“Why isn’t this is in Dallas?” was the out-loud reaction of a friend when he first set eyes on USA Cafe. (From blocks away, I might add. You can’t miss it, and I’d like to try.) Good question. USA Cafe–big, trendy, and mega in every way (“23,000 square feet of…
Fort Worth has recently become a dining mecca, but back when it was still a gastronomic desert, one of its oases was Reflections. (Reflections is so classy it’s located on the mezzanine level–not the top–of the Worthington Hotel. In other words, the food’s so good, the place can eschew a…
We were in the mood for “something different,” that is, something that wasn’t pasta, wasn’t pesto, not new, not American–something, perhaps, that wasn’t even grilled. We wanted to taste something that was not a fresh idea. The solution, it seemed, was Russian food. There is, as yet, no “new” Russian…
The cheesesteak, a dish indigenous to Philadelphia, has crept like kudzu onto fast food menus all across the country, and for the most part, who cares? Seldom is this sandwich worth a deviation from the strict burger line. But New England Cheesesteaks, a humble little storefront shop in Plano run…
“I believe it’s $4.95?” our friendly waiter answered when we wondered how much the manager’s merlot selection o’ the day was. “Um, I believe it’s Monterey Jack?” he replied when we asked about the cheese on the chicken sandwich. It was just a trick of speech, that rise at the…
Years ago as an occasional getaway, we decorated the back of a van, furnished it with a rug, some folding chairs, and a champagne bucket, and headed down I-35 to dinner at Durham House in Waxahachie. The specialty there was peanut soup, but the real attraction was the graceful old…
A pack of Carltons, a tumbler of bourbon and Coke, and a tin of Altoids. All the accoutrements of a successful evening were lined up in a tidy row on the polished bar in front of the blonde in body-hugging blue. She swung one perky leg over the other as…
Wolfgang Puck serves imaginative, artistic-themed food at the Governor’s Ball–just like the gold originals, his chocolate Oscars are reserved for the glamorous few. But most of America watched the Academy Awards while eating pizza in front of the tube, and our only real creative expression was which pizza. Our pie…
Ley Jaynes, the peripatetic wine dealer, has moved again, and this may be his best space yet. Tucked into the center at Skillman and Live Oak, on Oram, the latest in the series of Grailey’s offers everything the old store did and more. There’s still the big space lined with…
A lot of us thought Larry Shapiro’s ears were endangered when we heard his plans for the new Marty’s: Had he lost his mind? Could Marty’s, the monolith of gourmet food in Dallas, really be so threatened by Brinker’s (admittedly brawny) baby Eatzi’s across the street that Shapiro needed to…
Perhaps I actually just grew out of a craving for the flavor, but I consider myself a recovered chocoholic. I no longer lust for the dark sweetness of chocolate desserts, and when there’s a choice, fruit or plain vanilla are the flavors I treat myself to. Still, sometimes only chocolate…
“Let’s do lunch.” This placebo promise usually replaces a real meal engagement–no one expects to actually eat lunch in the foreseeable future with anyone who suggests, “Let’s do lunch.” Modern lunch is a problematic meal, at best. For a white-collar working person, it’s an artificial respite–you’re just moving from desk…
It’s surrounded by tie-dye emporia overflowing with all the equipment you need either for inhaling perfectly legal substances or for dying your hair blue. But Anglophiles and resident Brits know all about the proper little store on Greenville Avenue stocked with all the essential British goods: shortbread, sure, and marmalade,…
With all the fuss about fish on the restaurant scene, it’s good to remember that some of the best restaurant seafood available to us doesn’t come from seafood restaurants. Oriental cuisines are almost all seafood-based, and Oriental restaurants have served the freshest fish available at prices considerably below most seafood…
Someone has to say it, and it might as well be me: Something fishy is going on. OK, when everyone from Stephan Pyles to Gene Street is opening a seafood restaurant, you’ve landed a whale-sized trend, and you can count on swallowing as many fish metaphors and salty cliches as…
“I just don’t get this cigar and cocktail trend–it’s so eighties,” a friend complained lately. It’s my theory that cigars and martinis are the cheaper, more benign version of the last decade’s vices, cocaine and champagne, but I don’t really get it, either. However, there is one restaurant that’s picked…
It’s definitely the ’90s–a computer-equipped cyber-cafe that sells gourmet coffee by the pound over the Internet (with some help from the guys in brown trucks). Diedrich Coffee, a California coffee bar concern that specializes in all the by-now familiar variations of varietal coffee drinks, opened its first Dallas coffee bar…
The big food news a few weeks ago was all about Harry’s Market getting in bed with Boston Chicken. If you’re holding your breath, waiting for a punch line, let it out. That’s it: Harry and the Chicken. In the restaurant world, the marriage of one of the most successful…
The service ranges from preoccupied to surly, the ambiance depends entirely on the light (it’s acceptable on a sunny day and drearily depressing at night, although that could change if they ever get around to replacing some light bulbs) and really, the place is utterly devoid of charm, but Ali…
“I just don’t get this cigar and cocktail trend–it’s so eighties,” a friend complained lately. It’s my theory that cigars and martinis are the cheaper, more benign version of the last decade’s vices, cocaine and champagne, but I don’t really get it, either. However, there is one restaurant that’s picked…
Modo Mio tags itself as “cucina rustica Italiana,” but we could tell by the voice on the phone that it didn’t entirely fit that description. And sure enough, when we arrived we were greeted at the door by the stylish blonde attached to that voice, fashionably dressed in an understated…
Lots of us lament the disappearance of regionalism in this country. The dominance of fast food, media, and the movies means that boundaries are blurring, that local differences in talk and taste are fading. It’s getting hard to tell, for instance, exactly where the North sinks into the south, or…
