Standard Pour, Uptown’s newest cocktail den, brought to you by Brian McCullough of Smoke and pop-up bar fame and the team behind Sfuzzi, opened last week in the old Lotus space at 2900 Mckinney Avenue. The patio was packed on a breezy Wednesday night, and inside was at about three-quarters…
The Katy Trail Ice House was a zoo on Friday. There wasn’t a single seat available, and there was a wait at the bar to get a beer. Despite the crowd, I was able to get in, order a Lawnmower, chug it and get out in about five minutes. How’d…
If you weren’t there for Opening Day on Friday, I’m sorry. But there’s a lot more to come, including tonight’s Opening Yu. We went Friday, and are here now with 10 tips, reminders and observations. 1. Tailgating at Rangers Ballpark on Friday was everything it was supposed to be. The…
Baseball is officially here. I ran over to the Katy Trail Ice House to test an iPhone app and snapped this shot while I was there. Rangers fans are out in full force. If any of you find your way to the stadium this weekend, here’s some food you might…
Early this February, Iron Cactus got served. Literally. The Austin-based Tex-Mex chain, with a location in downtown Dallas, became the subject of class-action lawsuit alleging that it failed to comply with federal employment laws regarding wages and tip-pooling. According to the suit, Iron Cactus illegally implemented a tip-pooling procedure. Pooling…
“Always strive to master your craft.” The closing words of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, which opens today at the Magnolia and Angelika Theaters, would make sound advice for any trade. But thrust upon the shokunin, the master sushi chef, they invoke a certain umami for the soul that’s as inspiring…
JR Bentley’s “Chain Restaurant Hell” could have easily described Arlington for ages. But with Cowboys Stadium, the Super Bowl and record admissions at UTA, it’s finally got a few places with character. Well, OK, a lot of them are still chains, but not in the fast-food sense. If you want…
It’s Opening Day. You planned on going to go the stadium ring in Spring and tackle the big, bad Boomstick (above), but then your boss tossed a few extra TPS reports in your inbox. You’ll never make it to Arlington on time. Oh well. You didn’t want to spend hundreds…
The Dallas Farmers Market Friends will be at tonight’s Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs meeting, to speak out against a plan to open transitional housing for homeless people near the market. In their pleas to save the place, board members have made many references to the history of…
Tuesday evening, after tornadoes struck the metroplex, Scott Wooley, owner of the So-Cal Taco food truck, immediately started devising a plan to help the victims and relief workers. It’s all part of his gratuitous spirit, which is partly a result of his fight with cancer several years ago. He’s free…
A well-balanced cocktail is a work of magic. A handful of quality ingredients, combined with a sometimes subtle and sometimes vigorous agitation, transform into something significantly larger than the sum of their parts. While slurping oysters at the Chesterfield, the subject of this week’s review, I asked my tablemates whether…
Last week’s Union Bear review had me thinking about eggs. I was taken by a chicken-fried number: a salty crusty treasure chest filled with liquid gold. Next thing you know Side Dish is gushing about yolks. It was Graham Dodds that seduced them, with eggs from Yellow Prairie Farm in…
When Nicole Van Camp was 15 years old, she decided to become a vegetarian based on the grounds of animal cruelty. But she lived in highly carnivorous Carrollton. Unless she wanted to starve, she had to learn to cook. She quickly fell in love with her new life-sustaining hobby. And…
Yesterday the farming trade publication Farm Futures carried a story on the potential rise in beef prices after the recent uproar over pink slime, or LFTB (lean finely textured beef). CattleFax, a beef industry research group, estimates the pink slime news cycle “is costing the U.S. beef industry $15 to…
Today is National Alcohol Screening Day, a day on which almost 1,000 community-based organizations, colleges and military installations will offer free, anonymous screenings to help people determine whether or not they have a drinking problem. The website HowDoYouScore.org is sponsored by another site called “Mental Health Screening,” which, according to…
You finally have a decent place to take the Jewish grandmother in your life without sacrificing your coolness, thanks to Dallas’ newest food truck: K-Wheelz, a new kosher food truck by Dallas-based Simcha Catering. Simcha specializes in a large array of kosher platters for anything from corporate events, Shabbos dinner,…
On a January weeknight, one of the unseasonably warm ones, The Chesterfield was absolutely packed. Not with patrons, necessarily; the space was far from capacity. But downtown’s newest temple to mixology was overflowing with good vibes. Pandora filled the room with the redundant baseline of 12-bar blues and drinkers shouted…
In 1997, Rocky and Celeste Tassione traded in their urban lives for greener pastures north of Stephenville to grow organic, specialty greens through hydroponic gardening in one lone greenhouse. Their goal was to gather enough business through sales to restaurants to make a living of it. At first, it was…
Last week I published a blog post about an object of my affection: a steaming bowl of seafood laden soup from Veracruz Cafe. In the comments, CitizenKane seemed just as smitten, and asked about other bowls of soups and stews that were worth checking out. Since the mercury is rising,…
Chef Nicole’s Secret Supper Clubs are held on Saturday nights at a spot called My Private Chef in Deep Ellum, at the corner Elm and Malcolm X. During the week, Holly Muller uses this place to prepare meals for her private chef business. But on Saturday nights, Chef Nicole Van…
As usual, last month was a busy one in the Dallas restaurant scene. Read on for the full slate of opening restaurants, and be sure to share tips about restaurant openings or closings in the comments section below or at dish@dallasobserver.com. Openings: Chicken Scratch (2303 Pittman St.): Tim Byres’ new…
Last week, checking out the scene on the west side of the big fancy new bridge, I noticed a sign on a yellow building one block south of Singelton (400 Bedford) that reads “Coming Soon: Babb Brothers Barbeque & Blues.” The first sign of life in the Trinity Grove development…
