Samar Makes Esquire’s Cut,
But Is Dallas Not As Trendy as it Thinks?

The accompanying text for Esquire‘s
much-hyped list of best new restaurants is finally online, which
means eaters can now follow author John Mariani’s logic for
anointing Samar a top 10 stand-out (He was apparently smitten with
the patio, hookah selection and “women in painted-on blue jeans who
proved just about everything George Strait ever sang about Texas
women.”)

But the feature also includes a list of
“trends we’d like to call a thousand-year ban on.” For the
targeted offenses to qualify as trends, I’m assuming a fair number
of restaurants are perpetuating them. Yet I’m hard-pressed to come
up with Dallas examples of at least a quarter of the practices cited.

Then again, I’m still relatively new
to town. So I ask you: Where can I go if I want to be annoyed by the
following trends?

• Showing off today’s bounty of
  local vegetables as if it’s dessert on a dessert cart
• Maple powder
• iPad wine lists (I know the wine
  list at Charlie Palmer at The Joule is digitized, but I’m pretty
  sure the restaurant doesn’t use honest-to-goodness iPads.)
• Water sommeliers
• Being forced to “know the
  farmer”
• The term market on the menu
  (Please tell me I’m just not thinking hard enough here.)
• “This morning’s egg”

There is some evidence on the trend
list that Dallas isn’t entirely out-of-step with the national
restaurant scene: Thanks to Wolfgang Puck, we do have a restaurant
with a “name that includes numbers” and “miso cod.” And
surely the number of mussels sold nightly in Dallas County proves
restaurants here have mastered the “faux bistro aesthetic.” I
only wish some of those eateries would force me to know the farmer.