Much as I try, I can’t seem to find a common thread between Volvos and haute cuisine. Volvos are austerely functional vehicles, hauling child protective seats with the resolve of a D-6 dozer. They’re the automotive equivalent of granola with a side of stewed prunes, which, along with boutique lefty…
Dear Mr. O’Dowd: Right off the top I’ll admit I don’t know much about Irish food (is there a lot to know?). I’m German. And there’s not a whole lot to know about German food either, at least not in a haute sense. Assembling cool kitchen appliances, we’ve got that…
There was me — that is, the Kraut — and my zheena, and we sat in the Milkbar making up our rassoodocks about what pischcha to nibble on for the evening. This devotchka, all dressed in a malenky white vinyl skirt with these flip horrorshow go-go boots high up her…
There’s a guy in San Francisco named John Cunin who was the longtime maître d’ at a place called Masa’s before he decided to open his own place in 1990 called the Cypress Club. The Cypress Club was (and still is, I suppose) one of those see-and-be-seen places. People like…
Kampai Sushi & Grill is a new restaurant on Addison Circle next to Antonio Ristorante and across from the just-opened Avanti Euro Bistro. But this isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that Kampai faces “Blueprints at Addison Circle,” a structure that, according to the city of Addison, is…
Time was that the 99-cent threshold for pricing was the sole domain of the grocery store, or at least it seemed that way. It’s an old strategy. Knock a penny off a price and make it seem like the customer is saving a buck, while the cent saved ends up…
It’s not surprising that a venue like Ciudad D.F. surfaced like a bubble on Dallas asphalt. What’s surprising is that it has taken this long. Ciudad is Monica Greene’s (of Monica’s Aca y Alla in Deep Ellum) tribute to her hometown and a Dallas interpretation of the cuisine found in…
There are a few things that Ellington’s doesn’t get quite right. One of them is a statement in the restaurant’s publicity blurb: “We like to fry,” it states. “It may not be politically correct, but one taste of our fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, or pan-fried catfish, and you’ll swear off…
Maritage is named after a wine category — it’s actually spelled Meritage — created several years ago by an association of California winemakers. Those winemakers had a problem: Most of the world’s truly great wines comprise blends of vintages made from different grapes, most notably those grown in Bordeaux. There…
Fish has always been a funny fin. It could dazzle you with its scaled wonders, then turn around and disappoint you with a few beached blunders. But it would always hook you with a hefty check for the trouble. Launched in 1996 by businessman Steven Upright and chef Chris Svalesen,…
It sounds more like a garage than a restaurant. From somewhere more like Toledo, Ohio, than Vancouver, B.C. A place that sends its management on culinary swings through Oklahoma and Iowa instead of Bordeaux, Italy, and Napa. But earl’s is no ordinary dinner chain. In 1955, Earl “Bus” Fuller, a…
Right there, in a glass case just as you walk up to the counter at Chipotle Mexican Grill on McKinney Avenue is a T-shirt (for sale) with a clever maxim. “Usually, when you roll something this good, it’s illegal,” it says. This statement refers to Chipotle’s massive 20-ounce burritos, which…
Two days before Casa Del Lago opened in February 1999, chef-owner Hector Angeles was looking for something Italian to slip onto his menu, but he didn’t want pasta. He wanted something divergent, maybe twisted. He was stuck. “I saw a contest in a magazine about what you can create with…
A shokado is a type of bento box, a high-sided black container divided into four equal compartments into which tiny portions of meticulously crafted food are placed. Ino Japanese Bistro mimics the shokado bento, taking its minimal elegance to engaging extremes. Walls are bare and white, trimmed with dark dusty…
As a rescue effort, Fishbowl isn’t bad. In fact, this retro lounge fitted from the stuck-up bar affixed to the Stephan Pyles and Michael Cox’s AquaKnox would be a swell place to nibble and sip even if it weren’t next door to the hyper-upscale restaurant. What Fishbowl proves is that…
“You speak Hindi?” asked our server. Our eyes were glued to the television screen. Our mouths were chewing bits of lamb samosa ($3.95), delicious flaky fried pastry pockets jammed with ground lamb, cashews, cilantro, and onion. “No,” I said. “Then how you know?” he asked, waving his hand toward the…
Machu Picchu is Dallas’ first Peruvian restaurant. It’s named for a mysterious ancient Inca town set on a spectacular precipice nearly 8,000 feet above sea level on the eastern slopes of the Andes. The place was essentially unknown until an American archaeologist stumbled across it in 1911 under a blanket…
Maybe this is an evolution of some sort, the kind where the mutations and variations creep at such a slow pace that you barely notice. But Tramontana, a cozy little restaurant in Preston Center with the walls painted to look like the poster-infested bedroom of a café-cultured Francophile, is changing…
Make no mistake. A captivating veranda is a big deal in Dallas, not something to be sniffed at or choked on in the wake of Mercedes Benz exhaust. When you think about it, Dallas is perhaps the most unfriendly patio town in the world, outside of Grozny in Chechnya, or…
It’s hard not to like Z Café. Then again, like the sleepy forward coast of a comfortable marriage, it’s hard to like it without working at it. But you will put forth the effort, because Z, with its sloppily stained black tables, azure trim, black Zs plastered on the walls,…
Every now and then life hands you a perfect moment, one of those spaces of time when everything stops, turns beautifully epiphanic, and suddenly you find yourself babbling the goofy prose found in that Shirley MacLaine tree-climbing book. I have had a few perfect moments: watching the sun set in…
Thai food in Dallas is typically lumbering and uninteresting. The sauces are flabby, the textures tired, the flavors muddled. In this city, Thai cuisine lacks searingly distinct flavors or exotic subtlety. Tucked amid Addison’s swath of strip malls, Thai Orchid is one of the precious few Thai restaurants that skirts…
