Cajun used to mean exotic. Twenty-five years ago, before Chef Paul Prudhomme foisted his blackened redfish on gustatory history–giving lesser cooks license to char stuff to an ebony crisp and call it Southern cuisine–we could find really fine Cajun cooking, and its New Orleans cousin, Creole, only down in the…
Enter Cryovac. Invented years ago by a company called Sealed Air, which distributes everything from bubble wraps to extruded plank foams, Cryovac vacuum shrink bags revolutionized food packaging by injecting a burst of freshness into fish, meats and poultry sent through the distribution chain to the table. So it was…
It used to be a Dairy Queen, which helps explain the Sunday-Monday-Happy-Days feeling inside Starfish Seafood Diner. Walk up to the counter to scan the menu board and you’ll see a smiling guy in a white paper hat. A paper hat! That’s Tom McCoy, co-owner with partner Hank Branstetter of…
Pinned to the server’s starched white jacket lapel is a long narrow ruby bar trimmed in gold–a ruby sliver really. Guest: Tell me about your red bar. Waiter: This is the red “i” in Bice. Guest: Say it again. Bee-shay? Waiter: Bice. Guest: Bee-say? Bee-jay? Bee-shay? Waiter: It’s like Beach,…
The European twists are there, to be sure: truffles, snails, pâté and Parma prosciutto. There’s a sort of winsome arrogance to the BLT, which is composed of brie, lettuce and tomato. In a sign of still more haute haughtiness, you can order the BLT with bacon–for an extra buck. But…
If you don’t like to eat in public, Aqua Italian Bistro and Bar is just about perfect. Think of it as a don’t-see-anyone/won’t-be-seen kind of place. On two visits, a weekday dinner and a weekend lunch, we find cavernous Aqua sitting empty. “Are you open?” I ask, squinting into the…
Steak–damn straight–is the mother’s milk of Dallas dining. When imagination fails you, when the prospect of culinary risk numbs the cojones, when the anxiety of outfitting a restaurant without mahogany, polished brass and frosted glass tulip blooms over chandelier bulbs paralyzes you, it’s best to load up on 1,800-degree broilers,…
Let’s put aside pup tents for a moment. The American cowboy is an icon of rugged individualism coupled with stalwart determination, plus a little recklessness thrown in. The cowboy myth is embodied in the stoic, emotionally distant adventurer. You feel it at Cattleman’s Steakhouse. The moniker on the canopy over…
It’s easy to get a sense of where the cash registers rang up cups of coffee and pouches of teriyaki jerky. You can tell by the cameras fastened to the ceiling tiles. Four of them are visible, and their site lines converge on an area near the four banquettes lined…
Neighborhood joints, whether bar or restaurant, have always been difficult to define in broad strokes. A few become notable culinary destinations with adept staff and stunning dishes. More operate on our lives as Robert Frost’s mending wall. They set unnatural borders and bind locals with the dull safety of ritual…
have seen the metamorphosis, the changes in customer behavior.” –Dante Picazo Before Dante Picazo began his quest to tickle American tongues with a full deck of Latin flavors, he was running a small bingo room and a couple of blackjack tables at Station Casino Hotels in Las Vegas. This taught…
Partial transcript from group therapy session, Baylor University Medical Center, March 15, 2006. …screamed in agony. It was like someone, you know, some weed-smoking, tie-dyed vegan took a pair of tweezers and ripped the veins right out of my epidermis. Bibb lettuce: You mean they burn us and breathe the…
Parking is hard, so this tells you something. Every slot contains a car–Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and so on. A manager in a crisp suit strolls out onto the patio to direct. No valet on weekdays. But it’s OK to park in the dim strip mall across 7th Street, he says…
Let’s try out that old Sesame Street game, shall we? One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn’t belong. Did you guess a neighborhood sushi restaurant in Cowtown? Maybe a popular Japanese destination owned by a native of Taiwan who received her culinary…
Centuries before it was a place to down lobster shooters or short ribs ringed in heirloom red potato hash, a restaurant was a thing to sip, not a place. A restaurant was a restorative broth, a tiny cup of bouillon or, more likely, a thick meat essence of partially digested…
McKinney’s culinary culture has had a couple of peculiarities over the recent years. Witness the Prison, circa 2000. The Prison was a New American restaurant fashioned out of the circa 1880 Collin County jail. Frank James, brother of Jesse, booked a room there, as did Raymond Hamilton, a member of…
The most significant challenge in restaurateuring has little to do with fortunes big or small, lost or stolen. That comes later, maybe after décor. Café San Miguel has a deep blue marine bar with a porthole housing a metal star. Christmas lights are strung from the ceiling. The barstools look…
Kenny’s Wood Fired Grill is designed to resemble a 1940s Chicago-style chophouse serving New England-style seafood, pumping Uptown’s favorite mind-numbing spirit (Grey Goose) from frozen taps in a suburban location, pouring wine with French fries, hiding elegance behind self-promoting “artwork” and 30-something patrons wiggling through the room in low-rise jeans…
Deep Ellum in bright sunlight can be a downright alarming sight. There’s no hint of lurid, neon-streaked discord. Only silent brick structures, pitted by age, and a few lonely cars headed somewhere else. It looks like a small town in Illinois. Sitting down for lunch at Tarantino’s Deep Ellum, my…
Perhaps this is not intentional, but Cosmo Rouge Bistro & Lounge feels like The Black Lodge. You remember the Black Lodge? It was tucked in thick Pacific Northwest woods in a dream tucked in Twin Peaks. You remember Twin Peaks? Twin Peaks was the surreal David Lynch murder mystery television…
The opening act was almost comic. The setup: waiting at the sparsely attended bar for a dinner companion to arrive, ordering vodka martini up with a twist, “a martini, please.” The improv take: After searching for a couple minutes the bartender decides they’ve run out of Monopolowa. How ’bout Stoli?…
Sitting in Steve Fields Lobster Lounge is like being in a lava lamp. Not because of blobs floating and bumping to the muffled sounds of Jefferson Airplane, The Troggs or a Floyd fugue. (Right now a bar pianist is tinkling a rendition of Coldplay’s “The Scientist”–a solid entry in the…
