Sometimes, you come across a bit of unexpected excellence that makes life, as you know it, worthwhile. In a recent case, for me, it was a breathtaking meatball. People often ask if I’m jaded, if I expect too much from a restaurant or if I go in with a slash-and-burn…
Who can say what’s going to work in this business? Everyone says you can’t make it without location, location, location, and then you find a place like Cremona. Down a dead-end street, tacked onto a dying ex-flea-market mall–why should this place stay in business? What kind of real estate is…
Chip’s new location in the former International House of Pancakes on Lovers is bound to give Harvey Goff across the street a run for his money–the burgers are better, the French fries are better, and the atmosphere is free and easy, a little less like an outpost of the Citadel…
Waxahachie is the perfect distance for a springtime day trip, and it’s full of antique and curiosity shops. The only problem has been, where to eat? Cafe d’Amici is the answer. The old Rogers Hotel was empty for years. In fact, they used to use it for a Halloween haunted…
I’ve pointed out before that while nam pla and kim chee have become household words, the mother of all cuisines, French, is increasingly hard to find in Dallas. So I bring to your attention this week a French restaurant you might have forgotten or overlooked: Watel’s. To be entirely accurate,…
Babe’s is a family-style restaurant, so we descended on it in full-strength family style, which, frankly, can be formidable. Our waitress was not one to be intimidated, however. She was tiny, young, and sassy, with a clever comeback for every query or comment. About half of our extremely extended family…
As I write this, it’s been just a week since Andre Soltner retired. Now that’s hardly big news to the general population (raise your hand if you know who he is), but to folks in the slice of the pie chart that makes food and wine its business, this is…
Quick–before it gets too hot. It’s the time of year when one should forego the restaurant lunch and take a sandwich to the park. And here are some of the great sandwiches of Dallas: any of the panini at Arcodoro; the chicken salad at Marty’s; the incredible layering of tomato,…
I was supposed to meet friends for supper at 7 that evening, leaving everyone time to do their laundry later. But my meeting ran late, then my after-meeting ran late, and then I found out my car was threatening me with that irritating fuel light which means that, in reality,…
The return of the Noonday onion to the market and table is as sure a sign of the season as azaleas and Easter lilies (though perhaps not as poetic). The number A&M gave to its Texas version of the honeyed Vidalia onion strain is 1015; Noonday onions are 1015s grown…
When the man whom I usually refer to as “my dining companion” first started traveling to Japan on business 11 years ago, he stayed at the luxurious New Otani Hotel in Tokyo. He would come back two weeks later, his bags stuffed (no, not with towels) with presents for me…
Have a good time and do a good deed, all at once. Share Our Strength’s “Taste of the Nation” is the restaurant industry’s effort to stamp out hunger. Every year, in the same week, food and wine tastings take place in more than 100 cities nationwide, with the proceeds going…
Driving north on the Tollway last week once again, I made a vow: I won’t complain any more about going north. No more diatribes about cookie-cutter developments and Dallas clones, I promise. I’m sure you’re as sick of reading them as I am of writing them. I’ll just make the…
Okay, walk east on the sidewalk in front of San Remo (the one on Frankford Road) and you’ll come to the Rice Boxx. It’s just a Chinese take-out, but since I happened to know it was designed by some talent, and since I also knew it was owned by the…
Warnings are a big topic these days–when the world is such a hazardous place, and we can’t seem to be trusted to take care of ourselves anymore. I read in the paper a week or so ago that because of a tragedy involving children and balloons, a watchdog group is…
There’s one good thing about Tuesdays: hot duck fat. Le Char-donnay serves confit of duck every Tuesday, and if the week looks long, I suggest you stop in for lunch or dinner and take comfort in confit. To prepare confit, a country specialty of Burgundy, you cook the duck meat…
The whole population of this neat-as-a-bandbox (what is a bandbox?) little restaurant was facing the rear wall to watch a green parrot pivot on its perch to reach a morsel of food, reaching, reaching…till finally it overreached itself, capsized, and fell off its perch. Who ever saw a bird fall?…
Fried chicken was the favorite food of my childhood, probably because we hardly ever had it. We came home from church on Sunday not to chicken but to leg of lamb, a legacy of Anglophile grandparents. My mother didn’t like to fry chicken because it was “too messy,” which it…
On my restaurant critics’ top 10 list of most-often-asked questions–along with “What’s your favorite place to eat?” (home) and “Why aren’t you really fat?” (stress)–is, “What’s a good place to go for seafood?” Until now, I haven’t had a really good answer. Cafe Pacific is good, Newport’s is fine, there…
You may or may not remember that a few weeks ago I went off on a tangent about the State of the Cocktail. I received a little mail from that tirade, and I’ll be reporting on the results over the next few weeks–that is, at the slow pace of my…
The Metroplex is a myth. D-FW is actually and appropriately more like a big mall than a single metropolitan area, a messy conglomerate of distinct communities with two main “anchor stores,” linked only by geography and a highway. Everyone knows how different Fort Worth and Dallas are: Fort Worth is…
Five handwritten pages from a devoted diner–how could I ignore this request to check out her favorite pizza place? A transplanted New Yorker yearning for the pizza joint of her childhood, she discovered a menu attached to her doorknob one day which led to the pizza of dreams at a…
