Popular Dallas chef Matthew Antonovich puts a peculiar spin on just about everything. In the midst of shuttering 5-week-old Antonovich’s Tuscan Steak House on Preston Road in Plano, a restaurant he says was inspired by telepathic directives from his dead grandmother, he characterized the move as shrewd business maneuvering, one…
My most recent visit to the Green Room brought to mind an article I read in a restaurant magazine a couple of years ago about cheeks — and not the kind that make the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue shimmy off newsstands. “People have a hard time eating cheeks,” says Thomas…
It takes a lot of guts to take an Air Stream trailer, stuff it with taco fillings, and call it Vortex Mex, especially given the proximity of Dallas to Tornado Alley. Ask any meteorologist, and they will tell you the physical characteristics of trailers attract tornadoes with the same magnetic…
Some restaurateurs must imagine the last thing the populace wants to do when it goes out to eat…is eat. Look at all of the counterfeit atmospheres that have been drafted in the name of recreational supping. Rain Forest Café. Wilderness Grill. Planet Hollywood. In these places, food is an adjunct…
When I first peeled back the paper and got a good look at a Sandella’s Café wrap, I thought it looked like one of those rolled sleeping mats you see strapped to campers’ backpacks. Yet it’s really a high-quality product targeting time-pressured customers in the sophisticated sandwich segment. At least…
There’s latent lust in Dallas for exotica. You can smell it. No, not the over-processed, ultra-premium Velveeta kind that results in slick forays such as Samba Room or the South American gauchos at Fogo de Chao and Texas de Brazil. Dallas yearns for the real deal, where the dining room…
Tequila is jet fuel. One whiff of the stuff leaves little doubt. OK, carburetor cleaner. But this propellant-disguised-as-beverage sure acts like jet fuel. Your face gets hot. Your blood thins, rushes, and simmers. You feel invincible, as if you could scale a cliff or file your own income tax return…
There was a fierce rainstorm, the kind that falls in relentless sheets. Only a handful of cars were in the Deep Ellum lot across the street–no flashlight-waving lot attendants. No one to pay. Perhaps the attendant was holed up in one of those cars. As I approached the entrance to…
Holben hops David Holben’s position at FoodStar Restaurant Group (Mediterraneo, PoPoLos, Toscana) and The Riviera seemed as sure and unflappable as a stubborn rodent on a listing freighter. Yet he’s jumping ship. His leap comes on the heels of exits from FoodStar by operations chief Michael Costa and chefs David…
My first trip to Nick & Sam’s, Phil Romano (Macaroni Grill, Eatzi’s) and Patrick Columbo’s (Sfuzzi’s) steak and seafood house on Maple, was impressive–so much so that I had to pinch myself after the appetizers. “If it stays this good through dessert,” I said to my companion, “this place will…
Akins aching Los Akins admits to a burning itch to own his own restaurant. The former PoPoLos and Moonshine Cafe chef is holed up at Antonovich’s in Plano, where he’s assisting chef-proprietor Matt Antonovich. Antonovich is the onetime Sipango chef-partner who got the urge to create his namesake in the…
Tin Star is bright and chic. Tin Star is simple. Tin Star has catchy theme: “salsa, smoke, and sizzle.” Tin Star is cheap. But Tin Star doesn’t sparkle, because the most important point in this twinkler–the food–is as dull as a butter knife. “There is no reason that great food…
Hot little beds What Dallas needs is little hotels. Cute hospitality fashion hunks with bellboys in eel-skin caps and desk girls with fishnets reaching up to mid-thigh taking hip guests to their little boutique sleep slots with dripping black candles burning on the nightstand. Maybe we’ll get some. Word is,…
Raw feelings Scott Melton thinks he got a raw deal. “It was kind of chicken shit,” he says. Melton, who recently opened Sushi Nights on Main Street in Deep Ellum, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April for Sushi Deep Ellum Inc., the general partnership he formed to operate Deep…
I’m not really sure what all the fuss was about. But it all started with a printing error. Last summer, The Dallas Morning News did an article on the Palm Restaurant’s upcoming renovation, one that would darken the restaurant and sequester its dining spaces. The modest upgrade included new floors,…
Raw fish. Raw fish eggs. Raw marine sex organs. Think about it. Putting these things in your mouth is extreme. Raw fish is scary. Well, it used to be, anyway. Now it’s so commonplace that it draws yawns. Sushi restaurants are popping up with the speed of facial zits before…
Flying solo You could say that former Sipango chef and partner Matthew Antonovich is fickle. Either that, or he has no business sense when it comes to choosing a partner. Just look at his post-Sipango history. First he connects with Dale Wamstad of III Forks, only to discover that grilling…
Our server says that in the summertime waiters strip and dive in–plunge 35 or so feet into that dark, stagnant water hole that seems a portal to Hades. I cringe. “Oh, it’s 60 feet deep,” he says. (Actually, the well at Newport’s Seafood is 50 feet deep and holds some…
Woodward quits quad It’s the stampede of the Stars. David Woodward, chef de cuisine at FoodStar Restaurant Group’s Mediterraneo at the Quadrangle, says he’s bolting, packing up for the desert city of showgirls and conspicuous consumption. Woodward will be executive chef at Star Concepts Star Canyon in Las Vegas. Not…
FoodStar stir Just last summer, FoodStar Restaurant Group was gushing over ambitious plans to launch as many as 40 PoPoLos, Mediterraneo, and Toscana restaurants across the country. Now, the recipe at FoodStar Restaurant Group seems a little hashed. Rumors point to two spots indicating tumult: a struggling Mediterraneo at the…
I love Cork. Which is why I hate it. If Dallas has needed one thing for a long time, it’s a no-frills, down-and-dirty wine bar. One that energetically trumps the numbness of most wine lists. One with sass. One with smarts. Other places play around with the wine bar theme,…
Nature is awe-inspiring, splendidly pure, breathtakingly harmonious, gloriously elegant in its savage innocence. If you don’t yet know this after a lifetime of public television nature programs, Robert Redford rants, and Free Willy sequels, you’ll be stuffed with this delicious knowledge at Wilderness Grill in Grapevine Mills mall. You may…
