Jonanna Widner

As Americans, we know how to pick our nostalgia. We pluck the good, fleshy bits from the bones of our memories and leave the gristle to decay on its own. We hold onto the good stuff, and the rest floats away. After all, in the fun, heady days of a...

Upon hearing I had been assigned the duty of reviewing Al Amir, a Lebanese restaurant way up on Belt Line, I decided to study the restaurant's Web site. This, after all, was no casual trek to the corner diner. Nope, it was to be a foray into a foreign land,...

There's a wonderful scene in an episode of Mad Men, AMC's drama about early-1960s New York ad execs, in which a character orders some sort of old-school cocktail that involves an egg white—probably a silver gin fizz. Actually, we see him order his second round; the first one is implied,...

Ah, Dallas, the town with no history. Think about it: We tear down centuries-old buildings so we can erect temples built of fake bricks and paper-thin sheetrock. We desecrate beautiful old churches by cramming them full of rock memorabilia, and then we tear down the church. We pick and choose...

About 100 people sat in the gallery of the city council chambers last Thursday at the city plan commission meeting—an oddly high number, considering the commission usually discusses such scintillating subjects as 1-to-1 slope gradations or some shit like that. The audience sat patiently, some clad in lawyerly chinos, others...