La Estrella Mini-Mart sits across a pair of railroad tracks that cut through McKinney Street in Denton, the sound of passing trains and their horns a constant nuisance. Its walls boast a collection of custom-made and colorful murals. On sunny days, a bright yellow star beams off the eastern wall…
It’s been more than a year since I talked with Gigliola Aguilera about the salteñas she planned to cook occasionally in her tiny kitchen at Joyce and Gigi’s. I called Aguilera out for not putting the stew-filled pastries on her menu, mostly because they’re delicious but also because the delicacy…
In an area that is hot for most of the year, it’s somewhat surprising that there aren’t more local ice cream shops in Dallas-Fort Worth. There are plenty of places to find paletas and popsicles, but a pint of hand-churned ice cream made with local ingredients is a little more…
When he’s not gently placing foraged herbs on one side of a plate at FT33, Matt McCallister has to rest his tweezing hands and take a break from cooking some of the city’s best food. You won’t find him eating any trendy dishes drizzled with truffle oil or pulling into…
After months of taunting Oak Lawn with its contemporary design and one-two punch of a name, Scotch & Sausage (2808 Oak Lawn Ave.) finally opens its doors today at 11 a.m. The causal restaurant and beer garden offers more than 20 varieties of sausage “sandwiches” (which are basically like giant,…
To prepare for this fall’s Best of Dallas® 2014 issue, we’re counting down (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes. If there’s a dish you think we need to try, leave it in the comments, or email me. Trying to pick a favorite elotes stand might be the most…
Summer is traditionally slow for the restaurant industry, but you wouldn’t know that if you’ve been dining in Dallas this year. A number of high profile of restaurants have opened since our last heat check, and since then we’ve welcomed a new steakhouse, a restaurant devoted to the entirety of…
I’m in a movie called Tavern. That’s what you think when you walk into The Ivy Tavern, the new pub on Lemmon Avenue. It’s the most taverny tavern ever, as though you’ve accidentally strolled into the movie set approximation of a tavern filled with previously unused tavern props. There are…
Some embrace them. Some are torn between tolerance and abolition. Some take the perennial approach. Some don’t let them come to pass. Whatever the case may be, all chefs have an opinion on, and a way of dealing with, signature dishes — the kind of dish that has survived menu…
I feel like we never made it out of the honeymoon phase. Bonchon opened late last year, promising mountains of Korean fried chicken, bowls of crispy pickled radishes and mug after mug of ice-cold beer. I reviewed the restaurant early this year, watched a few football and basketball games at…
Number of people who were clearly pissed that I discovered their favorite secret mall restaurant: 3 Babies in highchairs throwing fits because “Mom, what the serious fuck is this chia seed pudding bullsh?”: 1 Green House Market is a fast, farm-to-table restaurant inside NorthPark Center that features locally sourced options…
To prepare for this fall’s Best of Dallas® 2014 issue, we’re counting down (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes. If there’s a dish you think we need to try, leave it in the comments, or email me. When a reader recommended I head to Spiral Diner to try…
Staring down at my plate at Jon Stevens’ newly minted Stock and Barrel in the Bishop Arts District, it’s hard not to conclude, suddenly and depressingly, that I got the shaft as a child. When I was growing up, meatloaf was a callous and passionless dish wrought from lean ground…
Unlike other town centers, where everything looks like it was erected in late 2010, McKinney’s town square holds a lot of character. Some of the small boutiques are worth taking a peek into just to check out the old buildings that house them. An antique dealer now sits in the…
If you’re talking about Dallas’ culinary resurgence in the last five years, there’s no ignoring Chef Matt McCallister. As FT33, McCallister’s farm-to-table restaurant in the Design District, attracts attention from the country’s most respected food critics, it’s also helping direct attention to the young, up-and-coming chefs who are working to…
Even though successful microbreweries are still a fairly new phenomenon in North Texas, we’ve had an avid homebrew scene since homemade beer was finally legalized in 1978. By my count, there are around two-dozen homebrew clubs based in DFW today and the oldest — the North Texas Homebrewers Association –…
When Paolo Cavalli opened Cavilli Pizza, his first pizzeria, in Irving in 2007, he was sure to contact the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana (VPN), the group of Neapolitan pizza nerds who certify the world’s pizza shops as being Naples-approved. His was the first Texas pizza to be VPN certified, and…
To prepare for this fall’s Best of Dallas® 2014 issue, we’re counting down (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes. If there’s a dish you think we need to try, leave it in the comments, or email me. Look at the bottom right corner of the tray in the…
In Happy Endings, we travel the part of the globe that says “Dallas” in search of great desserts and great places to eat them. Friday is my splurge day. At my house, we call it “party night,” but contrary to the images of free-flowing booze and throbbing lights and music…
In a new series we’re calling Shigging, we’ll be asking pitmasters to give us some specifics about how they smoke their meats. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “shigging,” here’s our definition: An attempt to steal secrets from a barbecue badass in order to make your own barbecue better. Some…
Listen up, baseball fans. In March, over half of ESPN’s experts predicted the Rangers would make the playoffs. Now, there’s not a Lemon Chill’s chance in an August afternoon game that we’ll finish higher than third place. With the All Star break behind us, Your Texas Rangers® are officially the…
The first thing that happens at John Tesar’s three-Brenner-star Knife, after you order a glacially-cold beer from an iPad, is a flight of complimentary crudités (fancy word for chopped, fresh vegetables with dip) hits the table. The place-mats look like woven, Elvish armor. Because this is Texas, the crudités comes…
