Recession? There must be one, judging by our paychecks and news today that Lola planned to shut down. Still, July saw an unprecedented (even in boom times) wave of restaurant openings.Strange–July and August are not generally considered the best of months by those in the food service industry. Maybe rents…
The City of Ate’s, um, kind and generous editor…yeah…once asked me what I thought this city needed in terms of vegan food. My answer: “I wish the Mexican restaurants would catch on.” Because it’s true–Mexican restaurants are slim pickings for vegans in Dallas due to the fact that most of…
As you know, each week we highlight some of our favorite reader posts–an idea we began sometime back in the hopes of giving away prizes, then dropped, then kinda stole from Leslie Brenner when she started doing it (without prizes) on Eats. Too much to choose from this time around…
“Little boxes on a hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes, little…” Okay, okay–I’ll stop. But doesn’t The Colony remind you of that town Agrestic from the show Weeds? Well, maybe not quite as affluent. And there definitely aren’t any hills to speak of. But the houses all look…
Whatever the dreary setting may do to your psyche, whatever hope may fade at the sight of cellophane-wrapped meat and kitchen staff trotting bags of frozen okra from the walk-in, you have to grant Cobb Switch a plus or two. Their brisket shows far more character than you generally find…
I was sitting in Michelle’s Homestyle Cooking, sipping on sweet tea, waiting for my food to arrive and thinking to myself that I was living a pretty great life. I’ve got a loving family, great friends, Showtime—things are pretty perfect. And then my food arrived. After one bite of my…
There’s no denying that Dallas can be sorta cliquish. If you’re wearing the right shoes (or Tweeting from the hottest gadget), you might break into a particular crowd. Sure, the bar scene can be different. Hand someone a stiff drink, and you could find your BFF for the night. But…
So many interesting comments this week. If we were still trying to give out prizes, one of these people would have walked out of here with an empty bottle of Knob Creek bourbon, sent that way by the folks in Kentucky as a means of illustrating how high demand affects…
Months ago, I realized that the Barbecue Bus on Maple Avenue had disappeared. I cried and cried and prayed and prayed that it would come back—the Barbecue Man behind the cigarette counter who served me chopped beef sandwiches was awesome, and so was the food he served up. What happened,…
Kent Rathbun opening a down-home Southern kitchen is a lot like asking an accomplished concert violinist—Joshua Bell, say—to play a fiddle tune. He can get all the notes right and yet… I mean, there’s good old-fashioned fried chicken, sweating inside a crunchy, double-dipped batter, waiting to burst forth at the…
Our favorite comment from this week is this from Bruce, responding to the On The Range feature about menudo. Bruce would try the infamous soup if he came across a version without hominy. As he puts it in this week’s non-award-winning entry:”I dont think there is another food on the…
It’s a Grind is anything but. It’s a coffee shop, sure, and a franchised one at that, with a dizzying array of caffeinated choices, just like any other. There are lattes—whole milk and skim—frothy cappuccinos, eye-popping triple-shot espressos and baked goods that claim some modicum of nutrition but in the…
Remember that Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times? Industrial gears grind and turn, round and round, over and over, in a graceful yet ultimately repetitive sequence until the little tramp becomes ensnared in the machine. Masaryk reminds me of this Hollywood classic. There’s an elegant pattern to many of the dishes,…
It shouldn’t be this easy, right? I’ve pinned this entire column, too many times, on a long-winded kvetch about how many questions I have to ask–and how resentful I suspect the various wait staffers must feel–every time I go out to eat. So when I found out that not only…
We’ve stopped trying to give things away, but we do like to call some attention to clever/accurate/downright impressive comments posted on City of Ate. So our favorites from the past seven days, no prizes attached:From TLS, in response to the Question Of The Week:”The Costco sampling stations are always crowded…
You know those people who are disgustingly picky about where in a restaurant they sit? Those people who, no matter where a host or hostess puts them, want to sit somewhere else, and are willing to pull the strings and smile ingratiatingly enough to get themselves moved? And who then,…
There’s a Burger Street in a Motel 6 parking lot. Duh. Going there. Gimme the Junior Burger Combo, which comes with a drink and the choice of curly fries or tater tots. Now, there is a huge difference between curly fries and tater tots: curly fries are curly fries and…
I can only gather and repeat admonitions based upon my own experiences at a particular restaurant. For that reason, I will never return to Lemongrass unless work demands a revisit. This statement should not, however, be read as a condemnation of the place. It’s just clear from a few meals…
My first introduction to a cucumber sandwich was sometime back in the mid-1990s, when I was a young teenager on some kind of church or tennis trip to the Deep South. Somewhere between Georgia and Louisiana, which might be Alabama, I remember stopping in a tiny town where the air…
There’s a timeworn bit of wisdom regarding too many cooks in the kitchen. They get in each other’s way, argue over the proper interpretation of recipes, bark countermanding orders to staff and generally muck things up royally—or so the story goes. Lately, however, accomplished chefs have been joining forces with…
I’ve driven past several Chicken & Rice restaurants in Dallas and always kinda wondered what goes on in there (besides the obvious chicken-and-rice-ing). The windows of MJ’s Chicken & Rice always particularly confused me because of their neon signs that read “Chinese” and “Catfish.” It’s like they picked all of…
This week, Veggie Girl braved the crowds of plastically enhanced Women Who Lunch to try out Houston’s. Rumored to have one of the best house-made veggie burgers in Dallas, Houston’s is part of the Hillstone Restaurant quasi-chain that includes R + D, across the street in Preston Center, and a…
