Italian Cowboy, the cartoonish Tex-Ital marvel at Spring Valley Road and Central Expressway, has conked out, or maybe pooped out. It seems Italian Cowboy owners Francesco and Jane Secchi, who also own Ferrari’s and Il Grano, noticed the premises was afflicted with the recurring odor of sewage since before the…
Several years ago Jeffrey Yarbrough thought up a wild idea for his wife’s 25th birthday. Anyone could reserve a table at some Dallas hot spot, he decided, but only a hardy few would dare brave the vast uncharted territories outside the metro area. So the owner of Club Clearview and…
Bistral Neighborhood Bistro & Bakery will shut down at the end of August, if it isn’t sold. If this doesn’t prove that McKinney Avenue is in the grips of a gustatory curse, then nothing will. Just this year, I count Mangia e Bevi, O’Dowd’s Little Dublin and now Bistral as…
It’s difficult to imagine a more important year in baseball annals than 1908. It was the year of “Merkle’s Boner,” which isn’t what you think it is. In an era when cocks woke people up in the morning, bungholes opened kegs, and dicks patrolled the streets, respectable men and women…
Sometimes Big Bowl isn’t big enough to fit all of the corn flakes that want to get in. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, they give you one of those flashing, vibrating duck calls that always seem to go off the second you get the bartender’s attention. This is unfortunate,…
If you’re a member of Dallas’ mildly xenophobic and snooty downtown demimonde, then the last thing you ever say when fishing for something to do is, “Let’s go to Frisco.” We’re not talking about the city by the bay, but the 33,000-strong and growing ‘burb in north, north Dallas, where…
Retro commercials on TV Land assure us of several critical things. A Coke, for example, tamed angry 1970s linebackers. Cartoon owls knew the answers to universal riddles, like the number of licks necessary to break through to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Most important, America’s seafood industry dredged only…
I like Las Colinas. Some may think it sterile and static, but these are the shallow ones. How could you not love a 12,000-acre master-planned community that among other things is home to the world’s largest equestrian sculpture: a herd of bronze mustangs galloping across a granite stream? Las Colinas…
The Crescent Court carcass of Phil Romano’s We Oui, his casual restaurant that was a little bit French and a little bit slutty, is poised to morph into an upscale casual New Orleans grubbery called Gumbo’s. But first the new concept owners, Austin-based Fired Up Inc., will have to tear…
Every time this country ends up with a Bush in the White House, several things most assuredly occur: The government inflicts some regrettable incident on Japan, the nation tumbles into a recession, a presidential pet writes a book, and everyone worries about the vice president’s ability to run things. We’re…
It didn’t take long for it to succumb to the McKinney Avenue virus. Or was it those debilitating stout trots? Whatever it was, O’Dowd’s Little Dublin appears to be on ice. Last week a simple sign on the door said as much, but it’s hard to pin down what happened…
Only a few weeks from the planned opening of their first restaurant in 1996, Texadelphia owners Brian Mitts and Tom Landis ran into a little problem. “We were in an old house, a pier-and-beam construction house,” Mitts recalls. An inspector looked at the foundation and called the owners together. “We…
Grand fusses are often made of restaurant makeovers. It doesn’t matter if improvements are little more than a splash of fresh paint and a reconfigured french fry, or a new karaoke salon and a whole new chicken-fried menu, the operator will squeeze all the publicity out of if he can,…
Sambuca is dark and narrow. This apparently is a requirement of jazz clubs. Jazz clubs must also be sultry, smoky and have the smell of stale spilled beer on concrete. Sambuca didn’t have much smoke, but it did have an aroma suspiciously similar to urinal deodorant cakes, which, when you…
Renowned jazz pasta operator and White Rock Lake booster Jeanie Terilli is expanding her noodle forte to Frisco. She’s squatting in the former Soprano’s spot, which she hopes to have open by September 1 as Terilli’s Sauce, sort of a cross between a Trattoria and Burger King. Not that she’ll…
Dixie Cups rank high in the pantheon of great inventions. They are sturdy, compact, disposable and capable of filling a room with oily black smoke when ignited. The Burning Question crew prefers to say no more about that last attribute. The little plastic cups are perfect for a late-night swig…
It’s been going strong in Dallas since its inception in 1984. After 17 years of critical acclaim–and a kitchen run at various times by chefs David Holben and Lombardi Mare’s Tom Fleming, and now by former Hotel St. Germain chef Michael Marshall–The Riviera has successfully thrived in Dallas’ mercilessly competitive…
A night out on Lower Greenville Avenue provides enough stuff for a Hollywood movie. The story line would be something gripping about a lone antagonist threatening small-business owners. Or perhaps a feel-good piece where a group of money-hungry capitalists trample the rights of residents until one man takes a stand…
Sunday is the big day at Italian Cowboy, a sort of steak and pasta dojo dressed in operatic cowboy gear. On the Sabbath, Italian Cowboy holds what it calls lasagna mania, an all-you-can-eat flat-noodle frenzy that is perhaps the Italian version of the stampede. This mania kind of reminded me…
Silver Fox, the prime steak vision jointly dreamed by Gene Street and III Forks founder Dale Wamstad (a.k.a. Capt. Bob Cooper and Del Frisco) finally opened in Grapevine a week ago Wednesday after the projected April opening date came and went. But there are still a few crinkles to contend…
Way back in the days of classic film noir, reporters spent their workdays hanging out in squalid taverns, knocking back whiskey and blurting vintage slang, piecing together stories in a haze of alcohol and stale cigarette smoke. The Burning Question crew misses everything about those days. Except for the hangovers…
Felton is a tiny town in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, right in the thick of the redwoods. There’s little there to attract visitors except for the scenery and perhaps a secret spot known as the Garden of Eden Nude Beach on the banks of the San Lorenzo River. But a…
