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Elaine Liner

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The Commissary & The Table: No Standing O'

Chef John Tesar's new Arts District eatery misses its marks.

By Elaine Liner
Jun 23, 2011

Cute, isn't it, how chefs-turned-restaurateurs name their joints now? They slap plain and unpretentious words on the marquee to fool you into thinking they're selling uncomplicated grub at a good price. The Commissary and its reservations-only fancy eatin' room, The Table, are like that. Chef John Tesar, formerly of The...
Alma: Great Mexican Food, but Give Us Tea for Texas.

By Elaine Liner
Apr 21, 2011

"This is the society we're living in," rants angry-guy podcaster/comedian Adam Carolla. "You can order iced tea and get something that tastes like somebody took a pillowcase of potpourri and boiled it." Ask for iced tea at Alma, the latest addition to Consilient Restaurants' Henderson Avenue collection (along with Hibiscus...
Screen Door: If Mama Cooked This Good, We'd A-Stayed Home

By Elaine Liner
Apr 29, 2010

Before you take the first bite of Screen Door's tasso ham soup, pause a moment to listen. This soup talks to you. It's a lady with a sweet Southern accent, speaking softly and gently into your ear. She says, "Come on, hon, eat up while it's good 'n' hot, 'cause...
Ocean Prime -- So Fancy, They Should Put Goldfish on the Menu

By Elaine Liner
Apr 1, 2010

On a day when you're feeling all up in your fine self, when your wrinkle-fillers have smoothed out the frown lines and your good car is out of the shop, that's the day to go to Ocean Prime. Because any other day? You're going to feel way out of place...
DISH Suffers From a Lack of Focus on Getting the Food Right

By Elaine Liner
Mar 11, 2010

The egg must not be cold. Here we are in Oak Lawn's dishiest new restaurant, DISH (the insistent capital letters an attempt to elevate the generic name). It is a frigid Saturday morning, and at 11:30 a.m., we two are the only patrons in a 5,500-square-foot space that seats about...
Tramontana: A Restaurant Made for Grandma

By Elaine Liner
Mar 11, 2010

This ain't your mother's bistro. No, it's your grandmother's. And if you visit Tramontana of an evening, though not too long past the witching hour of 8, you'll likely see a few other people's grannies here too. They'll be accompanied by nicely dressed adult grandchildren and, if some have been...
Stay Hungry, Live Longer: the Science Behind the Calorie Restriction Diet

An SMU biologist thinks the secret to the fountain of youth may be found by putting fruit flies on a diet.

By Elaine Liner
Feb 19, 2009

In a windowless, climate-controlled chamber on the third floor of the Dedman Life Sciences building at Southern Methodist University, thousands of fruit flies are on a diet so someday you won't have to be. The crumb-sized insects, weighing just 1 milligram each, live in slim glass and plastic tubes—100 flies...
Review: Cafe R&D

Café R&D serves up pretty, tasty dishes, but where's the meow mix?

By Elaine Liner
Jun 5, 2008

The prettiest dishes at Café R&D aren't coming out of the busy open kitchen; they're posing around the oval stretch of bar, or curled into the deep booths at martini time. On a late spring evening, the kittens and cougars of the nearby Park Cities slink in before sundown to...
Review: Spiral Diner & Bakery

Spiral Diner & Bakery lets you avoid sins of the flesh

By Elaine Liner
Apr 17, 2008

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...
Review: BayGrill in Frisco

A long way from the shore, Frisco's BayGrill does fish (mostly) right

By Elaine Liner
Feb 28, 2008

Takes some nerve to open a restaurant in the westernmost flatlands of Frisco and call it BayGrill. It doesn't even have a bay window, this bistro, much less proximity to a body of water. It is a pretty little place, however, sitting on the edge of oblivion at Legacy Drive...
Review: Urban Taco

Try a little Mexican food without the gloop and refrieds

By Elaine Liner
Jan 3, 2008

My favorite dining companion put it this way: Urban Taco sounds like something you'd order from the J. Peterman catalog. He's onto something. Think cute but functional. Trendy but not pushy. A little on the pricey side. But you want it anyway. Urban Taco fits all of those categories, and...
Review: Exposition Park Café

So good we want to live there and probably could

By Elaine Liner
Nov 29, 2007

You can order food to go at Exposition Park Café, but just about the only reason to do it would be to get a change of scenery if you already ate all your meals there. A sign over the bar at this decidedly un-haute haunt says, "Welcome, You Are Home,"...
Just Beachy

You can almost hear the surf pound at the Cape Grill

By Elaine Liner
Jun 14, 2007

If only The Cape Grill were situated where ideally it should be. That is, a half-mile or less from a pounding blue surf, a stretch of white beach and a friendly boardwalk. Instead, this sunny indoor-outdoor seafood place sits smack dab in an ocean of concrete near the Quadrangle, where...
Craic Den

Friendly atmosphere and good food bring you baic

By Elaine Liner
Apr 12, 2007

When you stop by McCarty's in Richardson—and you should—ask one of the regulars at the bar about the time a guy tried to make off with the stuffed and mounted wild boar's head. There are two of the heads hung high in the back room of this wood-paneled Irish-themed restaurant/pub...
Get the Hook

Things aren't going swimmingly at Fish Express

By Elaine Liner
Mar 22, 2007

Seafood is brain food" says the motto on the menu at Fish Express. Given the name of the place, an expectation of good fish served quickly would seem to be a no-brainer. Here, however, they have adopted the Amtrak model of "express." Place an order at the walk-up counter on...
May Oui?

Le Rendezvous dares to take its sweet time

By Elaine Liner
Feb 22, 2007

To say the service and pacing of courses at Le Rendezvous is leisurely is to make them sound too rushed. This newly reopened French place on the southwest corner of Royal Lane at Preston Road adheres to the classic continental style, meaning continents could shift a smidge in the time...
Ellumentary

Comfort food in a reincarnated restaurant in Deep Ellum

By Elaine Liner
Jan 25, 2007

Hearing that Deep Ellum Café is back in business in its original location at 2706 Elm St. is like finding out that a good old friend has moved back to the neighborhood. This was one of our favorite haunts in the late 1980s, back when Deep Ellum was coming into...
Island of Calm

Kona's tasty happy hour won't break the bank

By Elaine Liner
Sep 21, 2006

It is raining hard the second time I make it to Kona Grill. One of those bad boyfriend summer rains--the kind that shows up unexpectedly, sticks around long enough to dampen your hopes and then moves on. As the hostess shows me to a table near Kona's front window, I...
Gator Done

Crustaceans launches an "a-salt" on the taste buds

By Elaine Liner
Jun 29, 2006

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...
Open Arms

Friendly Starfish does clean Cajun seafood in Oak Cliff

By Elaine Liner
Jun 15, 2006

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...
Brown Study

Aqua doesn't impress-doesn't even try

By Elaine Liner
May 25, 2006

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...