Food & Drink

Walk into Smoke early on any Saturday afternoon and you’ll get the sense that the year-old restaurant hums along effortlessly. Simple preparations, a small, amiable kitchen crew, a mastery of the menu. Truth is, the food takes hours to prepare and there is meticulous care in the execution of what…

Sports venues are increasingly relying on celebrity chefs to bring glitz to their concession stands, but the American Airlines Center is trying to strike publicity gold by showcasing one very lucky amateur. The venue’s asking local cooks to create a “signature offering” to be offered for sale at Mavs’ and…

For folks who get in the habit of wandering around the Food & Fiber Pavilion and tasting Texas-made snacks during State Fair season, the Dallas Farmers Market Friends group is again offering a way to keep that sampling lifestyle going. The organization is sponsoring its 16th annual Hoedown on Thursday,…

A venerated gin distillery has tapped into the ongoing green tea trend for its latest release, Beefeater 24. After 15 years of making Beefeater gin according to the recipe founder James Burrough pioneered back in the 1870s, master distiller Desmond Payne was given the go-ahead to mix up his own…

You may need to sit down. Take a breather. The State Fair is beyond space-epic, at this point. You’ve eaten a good chunk of the fair’s fried foods already, haven’t you? Maybe a giant, throbbing red pickle or too? (Maybe you’re throbbing too). If you’re not at critical mass yet,…

The other day on City of Ate, my colleague, Hanna Raskin, bemoaned the state of the Go Texan Restaurant Week, one of the numerous programs designed by the Texas Department of Agriculture to spur interest and business in our state’s food industry. She noted that only seven restaurants in Big…

City of Ate this week set out to sample all the new fair foods that didn’t make the Big Tex competition finals. Here, part two of our deep-fried review. Check out part one here, and see more food in our opening week slideshow. 1. Chicken BLT It’s a grilled chicken…

Street food purists reviled Taco Bell’s “cantina tacos,” but the tenor of their response hasn’t dissuaded a Texas-based chain from trying out the same shtick. Taco Cabana today announced it will launch street-style tacos on Monday. According to an e-mail from a publicist for the 150-outlet Tex-Mex chain, the grilled…

It’s probably a few months too soon to name the most clichéd dish of 2010, but I’m early voting for watermelon with feta salad. The colorful salad showed up at restaurants across town this summer, gracing the salad page on menus at Pyramid, Dallas Chop House and The Mansion, where…

Mikkeller Nelson Sauvin IPA, one of four from the brewer’s Single Hop series available tonight at The Common Table.​Good news for cash-strapped beer lovers who were having a bit of trouble justifying a $15 pint (imperial 20-oz pour notwithstanding) at The Common Table: General manager and beer expert Jeff Fryman…

Some choke down too many beers at Duke’s Original Roadhouse in Addison. Others inhale sliders. But this Friday, October 1, at 10 p.m. and on Saturday, the entertainment will be swallowing swords and balloons, eating glass and — get this! — vomiting razor blades. The folks at Duke’s aren’t strangers…

No-frills and hole-in-the wall are phrases at risk of becoming as hackneyed as “I love you.” However, when you walk into Tacos El Guero, those will be the first words that come to mind. If you’ve been to New York City and visited any of its Chinatowns, odds are you’ll…

Winemaking is a laying-on-of-hands tradition, a passion that is often passed down from generation to generation. Most often, the children, grandchildren and other family members will stay with the core brand, further refining and developing its tipples and making it better. Occasionally, one branch decides to break from the tree,…

The State Fair of Texas makes it easy to find your way around Fair Park if you know how to use one of the handy free maps handed out at the entrance gate. If you wish to find the Go Texan Wine Garden, for example, merely mosey a ways down…

Even teetotalers have heard about fried beer. But do you know about fried beer batter? While Big Tex competition finalists get most of the glory, there are more than two-dozen new food items being served at the State Fair of Texas this year. Having sampled the also-rans, we can attest…

It’s Go Texan Restaurant Round-Up Week, but it may be difficult for Dallas residents to celebrate it. The program, sponsored by the Texas Department of Agriculture, is intended to showcase restaurants serving Texas-grown products. To participate, a restaurant must ante up a $25 annual fee and serve a meal this…

“Hey, are they happy we got rid of the rye bread?,” Jack in the Box’s mascot asks a fictional focus group leader in a recent commercial for the chain’s new pastrami sandwich. “Totally,” the researcher assures him. Customers may be pleased with Jack in the Box’s decision to simplify its…

He set the world tamale-eating record here three years ago, downing 71 in a 12-minute bout on the steps of Lewisville City Hall, and even with a dozen fewer tamales last Saturday, Tim “Eater X” Janus easily out-ate the competition to claim his third tamale title. The discontinuation of the…