You’ve got to hand it to Gilbert Cuellar. He sure knows how to make a venture reek with the sweet smell of success. A former El Chico Corp. executive, Cuellar is the brain behind Texana Grill, the massive new Texas memorabilia lodge in Arlington that doubles as a restaurant. And…
Don’t expect to drink here, because there’s no beer or wine. Though there is, kinda. Bihn Mihn Market next door sells both, and they opened the place up for us one night, drawing back the steel gate barricading the doors so I could get a sixer of Tsingtao (Chinese brew)…
Jean-Michel Sakouhi leans against one of the murals in his new restaurant. He’s wiry, with a relaxed demeanor that’s rippled by seemingly nervous laughs that leak past his thick French accent. Though he appears even-tempered, he has an independent streak. Maybe that’s why chef Dean Fearing dubbed him the Parisian…
If there’s anything Texans like to do it’s revel in their history, jubilate in their provincialism, bask in their brashness. In short, they like to brag. “We wanted a name that sounded epic,” says Brinker International restaurants alumnus Tye Phelps when asked why he named his new restaurant Love &…
When I first told a friend over the phone I was hitting an Irish pub called Slattery Rand’s, she came unglued. “Why the hell would anyone name a restaurant that?” she asked. “That’s disgusting.” It’s not so much a restaurant as it is a pub, I said. “So what?” she…
There was a mustachioed man in shorts, wearing thick plastic glasses and sitting on a chair propped against the back wall. On the table in front of him, two TV remotes were parked next to a phone book. The remotes worked a large television tucked behind the counter. The screen…
It twirls around once every 55 minutes, like clockwork. And you can time your meal and thus the quality of service to its creeping revolutionary swirl. When we put in our order at Antares high atop Reunion Tower, we were staring deep into Dallas’ downtown core. It wasn’t until we…
Scott Ginsburg leans forward in the booth and tears a piece from the crisp white butcher paper covering the table. He has left his wallet in the car, he explains to the waiter, so he asks whether it’s OK if he just writes out his American Express card number to…
Years ago, in faster times, my friends and I frequented a Thai restaurant on Chicago’s North Side, a place I’ll never forget, though I can’t seem to remember the name. But the decor and ambience stick in my mind. Seat backs loosely attached to the chrome chair frames were gouged,…
Thai Garden has a one strike against it from the outset: It doesn’t have a liquor license. That makes it difficult to enjoy some dishes to their fullest. It makes others hard to swallow. Take the lunch buffet ($6.50), for instance, which mingles Chinese and Thai fare. Under normal circumstances,…
The asphalt stretch from Dallas to Fort Worth is long and hard. Also brutal, at least judging by the wreckage littering the highway recently. Angled on the shoulder was an old Chevy truck with a tall makeshift cargo box fashioned out of lumber scraps. It’s right front wheel was missing,…
What is it with all this term-twisting of x’s in Mexican-inspired cuisine. I mean there’s “Mex-Tex” and “Mex-Mex” and now, Cabo restaurant is billing itself as the “original ‘Mix-Mex.'” I called Cabo’s parent, BFX Hospitality Group, and asked for some clarification. But all it got me was a bout of…
I pulled the first fortune from a cookie before any food arrived. A little girl found the plastic-wrapped thing in a large, empty wooden planter sitting on a brick partition. I opened it and broke the cookie to get the slip of paper. “It is more important to do your…
For many non-Asians, there’s little reason to plumb the tangle of strip stores and businesses brooding on Royal Lane as it threads past Harry Hines Boulevard and butts up against Stemmons Freeway. It’s a starkly asphalted stretch with convenience stores, professional offices, importers, and wholesale businesses. And restaurants. This piece…
Good move. About a month ago, Alfredo Mirza, owner of a duo of clumsily monikered venues dubbed Alfredo’s Italian Seafood Restaurant and Alfredo’s II, closed the latter, merged it into the former, and renamed his restaurant Alfredo’s. “We just centralized into one,” says Mirza. The move was logical, he insists…
Torrefazione Italia, located just in front of the pricey kitchen-accessory haunt Sur La Table, is a merchandise mart for the swanky caffeinated set. Café trinkets are everywhere — packaged, priced, and primped for purchase. Gift sets clutter the café’s counter surfaces and nooks. Coffee-sampling kits clog the checkout counter. A…
It’s easy to take potshots at corporate restaurants, those cookie-cutter cafés, brasseries, and bistros with homogeneous faux European menus devised by pencil pushers who scoot around in leased BMWs. They’re slick, focus-group hatchlings with recipes and ingredients devised and taste-tested on spread sheets. “It’s the independents who pump the creative…
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…
