Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.Why restaurants leave this snack to family reunions and church gatherings, I’ll never know. There are infinite possibilities (well, not infinite, but quite a few), almost everyone likes them and line cooks can…
The first round of our weekly dish duel features a venerable Tex-Mex veteran and a pretty boy from Uptown…You know, Texans brag almost constantly about brisket. Mention brisket tacos and you risk sending natives into a fugue state. We’ve always wondered why because, frankly, Dallas produces very few worthwhile examples…
But only if you subscribe to Hot off the Grill, our weekly email newsletter. And it’s best if you do so quickly. The goons from marketing have been a little, shall we say, perturbed I didn’t post this reminder last week. They’ve voice their disproval on several occasions and have…
Today we received a note from the fine folks at Gardere, a highly respected Dallas law firm. Seems one of their clients, Donica Jimenez (founder and owner of Cafe Madrid restaurants), was upset that other publications listed Ildefonso Jimenez (of Si Tapas Restaurant) as a founder of Cafe Madrid.The letter…
Joan of Arc4020 N. MacArthur, Irving972-870-5632Oh, god.The place isn’t really lousy, as Rossetti’s Joan would have you think. But first they were out of bacon, which kinda put a dent in my BLTA (the A for avocado) plans. Then, when the person sent to replenish their bacon stock returned, it…
Flipping through the whatweredoin.com blog the other day, I came across a discussion of our Top Ten Overrated Restaurants that included this comment from “Bread Winners”: “Interesting that not a week later, City of Ate…named us one of ‘Uptowns 10 Best Patios.’ They love us, they hate us, they love…
So we stole this idea from Jay Jerrier. A Neapolitan pizza guy himself, he wondered in a comment posted on our site this week whether the cracker crust was the city’s favorite.Pizza crust comes in many styles. For the purposes of this week’s question, however, we’ll assume that marginal versions–rustica,…
This current generation of American drinkers couldn’t really care less about tradition. They shirk the classic cocktails in favor of trendy new flavors: pomegranate martinis, green tea margaritas, acai vodka and tonics or whatever the anti-oxidant of the month happens to be.Despite my frustration with such fads, I must admit…
Our favorite comment from this week is this from Bruce, responding to the On The Range feature about menudo. Bruce would try the infamous soup if he came across a version without hominy. As he puts it in this week’s non-award-winning entry:”I dont think there is another food on the…
Unfair Park’s Robert Wilonsky has been tracking Bob’s–of steak & chophouse fame–many difficulties, updating the story again today (read it here). Over at SideDish, Nancy Nichols keeps up with the ne’erdowellness of another restaurant group (as you can see here).Nancy’s story, as she pursues it, will become even more sensational–trust…
Grimaldi’s3636 McKinney Ave.214-559-4611A good portion of Uptown’s consciously hip population (which is, itself, just a segment of Uptown residents) like to think chains exist only in the culturally desolate ‘burbs. But a few of the neighborhood’s favorite haunts, such as Mi Cocina and Grimaldi’s, are themselves corporate entities…although when it…
The incomparable Mr. Dallas takes his turn as guest DJ at PM Lounge in the Joule on Saturday night. His shift kicks off at 9:45–rather fitting, considering his, um, experience level. The set will consist of Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, Musical Youth and maybe some Hooked on Classics…No, not really…
Remember that Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times? Industrial gears grind and turn, round and round, over and over, in a graceful yet ultimately repetitive sequence until the little tramp becomes ensnared in the machine. Masaryk reminds me of this Hollywood classic. There’s an elegant pattern to many of the dishes,…
There was an advertising jingle back in the 70s proclaiming Americans love for “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.”Slogan writers often take some liberties, of course. I mean, football was already the nation’s number one sport by then. And clearly this was before Miley Cyrus, reality television and i…
So this morning Nancy Nichols finally joined the anti F-word club. Here’s our little diatribe on the same subject from sometime in Februaryhttp://blogs.dallasobserver.com/cityofate/2009/02/one_thing_you_will_never.php…
Cafe Istanbul7300 Lone Star Drive, Plano972-398-2020The northern addition to Plano’s Legacy development supports a hive of restaurants, all clustered near the big fountain that supposedly distracts from the vista of an office building and the distant blue of IKEA.But the grouping–and others spread around the entire complex–is what makes Legacy…
I’ve all but given up on my anti-slider campaign. Not trying to stamp out small sandwiches, you understand, just use of a word referring to the kind of distress one never likes to associate with dinner.Of course, I’m still dedicated to erasing smarmy things like the F-word (“foodie”). And I’ll…
Why do we ask? Well, a town in Australia just banned bottled water for environmental reasons–all that plastic waste, you know. But there are also those studies proving that, in most cases, tap water is every bit the bottle’s equal, in taste as well as good-for-you-ness. Indeed, some brands simply…
We’ve stopped trying to give things away, but we do like to call some attention to clever/accurate/downright impressive comments posted on City of Ate. So our favorites from the past seven days, no prizes attached:From TLS, in response to the Question Of The Week:”The Costco sampling stations are always crowded…
Just when I thought the DFW area had sidestepped at least a few of the more pointless food trends–TV dinner restaurants, bubble tea–comes this story from Teresa Gubbins and Pegasus News.The Cereal Bar in The Colony serves, you know, corn flakes, Special K, maybe even Count Chocula–the stuff you can…
Perhaps only gin has a more dubious reputation than rum–although to earn it, gin had to beat out rum’s association with slavery, pirates and the rough drink known as “kill devil” preferred by islanders of previous centuries.Hell, even the name comes from “rumbullion,” an archaic British slang term for the…
Hook, Line & Sinker3103 Lemmon Avenue214-965-0707Fans of the popular Uptown shack may find it harder to support their ‘best catfish’ claims, thanks to at least one more upscale challenger. I’ve never been certain they deserved the accolades lately, anyway, given their simplistic approach to the fish. On the other hand,…
