Medina Oven & Wine Bar is in Victory Park, so of course it is a restaurant with lounge-like accents. Nevertheless, there are no hookah pipes exhaling their fruity fume. There are no belly dancers oscillating their midriff folds like lapping shore waves, though a server admits the belly part is…
From early breakfast to late lunch, John’s Café doesn’t pretend to be anything but a neighborhood diner serving basic, filling meals with a few Greek offerings mixed in. There’s no pomp or circumstance and no bullshit. John’s is a quick, bustling grub hub happily settled on Lowest Greenville Avenue with…
Staff members with Bic pens jabbed into paper hats: 5 Minutes it took to find a parking spot within a three-mile radius: 10 As I walked into Bubba’s, I was so distracted by the wonderful smell of friedness that I barely got out the words, “I’ll have the Number Two.”…
Giant golden Buddhas: 1 Chopsticks: 0 I was at Preston and LBJ (mainly just to raise the ratio of adult people to small people in strollers, because I know that pisses off North Dallas) flipping off Chili’s like I always do on Wednesdays when I saw it: Scuba store? Hell,…
Scene, blessedly, is not much of one. Sure, it goes through a few strenuously correct motions, mingling beatnik inflections with aspirant bourgeois vernacular in the great hope of generating a new breed of cool in this chic, cavernous bassinet of new urbanism. Fixed in its own private, gated exhibition space…
It’s dedicated to the yearned for but often elusive O, subliminally, at least, judging by the comely scene coagulating around the sinuous bar—a cuff-linked wrist stroking a bronzed thigh, a French-tipped finger twisting in a belt loop one stool over. The crowd is lithe and sexed-up, dressed in jackets and…
Months it’s been open: 2 Trophies made into paper-towel holders: 20 If Coach’s Burgers knows one thing, it’s how to name a burger joint. In this town, it’s tough enough picking out a cool restaurant name, but on top of that, half of the good ones are already taken. Can’t…
Brick building that’s falling apart count: 1 Hours I smelled like Mexican food after I left Herrera’s: 4 Herrera’s has fuckin’ good tortillas. And before you tell me that resorting to vulgarities is childish and lame, I say screw you, you’re wrong. (And, because I pre-empted your judgery with an…
It’s Sunday, the only day of the week other than Monday to test-drive this particular Ounce Prime Steakhouse signature. A full dinner: prime rib, 14 ounces; salad or soup; crème brûlée or cheese cake; Yukon mashed potatoes; a button of polenta stamped with the ancient symbol for the ounce—a “z”…
People in the place at noon count: 6 Bike count: 2,000 million I got an e-mail a while back that I should check out Strokers Ice House on Harry Hines Boulevard. So, I looked up their Web site, and holy ta-tas, there are a lot of boobs there. I was…
Dining out with a vegan is like a date with Mr. Bean, the Rowan Atkinson character for whom things rarely go right. In our group of friends, it’s all about Mr. Green Bean, eschewer of meats and dairy products, chewer only of vegetables and grains and other edibles from sources…
In music you run headlong into cruelty when composing with an economy of notes, positioning single tones or sparse phrases in stark nakedness, sometimes bracketing them in empty measures so that each lingers on its own. They must be placed with exacting care to survive. There are no flurried note…
Minutes I waited for my food in Steel count: 45 Things I ordered that required cooking count: 0 I drove with purpose. I saw the red “S” on the black awning, double confirmed that I was in the right place at the sight of a couple of ass-clowns in ass-clown…
Salad bar that must get passed up for fried goodies at least 1,000 times a day count: 1 Tie count: 4 Flip-flop count: 12 Seems like every restaurant has a mascot these days. Applebee’s has that ridiculously annoying talking apple (Wanda—please stop being an apple and go back to being…
Blue Canyon Kitchen is one great wail of kitschy vigor, so loud your ears ring. Aspen logs, fully barked, hang from the ceiling. Tables are ringed with chairs made from pruned sticks and branches and are upholstered in fake fur. Hollowed-out aspen stumps hold arrangements of pussy willows. Prime steaks…
Embedded in the ceiling, high above the dining room, is a series of lighted, saucer-like depressions. Huge silvery propellers are fixed within, but they don’t spin like ceiling fans. They rotate in short, precise increments. To spin would invite bedlam. Servers would stumble with vertigo. “It’s very disruptive to the…
Chicks slicing meat when I walked in the door count: 2 People in line count: 452 If there’s one thing I like to eat, it’s meat. (No matter how I rewrite that sentence it keeps coming out sounding gross, so you’re just gonna have to get your mind out of…
It’s all about being green. Oprah gives tips on going green. TIME.com has a weekly green column. NBC has hosted a green week. Continental Airlines. Honda. Everyone…well, not everyone, but Bush still has some time in office. Green was on the top of my mind for my latest dining mission:…
Giant American flag count: 1 Tiny Greek flag count: 50 Gyro (pronounced yeero and not jyro or guyro) is Greek for half-moon, soft taco-looking thing filled with yummy lamb. And when you’ve got a hankerin’ to eat lots of stuff you’re uncomfortable pronouncing aloud, Anton Café downtown delivers. I ordered…
Aft the Cliff Café’s gravel parking lot is a brick house—an ancestral McMansion with subtle ornate strokes that predate soaring chateau turrets and vaulted front stoop eaves. It’s perched on a patch of brown grass and spindly brush on an expansive lot. There is wood trim and mottled brick. The…
Flat screen TV count: 1 Friendly behind-the-counter lady: 1 So, I was at the Dallas Central Library, totally engrossed in Jewel’s A Night Without Armor (an oldie, but a goodie) when I smelled the smell of fried wonderfulness for less than 10 bucks. It was grease without that nasty whiff…
There’s magic to the kebab, properly prepped, fired with finesse over glowing coals. There’s a hairsplitting technique to properly trimming and cubing meats before stabbing and bunching them on a skewer. There’s a deep secret truth to the marinating and the seasoning and the splashing with onion juice. There’s a…
