Tin Star is bright and chic. Tin Star is simple. Tin Star has catchy theme: “salsa, smoke, and sizzle.” Tin Star is cheap. But Tin Star doesn’t sparkle, because the most important point in this twinkler–the food–is as dull as a butter knife. “There is no reason that great food…
Hot little beds What Dallas needs is little hotels. Cute hospitality fashion hunks with bellboys in eel-skin caps and desk girls with fishnets reaching up to mid-thigh taking hip guests to their little boutique sleep slots with dripping black candles burning on the nightstand. Maybe we’ll get some. Word is,…
Raw feelings Scott Melton thinks he got a raw deal. “It was kind of chicken shit,” he says. Melton, who recently opened Sushi Nights on Main Street in Deep Ellum, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April for Sushi Deep Ellum Inc., the general partnership he formed to operate Deep…
I’m not really sure what all the fuss was about. But it all started with a printing error. Last summer, The Dallas Morning News did an article on the Palm Restaurant’s upcoming renovation, one that would darken the restaurant and sequester its dining spaces. The modest upgrade included new floors,…
Raw fish. Raw fish eggs. Raw marine sex organs. Think about it. Putting these things in your mouth is extreme. Raw fish is scary. Well, it used to be, anyway. Now it’s so commonplace that it draws yawns. Sushi restaurants are popping up with the speed of facial zits before…
Flying solo You could say that former Sipango chef and partner Matthew Antonovich is fickle. Either that, or he has no business sense when it comes to choosing a partner. Just look at his post-Sipango history. First he connects with Dale Wamstad of III Forks, only to discover that grilling…
Our server says that in the summertime waiters strip and dive in–plunge 35 or so feet into that dark, stagnant water hole that seems a portal to Hades. I cringe. “Oh, it’s 60 feet deep,” he says. (Actually, the well at Newport’s Seafood is 50 feet deep and holds some…
Woodward quits quad It’s the stampede of the Stars. David Woodward, chef de cuisine at FoodStar Restaurant Group’s Mediterraneo at the Quadrangle, says he’s bolting, packing up for the desert city of showgirls and conspicuous consumption. Woodward will be executive chef at Star Concepts Star Canyon in Las Vegas. Not…
FoodStar stir Just last summer, FoodStar Restaurant Group was gushing over ambitious plans to launch as many as 40 PoPoLos, Mediterraneo, and Toscana restaurants across the country. Now, the recipe at FoodStar Restaurant Group seems a little hashed. Rumors point to two spots indicating tumult: a struggling Mediterraneo at the…
I love Cork. Which is why I hate it. If Dallas has needed one thing for a long time, it’s a no-frills, down-and-dirty wine bar. One that energetically trumps the numbness of most wine lists. One with sass. One with smarts. Other places play around with the wine bar theme,…
Nature is awe-inspiring, splendidly pure, breathtakingly harmonious, gloriously elegant in its savage innocence. If you don’t yet know this after a lifetime of public television nature programs, Robert Redford rants, and Free Willy sequels, you’ll be stuffed with this delicious knowledge at Wilderness Grill in Grapevine Mills mall. You may…
Of smokes & meat The spot on Cedar Springs and Carlisle has served as a rotating temple of vices over the past couple of years. First it was The Joint, a hot-and-rowdy pool hall and restaurant staffed with waitresses who wore little more than cue-stick chalk. Then it was Lone…
Cork felons Serious Texas wine sippers are angry because they think it’s going to cut their access to wines generally not stocked on Texas store shelves. Wineries are mad because they don’t like being hauled off to the slammer for serving those sippers. But that’s tough. State Sen. David Sibley’s…
The pub is packed. Every tiny table is occupied. But just as we walk in, a spot opens by the window in the raised seating area to the left of the bar. It could be romantic, even if the view is just parked cars off Gaston Avenue in the foreground…
Bizu isn’t Alberto Lombardi’s first French bistro, and Bizu, which means “little kiss” in French (with a twist on the French spelling), probably won’t be his last. But what do I know? Sure, I’d stabbed my fork into some marginal meals at Lombardi’s in the West End. And I’d sat…
Eat Tibet free It’s almost nauseating how the entertainment industry flaunts its benevolence when there’s a chic cause to latch onto. Millions of children across the globe die every year from diarrhea, but you don’t see weepy Sharon Stones organizing star-studded oral rehydration salt fundraisers. It’s not as chichi as,…
You have to admit it. Owner Hamid Moallem did a hell of a job retrofitting his new restaurant into Soho Food, Drinks and Jazz. I remember when it was Okeanos, featuring seafood by famed Dallas chef Avner Samuel. The institutional terra-cotta tile floors and baby-blue walls with yellow trim the…
Bistro bluster Ouch. Last week’s review of The Bistro singed some nerves, and it wasn’t my impressions of the food or service that inflamed temperaments, either. It was naming the names of those responsible for The Bistro’s largely marginal fare. A March 15 Bistro press release ballyhoos the restaurant’s new…
Soul food We’ve all heard that chefs are a little crazy. We’ve also heard that crazy people sometimes make drastic moves at the behest of ghosts. Help the president run the country for instance. But open a restaurant? That’s what former Sipango chef/partner Matthew Antonovich confesses. He says his recent…
That little restaurant space with the burgundy awning near Lovers and Inwood has gone through some modest mutations over the years. In 1992, it was Le Caviste, a French wine bistro. Then in 1993, Guy and Martine Calluaud appropriated the space and created Calluaud’s restaurant, a more informal version of…
“A 1967 Raquel Welch romp,” cookbook author and TV cooking-show host Nathalie Dupree says as I take a seat at Joshele, the new upscale dining and jazz spot in Plano. “Space, A, space, H, O, M, Do you know it?” she asks. “Wait a minute–I don’t think you’re old enough.”…
Dragonfly flutters A Dallas County district judge slapped longtime Dallas nightclub operator Steve Kahn with a temporary injunction late last week, essentially removing him as head of the Dragonfly Bar & Restaurant on Lower Greenville Avenue. The ruling follows months of legal wrangling between Kahn and Dragonfly’s limited partners, led…
