The Bay Leaf could easily be just another one of those dark, strenuously hip Deep Ellum joints fashioned out of aging warehouse brick and smoky oil paintings. On certain nights it even has live jazz, tucked up front by the door. During non-live-music times, though, Bay Leaf jazz is like…
It’s hard to not think of Arthur’s as an icon of perseverance amid the unforgiving brutality of the Dallas restaurant scene. Owner Mohsen Heidari, in addition to grappling with the constant and typical tortures of employee turnover, spoilage, government inspectors, taxes and critics, has had to deal with asbestos, bad…
Chez Gerard is a crotchety old cottage born some 17 years ago on McKinney Avenue at a time when French cuisine spelled sophistication. The restaurant has changed little since then, and a French kiss might not smack of the sophistication it once did, but that doesn’t mean Chez Gerard fumbles…
Richard Chamberlain is the type of food pro who has a history studded with jewels. Starting with proletariat food training at El Centro College, Chamberlain went on to apprentice at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. He was credited with developing a cuisine christened American alpine cooking while in Aspen, was…
Zen den is a big deal. On a Monday evening when it isn’t even open for dining, a manager escorts groups of people through the passageway into the dimly lit room generously draped in gauzy curtains. “This was AquaKnox?” asks one zen den tourist in amazement. It’s hard to believe…
It didn’t take more than a couple of bites before dining at York St. got me thinking about Lloyd’s of London. Lloyd’s, founded in 1680, is the venerable insurer that was brought to the brink of ruin by asbestos litigation, among other things. It’s also the company that famously wrote…
It wasn’t too long ago that Frankie Carabetta was set to operate a McKinney Avenue sports bar with his name on it. That was when Tracie Barthlow, owner of Bridges Gourmet Coffee, was his business partner. But a bitter rift and a lawsuit forced an end to that partnership. Now…
That Rocco’s was once Highland Park Cleaners is not hard to imagine. This tiny hut could have been little else, save for a hotdog stand or one of those mailbox places that charges you double to ship fruitcakes at Christmas. It’s easy to imagine plastic bags stuffed with suits and…
It’s funny how people in Dallas refer to everything north of LBJ as some kind of untamed wilderness. They call it “way up north,” or “Oklahoma,” even the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But that’s just silly. Plano and its less civilized siblings Frisco and Allen aren’t populated simply with feral…
It’s not hard to stare across the turbid ripples of Lake Ray Hubbard and imagine romance. Lake Ray Hubbard spans 22,745 acres, so it looks like an ocean through a slightly sozzled night squint. And though Lake Ray reaches a maximum depth of only 40 feet, there is still plenty…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“Some individuals may have an allergic reaction to shellfish,” the Hurricane Grill menu warns. “The Hurricane is not responsible.” So puff up, blister, itch and swallow your medicine. But is the Hurricane responsible for the hurricane? Hurricanes are terrifyingly furtive beverages, unleashing their rum pestilence long after you’ve lost count…
That spot on McKinney Avenue and Monticello, the one that sizzled and popped with Dallas couture before someone pulled the plug on the glitterati frier, the one that elevated chef Gilbert Garza to prominence before he stepped down and escaped to a little neighborhood spot called Suze, has risen from…
Patrick Esquerré compares himself to God. Not in a megalomaniacal way but in an almost self-deprecating sense. Back in 1983, Esquerré successfully took an idea for a French bakery and café and multiplied it into more than 60 offspring sloughing off revenues topping $100 million. That first Le Madeleine was…
Arcodoro & Pomodoro is really little more than a Sardinian set of Siamese twins that provides elegant fine dining and casual but lustful meat-picking with pizza under one valet awning. Yet this genetic aberration’s dual personalities are as striking as they are similar. Everything on the menu is available in…
