinese restaurants with the ducks (geo and otherwise) hanging in the window. But there are a few…
The sign at 2001 Flavors reads: yogurt, stuffed potatoes, rotisserie chicken, salads. A summing-up of 90s gastronomy. Inside, it looks like a yogurt store, but yogurt isn’t the only thing you can get with mix-ins anymore. The deal here is you choose a base, like a potato or chocolate yogurt,…
I once had a cat who ate cantaloupe. I didn’t have to coax her to eat cantaloupe–she naturally craved it. You couldn’t sit down to eat a fruit salad without Bip caterwauling until you gave her some melon. Eddie and Edie, the current cats-in-residence, could care less about cantaloupe or…
I hate to repeat myself, and it hasn’t been very long since I reviewed Breadwinners in this space. You might remember–it was a new restaurant on McKinney whose name reflects the emphasis on baked goods. (The tomato basil bread is terrific.) At that time, it served only breakfast and lunch;…
Welcome the return of the legendary pool. Every kid with a fake ID in the ’50s knew that behind the padded red doors of The Vagabond Club, there was a glimmering turquoise swimming pool–what could have been more alluringly exotic? Greenville Avenue Country Club built a theme and a party…
My colleague at the Dallas Morning News reviewed Monterrey months ago, when it was new, and she predicted it would fill to overflowing as more and more people discovered it. She suggested we all wait and give it time before overwhelming it with enthusiasm. That’s the way it should have…
I hope everyone has noticed that I’ve been making a conscientious effort to stop complaining about driving to Far North Dallas, a recently capitalized destination which, according to various irate readers, I frequently confuse with Plano. It seems that Far North Dallasites are extremely sensitive about being mistaken for Plano…
Sometimes, you come across a bit of unexpected excellence that makes life, as you know it, worthwhile. In a recent case, for me, it was a breathtaking meatball. People often ask if I’m jaded, if I expect too much from a restaurant or if I go in with a slash-and-burn…
Who can say what’s going to work in this business? Everyone says you can’t make it without location, location, location, and then you find a place like Cremona. Down a dead-end street, tacked onto a dying ex-flea-market mall–why should this place stay in business? What kind of real estate is…
Chip’s new location in the former International House of Pancakes on Lovers is bound to give Harvey Goff across the street a run for his money–the burgers are better, the French fries are better, and the atmosphere is free and easy, a little less like an outpost of the Citadel…
Waxahachie is the perfect distance for a springtime day trip, and it’s full of antique and curiosity shops. The only problem has been, where to eat? Cafe d’Amici is the answer. The old Rogers Hotel was empty for years. In fact, they used to use it for a Halloween haunted…
