Best Barbecued Fish 2007 | Grilled Salmon in Mongolian Barbecue Sauce | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Barbecued Fish

Grilled Salmon in Mongolian Barbecue Sauce

It's not always on the menu, but you can get it if you call ahead 24 hours with insistence in your voice. Shinsei's perfectly grilled salmon, polished in Mongolian barbecue sauce, is an astonishing thing. A neatly cleaved square of pink rests on a banana leaf. The thick, sweetish sauce drools from its edges. Sesame seeds and parsley are trapped in the tarry thick of it. It's rich. It flakes easily, sliding into neat shingles on the thin layer of fat that bleeds through its fibers. Sweet is counteracted by smoke. Salt wrestles with tang. Skewers of pineapple, water chestnut and peppers are laid in front of this delicious fish. Catch it if you can.

Best Bloody Mary

The Green Elephant

Popular convention maintains that the appropriate time to consume a Bloody Mary is some Saturday or Sunday morning after a hard night out, perhaps accompanied by a plate of migas. But that's a shamefully short amount of time to dedicate to such tomatoey goodness. So when we discovered that the barmen at the Green Elephant could pour the damn tastiest Mary in town, we welcomed the Bloody Mary into the night, where it belongs, especially given its violent nomenclature. It's hard to say what makes the Green Elephant Bloody Mary so great, but we have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the splashes of Newcastle and Shiner Bock that the Bloody Mary connoisseurs at the Elephant add to the drink. And remember, when you're asked "Like it spicy?" make sure you have guts of steel before saying "yes." Because they mean business. Delicious business.

Best Bowl of Mussels

The Porch

The Porch
In almost every bowl of mussels served in these parts you'll get one or two that possess the lingering flavors of highly extracted morning mouth. You wince. You cringe. You struggle to spit into your napkin while maintaining decorum. If you narrowly miss a brush with the emergency room, you gulp a shot of vodka and move on to the tiramisu. This won't happen at The Porch, where fruit crisp is the preferred desert and mussels are prepared in Hefeweizen steam. These tiny, clean shellfish rest in an addictive pool of wine, saffron, smoked paprika, tomato and garlic. The broth tosses off licks of smoke thanks to the garlic smoked right alongside the beef for The Porch's chopped brisket sliders, which are good to dip into the mussel broth when the shellfish are depleted—a serving suggestion.

Best Break From Tex-Mex

Zaguan

As much as we love Tex-Mex, it's easy to overload on refried beans and queso in this town. So when we want Latin, but are tired of the enchilada platters, we head to Zaguan, a bakery and cafe with a South American flavor. The menu seems to be constantly evolving, but standards include cachapas, sweet corn pancakes with your choice of fillings; arepas, white corn cakes that resemble English muffins, again filled with a selection of meats or cheese; and pabellón criollo, a hearty meal of shredded beef, seasoned black beans, plantains and rice. Our favorite is the pabellón. A freshly squeezed juice (including unusual ones such as watermelon and papaya) completes the meal.

Best Breakfast

Legal Grounds

Unlike the Starbucks across the street, Legal Grounds is a cozy neighborhood staple with a regular cast of servers and customers who seem as if they've known each other for years. But the easygoing nature of the place would be for naught if the coffee and food didn't come along for the ride. From the delicious and rich muffin tops to the one-of-a-kind French toast that soaks up a medley of fresh fruit, Legal Grounds delivers one of the best breakfasts in town and that rare Dallas blend of good food and friendly people. You don't have to dress up to eat at Legal Grounds or, even worse, look like a hipster. (AllGood Café, we turn our lonely eyes to you.) Instead you can come in after a bike ride around White Rock Lake or 10 minutes after you wake up and still feel right at home.

Best Breakfast Burritos

JusMex

This is the sort of place that makes a breakfast that will keep you full well past lunch. Try the huevos rancheros, or any one of their omelets; you can't go wrong. But what this place is known for are its breakfast burritos. Filled with eggs, bacon, sausage and whatever else you want them to put on it, they're the best breakfast burritos in town. Plus, the service here is excellent. Come in one time and they already treat you like a regular, which, if you ride DART rail downtown to the St. Paul station, you may well become.

Best Butcher

VG's Butcher Shoppe

"Your hometown butcher shoppe, in the city" reads Greg Geerts' business card. The tiny shop isn't much to look at. It's spartan and white, with only a few old Samsonite suitcases and end tables to give it charm. But the infectiously engaging Geerts, who learned his craft at the meat counter in Huntsville after a string of DWI charges before moving on to Tom Thumb, is just the man to trim your rib eyes and New York strips. He prepares steaks marinated especially for indoor sizzling on George Foreman grills (because most Uptown apartment complexes don't allow hardwood charcoal grilling in the bathtub anymore). His fresh pork, ruby lamb chops and the sliced free-range chicken breasts look as fresh and wanton as anything you'll see—or wish you'd see—in your grocer's meat case. The Black Angus beef is mouthwateringly delicious. VG's sells Boars Head meats and cheeses and beef frankfurters and knockwurst. Geerts will sharpen your knives by hand on stone and demonstrate (more like insist on) the proper ways to care for and steel the edges. Geerts will get you anything you want. He just recently secured a 40-pound whole pig and a 20-pound whole goat for a Dallas luau. The pig had real blue eyes, he offers. He didn't say much about the goat's face, though.

Best Cajun Restaurant

Nate's Seafood and Steak House

Nate's is as plain and shamelessly effective as a good swamp cooler; a Cajun kitchen bog sweating the smoky scent of spice that haunts the spaces between the beer signs. Big slices of slick buttered and heavily garlicked French bread; deep and dirty yet exquisitely balanced seafood gumbo with clean spices discernible through grains of fluffy white rice. Fresh fish, grilled or blackened, brims with savor and is perfect in texture. Spread some live blues on that (they do), and you have a recipe for perfect moments.

Best Cheap Lunch

Sali's

Sali's doesn't have much of an atmosphere, despite the large mural of Venice on one wall, complete with canals and gondoliers. You'll see lots of big families and kids' soccer teams, usually there for the excellent hand-thrown thin crust New York-style pizza. But if you want a quick gourmet lunch and you have only a tenner in your pocket, Sali's will fill you up. Start with the salad and spicy house dressing. Peel off a piece of the yummy, garlicky bread. Then dig into manicotti, lasagna, eggplant, stuffed shells, spaghetti or fettucine Alfredo, served in individual casseroles bubbling hot straight from the oven. The bill tops out at $4.75 plus tip, $7 if you get iced tea or a soda.

Best Cheesecake Discombobulation

Little Katana Mango Cheesecake

On its face, busting things up is the antithesis of culinary craft. But Little Katana has mastered the art of creative destruction—deliciously. With mango cheesecake, Little Katana starts with the traditional sour cream-topped cheesecake, mingles it with fresh mangos, busts it up and dumps the debris into a sundae glass before topping it off with whipped cream. The beauty of it is that everything is retained: the mango tang, the graham cracker crumb crunch and the smooth velvety cheese, all in an organized mess of disorganization. Wrecking crew cuisine is the new global fusion. Trust us.

Best Of Dallas®

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