Perhaps Lola owner Van Roberts operates on a different plane, maybe the kind derived from a salad where the porcinis are subbed with magic buttons. Whatever you make of his latest culinary plunge, The Tasting Room, his balance-sheet projections seem to emanate from a different dimension than those generated by…
The other day we stumbled across a truly bizarre line penned by essayist G.K. Chesterton. Now, we’ve read a number of strange and disturbing things in our time: Vanna White’s account of her success and career, John Lydon’s retelling of his impecunious boyhood, anything written by William Murchison in The…
One of the inverted glass bowl chandeliers hanging from the ceiling is busted. Not blemished like a chipped tooth, but damaged like a hockey player’s smile. It’s a natural, accidental impairment in a dining room packed with faux threadbare touches. The creamy walls are blotched with a crackle finish–fraudulent architectural…
Like Tristan Simon with his symbiotic Henderson Avenue empire, restaurant concept baron Phil Romano and his Nick & Sam’s sidekick Joe Palladino seem bitten by the hub-and-spoke bug. Just after opening the semiprivate nightclub Medici two weeks ago, the pair is sewing up a joint venture with Fernando and Gino…
Comic Jackie Mason once asked: “Jewish civilization is 6,000 years old, and Chinese civilization is 4,000 years old. So where did Jews eat on Sunday night for 2,000 years?” It’s a strange crossover, this Jewish love of Chinese cuisine. Does it stem from shared tastes for chicken soup, tea and…
The Mercury, Mico Rodriguez’s posh dining nook slipped into the upscale Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, quietly dribbled out of the thermometer tube last week. “We just weren’t able to sustain a following, especially since we opened up September 7, 2001,” says Rodriguez. “It really was doomed, I think,…
There’s a virus infecting Deep Ellum. Not the mosquito-borne kind–this is a restaurant virus, one of temperance, sobriety and restraint. Symptoms range, but they all generate the same basic characteristics: dull names; utilitarian menus; simple furnishings; lousy ambience; street fronts inhospitable to lines of cars from Stuttgart and Bavaria; resourceful…
Texas and Oklahoma linemen aren’t the only ones set to butt heads Saturday at the Texas State Fairgrounds. Consolidated Restaurant Operations Chairman Gene Street is going to bang skillets with cooks from Newton’s, an Oklahoma City restaurant, to determine which state can sizzle the best chicken-fried steak. “I need to…
Nobody likes an expert. When Congress elicits testimony on issues of social concern, such as stem cell research, they call upon Mary Tyler Moore rather than suffer through the pointed ramblings of droll scientists. Claim to be a sports trivia nut and someone will instantly fire off obscure questions. (Our…
Saffron is the Bentley of the spice rack. The golden, rich and pungent powder rendered from the threadlike stigmas of the flowering crocus is the most expensive spice in the world. At various periods in history, this bouillabaisse staple has been worth much more than its weight in gold. This…
Frankie Carabetta, the virile bar magnate who has sown taps and shots all over Uptown (there’s even a bar on McKinney Avenue, Frankie’s, named after him that he has absolutely nothing to do with), is busy pumping out more progeny. At this time next week, Knox Street Pub & Grill…
A reporter’s little notebook is everything. Etched inside are scribbled records of events and the words of people great and unknown. Without a notation in some worn tablet, the world would never remember such lines as Patrick Henry’s “give me liberty or give me death”…Um, wait. Bad example. Someone added…
Like chardonnay, merlot is a wine that is simultaneously subjected to derision and gushing plaudits. While the masses lap it up, those with discriminating noses and fat wallets sneer at the stuff, even as they shell out thousands of dollars to prominently stuff examples from Pomerol or Saint-Emilion into their…
Nick and Sam’s owners Joe Palladino and Phil Romano have a name for their 4,000-square-foot, semiprivate nightclub scheduled to open the second week in October. It’s Medici, which is Italian for affluent, royal family. Hmm. Could that moniker come off as a little snobby? “I think it might,” Palladino admits…
My first taste of North Texas was a nibble of Arlington. I was staying in a tract home in a neighborhood with far too many tricycles and souped-up Hyundais. I’m not sure if this was the cause, but I soon developed a potent thirst for wine. In Arlington, I soon…
Chef Gilbert Garza, who’s been holed up in his tiny restaurant Suze for the past couple of years, hasn’t been making much noise. He is now, though, because his kitchen is crowded. “Garreth Dickey has been cooking in my kitchen for the past three weeks,” he says, referring to the…
There’s a scene from the Monty Python classic Life of Brian in which a mob mistakes an underachiever either for the messiah or an Alabama judge; it’s been awhile since we’ve seen the film and we get the two confused, anyway. Brian of Nazareth implores his unwanted followers to embrace…
When Citizen opened roughly four years ago, its mix of neo-Asian fusion with a traditional sushi bar threw off so much heat that it was nearly impossible to get near it on a weekend night. The bar area, with banks of white televisions (now converted to plasma screens) bolted onto…
There’s no sushi bar here. (But there is sushi.) There’s counter seating equipped with an expansive view of the square open kitchen. It’s like watching ballet, the daredevil kind with knives and flames. Orders come in, and chef-owner Seiji Wakabayashi ladles orange fluid into a saucepan. Another pan gets a…
Ah, to be the best. Fools try to earn the sobriquet through years of dedicated labor. The younger generations, their attention spans schooled by technology and sound-bite journalism, simply proclaim themselves the best at their craft. It worked for Barry Bonds, Deion Sanders and every rapper who ever booked time…
Texadelphia founder Tom Landis says he hopes last week’s Dallas Observer cover story by Zac Crain on Deep Ellum crime (“Cruising for a Bruising”) will light some fires under a few butts that park in City Hall. It sure lit a flame under his. “While our other places, like Las…
Great things can disappear in an instant as some momentous burp rattles mankind and alters the face of history. Pompeii, a town southeast of Naples, Italy, built on a spur of prehistoric lava, is just one example. In A.D. 79, it was destroyed in a flash by a hard-driving, molten…
