Best Soup 2007 | RJ Mexican Cuisine | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Soup

RJ Mexican Cuisine

Because it's considered a simple tomato soup, people tend to think gazpacho is easy to make. So wrong. Often you order the cold Spanish dish only to be served a bowl of chopped tomatoes, onions and peppers, as if they can just whip up some pico de gallo and change the name. RJ's gazpacho is the real deal, though, a cool, refreshing blend of tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, Spanish onion, cilantro and Haas avocados. It has just enough spice and soupiness and exactly the right amount of garlic, which let's face it, is the most important of all.

Best Steak

Pappas Bros. Steakhouse

Big slabs of red beef alive with juice and char are the essence of Dallas cuisine. Diners full of lust and sweat and drool are the essence of the Dallasite. All of this is found in a maze-chambered dining room appointed with meticulous elegance for the indulgence of the well-appointed paunch. Pappas' prime meat is dry-aged, hung out to dry for 28 days (or so) to maliciously extract the deep rich flavors and heighten the impact of its evenly distributed fat. Natural enzymes break down connective tissues, creating a sublime cut—rich, silky, seasoned simply but with mind-bending effectiveness. The nutty dry-aged finish elegantly unravels and loiters with exquisite persistence, loosening only when sluiced with a strapping, gripping Cabernet or one of those assertive Australian Shirazes. So pass the bacon-wrapped scallops, some turtle gumbo, the thick asparagus needles and maybe a few lettuce wedge layers. Meat lust must be tempered. Then again, you may choose to lose consciousness in a fit of carnivorous bliss.

Best Sub

Jimmy's Food Store

Lauren Dewes Daniels
The minute you take your first bite of a Jimmy's Italian sub, you realize what all those chain places are trying to do but don't. Jimmy's uses the best capicola, mortadella, provolone, pepperoni and Genoa salami with finely diced fresh lettuce, cherry peppers and Jimmy's own secret sauce all on fresh white or wheat loaf. It's fresh, sure, but you know what else it is that's a good idea for an Italian sub? Italian. You can drop by Jimmy's and pick one up to go or grab a little table and eat it there. Word of advice, though? It's not what you'd call a fast food place.

Best Sushi

Yutaka Sushi Bistro

As sushi restaurants spread like black mold across DFW, blooming in strip malls and grocer cases, transforming sushi rolls from the exotic to the silly (with names like crazy, mermaid, grasshopper), rolled with fake shellfish, it's easy to forget that sushi is an art form rendered from precisely forged steel, years of drilling and the rigors of near insane meticulousness. Such craft is articulated at Yutaka—in the smooth cool hamachi, shedding its nutty layers as each strip of fish fumigates the mouth with its clean marine scents; in the octopus so delicately sliced you can almost feel the weave of the flesh as it unravels in the jaws; in the slightly roughened, shimmering uni; in the squid that feels like a piece of perfectly cooked rigate once it passes between the lips. This sushi is so ripe with tenderness, so discreet in revealing the savagely honed technique and relentless spirit that wrought it, you almost forget this is sushi—a craft slapped so senseless by its commercial ubiquity that it may as well be a glazed doughnut.

Best Sweet Treat

Delicious Cakes

True story: A cupcake fell on the floor in a friend's kitchen. We were busy cleaning up the icing mess, while the majority of the cake carnage lay in a heap on the counter. The husband walked in. "What happened?" "Cupcake casualty." "How long was it down?" "More than 5 seconds." "Where's it from?" "Delicious Cakes." "I'm all over that." He scooped up the broken mound and savored it with reverence due a sacred relic. We've since experienced the Delicious Cakes greatness at a wedding and two other special events. Every time the baked creations have been perfectly moist and light, with just the right amount of icing—never any sugary overkill. The name seems simple and presumptuous, but it's an astute description of what the bakery has to offer in various forms (wedding, bridal, groom, personal party and bundt). Recommended flavors included Italian cream, red velvet, Mexican chocolate and fresh strawberry.

Best Thai Restaurant

Royal Thai

Like other cuisines—Italian and Chinese creep to mind—unearthing good Thai can be confounding. It can be listless. It can be sloppy. It can be uninspiring. Royal Thai shakes up the ennui, not only with fresh cuisine, but with its Thai elegance and sophisticated staging that includes a wine list fraught with clear thinking (acid lush whites and reds along with the usual Chard-Cab brigade). Tom kha gai, a soup of galangal, coconut milk, chicken, mushrooms, lemongrass, kaffir lime and chilies is an opus of tart and spicy. Tender, juicy satay begs for dunks in an appropriately spicy peanut sauce (these choosy mothers didn't choose Jif!). Salads, like the searing yahm plah meuk with calamari, lemongrass, mint and lime, or the brisk chicken lahb bedded on clean iceberg lettuce shreds, can be meals, humming as they do with flavor you can feel all the way down to your hangnails. Smooth curries are here, as are the whole fried fishes (cat and snapper), battered and brittle and moist and spiced like the best of them. Which they are.

Best Thai Up Yonder

Zak8 Gourmet Thai Bistro

The atmosphere at this spacious restaurant is both relaxed and elegant, with simple black décor that makes the enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling pop. Yet the prices are fairly low, with tasty wonton and eggroll appetizers at $3 to $5 and noodles, stir-fries and Thai curry dishes for $8 to $10. The Massaman red curry is fantastic, as is the spicy peanut sauce and cashew stir-fry. The owners also have a humanitarian component to their business plan—according to their menu and Web site, one penny of each dollar spent is donated to the global, New York-based Hunger Project.

Best Use of Pesto

Pesto Pizza

Atop a lunch line tray sits a simple work of gastronomical delight. Delicate, crispy crust (the best kind if you ask us) spread with a thin layer of pesto bright with basil and just a touch on the salty side. Fresh mozzarella is ooey gooey in an intimate cuddle with a diced trio of red onion, grilled chicken breast and fresh tomato. The edge pieces of the thin, rectangular pie are sparse on melty goo, so you have a retreat from the middle, more heavily topped squares. It is, dare we say, a perfect exercise in balance. Scalini's neighborhood joint already had us for its dark, friendly retreat-like atmosphere, but it keeps us coming for the pesto pizza.

Best Vegetarian Breakfast Options

Buzzbrews Kitchen

In our vegetarian phases, the thing we missed the most was breakfast meats. While we've still never met a truly satisfying bacon replacement, the faux breakfast sausage is doable. Even then, it's difficult to find at restaurants—unless you're at Buzzbrews Kitchen. This tiny shoebox of a diner, nestled in a motel parking lot, offers veggie sausage as an alternative to the delicious but dead pork flesh on most of its plates. Not a fan of meat analogs? Try the Hare Krishna—a breakfast of eggs stuffed with avocadoes, covered in cheese and served with "garlic marbles" (small seasoned potatoes) and grilled tomato.

Best Vegetarian Restaurant

Cosmic Caf�

Catherine Downes
If you need a break from the corporate humdrum and find yourself craving some killer meat-free food in a Zen atmosphere, this isn't just your best bet, it may be your only one. The atmosphere is decidedly bright and colorful, with a building reminiscent of a Buddhist temple, complete with prayer flags, Krishna statuettes and brightly painted walls. There are hearty soups, appetizers like hummus and samosas and a well-rounded menu of "big-bang entrees." You can't go wrong with the Cosmic Stir, a tofu and vegetable stirfry, or the Socrates Plato, a pile of flavorful portobella mushrooms over basmati rice. It all comes with naan, a fluffy and delectable Indian bread, and you can select a refreshing herbal cooler or hot chai tea to accompany this meditative smorgasbord of culinary bliss.

Best Of Dallas®

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