Best Sunday Morning Coming Down 2010 | Barbec's | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Sunday Morning Coming Down

Barbec's

You get the feeling that many of the regulars at Barbec's have been coming there since Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson first played "Sunday Morning Coming Down" together 30 some-odd years ago. It's a testament to the East Dallas mainstay's good old-fashioned, no-frills country-style breakfast. No frills, that is, until you take the first bite of Barbec's famous beer biscuits. Washing down the sweet, buttery biscuit with that first cup of coffee is the perfect way to warm up a hungry stomach just before ordering the "Double Barrel Breakfast." The popular platter features two eggs, two pancakes and bacon or sausage, and it's certain to satisfy any hunger—or hangover.

Best Assassination Coffee

6th Museum Floor Café and Store

The Sixth Floor Museum has expanded into the 501 Elm Building across N. Houston Street from the museum, with administrative offices upstairs and a really cool new café and store on the ground level. The café, with food from La Duni and excellent coffee, looks out on the site of the city's great shame, the event that labeled us "The City of Hate," which means that French tourists can sip lattes and despise us in air-conditioned comfort. This has to be good for the economy. Meanwhile, the store offers work by local artisans and Fair Trade/Eco-Friendly manufacturers, some with references to Kennedy, some of it more about the Kennedy era and Dallas. Name another city that has turned its worst disability into a profit center.

Best Place to Dig On Swine

Artisanal Style Pork Ham at Smoke

Get it with brunch—a pile of these dry ham flakes on the side—and you'll wonder why you bothered ordering anything else. The ham has a way of taking over. Smoked out back with a blend of mesquite, pecan, cedar and oak, or in the hundred-year-old smokehouse indoors, a taste of chef Tim Byres' ham is like discovering a whole new animal. Nothing about it suggests the watery vacuum-sealed lunch meat you knew before. You'll find there are fatty pieces and crustier ones, but all of it sweet, smoky and hard to forget—and, we'll just come out and say it, oddly like the breading on a Chicken McNugget. An unlikely comparison, maybe, but in the city's best spot for fancy barbecue, it's the standout meat. You'll realize it's what ham should taste like, and everyone else is doing it wrong.

Best Desserts

Crème De La Cookie

When our sweet tooth takes over and we're craving something more than an ordinary, run-of-the-mill dessert, the first place we think of is Crème De La Cookie. The Snider Plaza treat boutique bakes up irresistible cookies, cake balls, cupcakes, bars and brownies, as well as signature offerings like the whoopie pies with marshmallow butter cream (a gourmet take on a Moon Pie) or fudge brownie towers drenched in chocolate ganache known as Screamin Os. Last year, Forbestraveler.com featured the spot's OMG Chocolate Chip Cookie as one of the top in the nation, noting the cookie's "deep rich flavor" and high-quality ingredients like Schokinag Chocolate imported from Germany. Crème De La Cookie is also one of only a handful of places in Dallas where you can get a cup of coffee brewed with beans from Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee, which the shop used in a few of the delectable treats, like the wonderfully gooey Chocolate Espresso Chip.

Best Bar Food

The Lakewood Landing

Lauren Drewes Daniels

Sure, we can appreciate an aesthetically pleasing cheese board with locally sourced artisan meats and gherkins, a platter of Thai-inspired steamed mussels and other fancy-pants gastropub fare. Still, when we think of bar food, we're thinking cheap, crispy and brown. And with its beer-battered onion rings, jalapeño-topped cheese fries and tasty burger, it's clear that the cooks at the Landing know their way around a deep fryer and a flat grill. Nary an item tops the $10 mark, and the food is served late enough that you can give your stomach lining a healthy coating of grease before you try to drive home.

Best Sushi

Zen Sushi

Chef Michelle Carpenter doesn't just have casual fans; she has devotees. The half-Japanese/half-Cajun sushi expert is known for her elaborate Omakase dinners, which grant her the freedom to serve whatever she feels like making (get ready to be wowed by such items as popcorn-sized fried octopus, smoked apple and bacon yakitori and a miso-marinated black cod that's worship-worthy). Her sushi-making skill has been called performance art, with impeccable slices of raw fish molded like tiny sculptures over rice. She's known for adding touches of Southwestern flavors to her sushi, strips of lime, speckles of jalapeño or cilantro. Our own critic commended her for her raw fish respite blazing trails in Oak Cliff's Bishop Arts District.

Best Caterer

Pappasito's Cantina

Let's say you have the sudden need to throw a party for 50 at your home and most of the guests are from the East Coast where the chance of them experiencing genuine Tex-Mex is not only unlikely, it's unheard of. You are short on time, and your spouse is no damn help, so you call Pappasito's Cantina and book the evening and food and watch as they do the rest. On the appointed evening, they swoop in, set up tables, chairs, festive decorations. They man a frozen margarita machine, which you sample for taste. A lot. A cook stands over an industrial strength mesquite grill, preparing tasty chicken and beef fajitas. Several more staff work the quesadilla station that will rock your world. Their professional servers offer just that, professional service, and best of all, after the party peaks and the guests begin to leave, they clean up after themselves. Which is its own blessing, because it's late and you're too smashed to even try.

READERS' PICK BEST HOME-STYLE RESTAURANT

Mama's Daughters' Diner

Mama's Daughters' Diner

READERS' PICK BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT

P.F. Chang's China Bistro

P.F. Chang's China Bistro

READERS' PICK BEST PIZZA

Picasso's Pizza & Grill

Picasso's Pizza & Grill

Best Of Dallas®

Best Of

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