Growing up in Amarillo, Mat Nugent’s mom was, in today’s lingo, a “foodie.” She taught classes in French cooking, hosted parties to display her culinary skills and, of course, watched Julia Child. Her interest rubbed off on son Mat, who split his TV time between cartoons and cooking shows. So…
Jonathon’s Oak Cliff continues to generate buzz. Just as Eater almost awarded Jonathon Erdeljac chef of the year, November’s issue of Food & Wine featured the casual restaurant’s “Beer-and-Cheddar Soup.” I called Jonathon’s wife Christine and asked her how the restaurant came to be featured in the glossy magazine. “I…
Pat Robertson never ate mac and cheese at his Thanksgiving dinner, and after scratching my head deep in thought for the last three seconds, I’m pretty sure that I haven’t either. But Robertson’s question of the dish as a Thanksgiving staple (“Is that a black thing?”) along with the commentator’s…
Don’t you hate it when the waiter at the Mexican food restaurant gets pissy when you ask for a take home box of 30-40 hot tortillas? Or when you ask your neighbor to make you some like she did in the old country and she gets all judgemental and is…
News broke yesterday that Sol’s Nieto Mexican Grill at Mockingbird and Abrams closed. Gubbins got the scoop from manager Blanca Perez: “The landlords refused to make any kind of deal with us, so there is nothing we can do. After 10 years, it’s heart-breaking for us to go down this…
Speaking of signs… Before we all stuffed our bodies with Thanksgiving last week, Congress declared pizza a vegetable. Only not really. Tomato paste, which is obviously associated with pizza, was declared a vegetable. We’ll leave it to the Washington Post to sort out the nutritional madness. Meanwhile, in San Antonio,…
The barman procures a large glass jar from underneath the bar and pours in a few ounces of Sobieski vodka, followed by fresh-squeezed lime juice. Hickory chips are scooped from a glass jar and loaded into a hand-held smoking gun, then ignited with a small torch. Smoke fills the jar…
The second season of TLC’s Next Great Baker premieres tonight, and two bakers from the metroplex are among the baker’s dozen vying for a chance at the grand prize of $100,000, a spread in Brides Magazine and an opportunity to work with the show’s host Buddy Valastro in Carlo’s Bakery,…
Men’s Health magazine has set out to find the nation’s most manly restaurant. Their website listed a seemingly arbitrary selection of eateries around the country and asked what makes for many eating. Must a manly restaurant mean mass amounts of prime-cut protein? Must it have a selection of esoteric craft…
News broke last week that RedFork, the flailing gastro pub in Knox Henderson, has closed to undergo renovations. It will apparently re-open sometime early next year with a new menu and a new look — “a neighborhood bar where you can watch the game and get a plate of food,”…
There’s a fairly standard lunch routine here at Observer headquarters: meander around staffers offices and cubicle like brain-hungry zombies until a restaurant decision is made. Often, it’s tacos. Even more frequent: the consumption of meat (Sorry Anna). Hell, it’s usually around lunchtime when our hunger overrides our visual accuity and…
The Venue: If Chef Tiffany Derry at Private Social needs to borrow a cup a’ sugar from a neighbor, the new uptown Del Frisco’s Grille would probably be her best bet. The two modern glass-heavy storefronts split the remodeled section of One McKinney Plaza with Del Frisco’s Grille taking up…
UPDATE: On November 29, the North Texas Food Bank received an $800 check from the organizers of Tomato Battle. More updated details are in Gubbins’ article. Back in October we told you about the Tomato Battle, a new event that featured people throwing old tomatoes at each other. Seemed like…
I’m partial to Cajun and Creole food. I like their rich and crazy approach to meals, both in terms of flavors and attitude. So, with high hopes, last Saturday night we had dinner at The Free Man Cajun Café in Deep Ellum. The atmosphere was lively and original. They don’t…
The big dance may be over, but Thanksgiving lives on inside our refrigerators. Leftover turkey and sides revisit us for days after the holiday — lingering in Tupperware, covered in foil and wrapped in plastic, until that 5-day-old turkey funk reaches out from our fridge to punch us in the…
The locavores in Dallas have always had it tough. While Tom Spicer may be pushing the envelope of urban gardening, and farms outside of Dallas deliver great product, their offering can’t be described as a bounty. Local game is plentiful, but produce availability can be a challenge…
In college I had to take a communications class, which involved giving a persuasive speech. Luckily, I don’t remember mine. But, I’ll never forget the girl who persuaded us not to eat chicken. It worked. She did a standing ovation-worthy physical interpretation of a chicken with all the alterations to…
Each week, the Cheap Bastard goes looking for a new place to eat a meal for less than nine million dollars. This week, she finds the man of her dreams at La Victoria, 1605 N Haskell Ave., 214-827-0101. Dinosaur toy guarding the barbed wire fence count: 1 Times I’ve driven…
I approach Thanksgiving with the full intent of it being a colossal eating event. Sleeves rolled up, I slide all my chips across the table and sit back with an air of indifference. Let’s do this. It made me wonder, how much damage can we do in one day? So,…
Local, the sleek little restaurant in Deep Ellum, opened late in the winter of 2003. It was met with tempered praise from this newspaper, which lauded the elevated simplicity of chef-owner Tracy Miller’s modern American cooking, touting her brilliance with fish and gently spooning other praise on a “restaurant unsullied…
Occasionally we identify interesting local folks who are as obsessed with food and restaurants as we are, and share some of their thoughts on Dallas’ dining scene and food in general. This is one of those occasions. What food reminds you of your childhood? Soft pretzels! I’m originally from St…
File this under Gift Ideas You’re Totally Gonna Want … Once again, another entry of particular brilliance from the folks at Think Geek, who’ve conjured enough Star Wars-esque goods to become the sole source for this author’s Christmas gifting: The Star Wars Breakfast Beverage Set. The $29.99 set comes with…
