Pho Bang and I have a sliding doors sort of relationship. My mom tells me I ate there with her as a permed tot, but of course I don’t remember that. (The perm part is more of an intentional denial.) When I moved back to Dallas a few years ago,…
Nammi is “cruisin’ Vietnamese fusion.” It’s a food truck! Yay! We begged heaven and its opposite, City Hall, to let us have food trucks in Dallas, and we’re so excited that they’re here, and now that we have them…apparently none of you effers go to them unless it’s opening day…
Ketchup, the neighborhood burger bar in cuisine-crowded Uptown, welcomes diners with a patio stocked with wicker chairs and tables tucked under wide umbrellas—an opening salvo that will no doubt be in high demand come fall. The inside offers a mishmash of seating, too: black-topped, metal-trimmed diner tables, classic booths with…
Another month flies by, and with it, a batch of restaurants opened and closed. In-N-Out Burger set up shop in Dallas-proper this month, and surprisingly enough, wasn’t bombarded by hoards of burger-lovers. We guess everyone got their fill of the Californian mega-chain last month. The Coffee Lab (4000 Cedar Springs…
The city of Nazareth sits 1,000 feet above sea level in northern Israel between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee. In the late evening, lamps light up this ancient city’s white façade and buildings with a glow the color of desert sand. Perched in the hills with the dark…
You’ve been to gas-station taquerías. You’ve been to snow-cone stands. But have you ever been to a gas station taquería/snow-coneria? If not, lemme tell what I know about heaven. Cool & Hot Tacos is just off of Interstate 35 at Eighth Street. You’ve driven past it a million times on…
I see blond people. I am sitting in a leathery banquette at the new Marquee Grill & Bar in Highland Park Village, flanked on one side by what looks like a 20-year reunion of Kappa Kappa Gamma, and beset on the other by an attractive blond with matching baby. In…
Eclectic, per Merriam-Webster: Composed of elements drawn from various sources. At a menu-revamp unveiling last night, that is the word Screen Door’s chef David McMillan used to describe the direction in which he was taking the restaurant. Steering an upscale Southern comfort menu into a globally influenced path may sound…
Sure, any pizzeria somebody walks into technically offers off-the-menu items; the chefs will sprinkle some cheese and random toppings on a pie and voila! This being said, we weren’t on the hunt for elusive eats when we met some friends for pizza at Coal Vines in Uptown last week, but…
This summer, one of your friends will inevitably drag you to the Dallas Farmers Market because, “Ohmahgawdy’all!! Texas peaches are in season!!!!” Yeah, that’s great. You know what’s also in season? SWEATING ASS CRACKS. I don’t know if you heard, but the high was 315° Eff yesterday, with a heat…
Cute, isn’t it, how chefs-turned-restaurateurs name their joints now? They slap plain and unpretentious words on the marquee to fool you into thinking they’re selling uncomplicated grub at a good price. The Commissary and its reservations-only fancy eatin’ room, The Table, are like that. Chef John Tesar, formerly of The…
When David Thompson, one half of the TacOCliff blog (tacocliff.wordpress.com) and I chomped down on the grass-fed ground beef tacos that newly opened Company Café was selling from a stall at Earth Day Dallas 2011, we had lofty expectations. The Lower Greenville restaurant, owned by Stephen White and Chris Cowan,…
“Ever had the tacos at Flash Mart?” sounds like a crappy pick-up line some drunk chick would give you at Ghostbar. But, seriously, have you ever had them? No, of course there are no flashers inside the Flash Mart on Abrams Road. Gah. Everyone knows they’re all at DISD high…
The Porch is home to numerous off-menu items, what with their enormous, constantly changing blackboard, seasonal drinks and items that can be altered to suit diners’ needs. Finding elusive bites at the trendy Henderson Avenue location wasn’t a problem for us; the trouble was deciding which off-menu items to order…
Garden Cafe is part hipster, part hippie. It’s as if all the people in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle had consensual big-city sex and made a restaurant baby. Inside, Garden Cafe’s booths are filled with skinny, black-shirt-and-Jeggings-wearing dudes who come here to work on their short stories and hang out…
It’s the rare restaurant that announces its intention to satisfy every possible segment of its customer base with its sign. But for The Office Grill, open since March off a clamorous expanse of the Dallas North Tollway near Trinity Mills Road, its placard says it all: “The Office: Sports, Stocks,…
In 1940’s Belfast, Ireland, there lived the Magee family. Six daughters were born one after the other, followed by five sons all squeezed into a two-bedroom row house. The neighbors on one side were the McCormicks, who had 10 kids. On the other side were the Dunnigans, also with 10…
A few years back, Mario Alfano and Sabino Valle took the old Casa Blanca space on Lemmon Ave. and transformed it into Mario Sabino’s Mexican & Salvadoran Restaurant. Upon entering the first set of doors, we were greeted by a giant dry-erase board that read “Try our new strawberry swirl…
Driving up to La Hacienda Ranch with my mom, all its theme-y ranchified decor made me think for a second that I might be walking into a strip club. I figured, what the hell—there’s nothing like horking down a cheese enchilada with the woman who birthed you while someone sanitizes…
“In here, life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful!” The line from Cabaret pops into my head as we drive up to impeccably manicured Hotel ZaZa, home to Dragonfly restaurant. The valets appear out of nowhere and graciously help us from the car. “We’re here…
The month of May has proven to be an eventful one. The Californian mega-chain In-N-Out Burger made its Texas debut in Frisco and Allen, The Cedars Social finally celebrated its grand opening, and plenty more new culinary establishments have popped up along the way. Not to mention, a few have…
I’m skeptical of the value of pepper spray and sending people to the hospital, two things that appear on the resume of capsaicin, the active component in chili peppers. So when I found Prometheus Springs Capsaicin Spiced Elixir, a bottled tea whose quirkiness and individuality hinges on the shock of…
