Just think about simple pasta dishes here. The food cost for a restaurant making pasta is negligible, but they charge $15 or so for the finished product. Unless you’re after one of the more elaborate shapes, pasta is easy to make at home. If the restaurant uses dried pasta, it’s…

Handle The Proof is our weekly exploration of spirits, cocktails and the culture of fine drinking. Despite the inroads of craft and single barrel brands, bourbon still suffers from somewhat of an image problem. Once when I ordered a round of Booker’s in some Uptown bar, for example, a woman…

Just got off the phone with Arnold Jones, food critic and lifestyles editor for the Dallas Voice. As reported today by the Dallas Morning News, Jones’ car drowned the other night as he tried to make his way through downed trees to his M streets home.”It’s kinda funny being the…

Cool River1045 Hidden RidgeIrving (which used to have a football team and an important golf tournament)972-871-8881When anyone mentions Cool River, those within earshot instantly conjure images of flabby gentleman draped in adult Garanimals desperately maneuvering to isolate younger, outnumbered prey.And not very ably.Adjacent to the upscale Champps bar scene, however,…

Apologies for the delays. The weather forecasts for yesterday evening called for a 30 percent chance of rain, so I spent part of my time in a tunnel at Pizza Hut Park and potential funnel clouds developed. Good thing they didn’t say 40 percent–we’d have an F-5 tornado ripping through…

Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.Without the existence of frozen supermarket taquitos, most guys wouldn’t have survived their 20s. Hell, even after we’ve overcome all that Darwin throws at us over that particular decade–beer bongs, beer pong, the…

Just how many food shows do we need hanging out in and around Dallas, distracting our chefs and disrupting meals?Oxygen will be shooting the Naughty Kitchen at Central 214 for the next few months. The contest winner with the hair was back in the area–this time in Cowtown. A mom…

Could Another Train Wreck Be Far Behind? That’s how his trademark “collision cuisine” got it’s name. Someone wrote that Cassel’s cooking was like a train wreck on the plate–but it worked.At least that’s how he recalls it. And it worked well enough to make the Green Room an institution. The…

Last week I wrote about slipping standards of service. Most readers blamed lax management and training. But we also received a number of, shall we say, interesting comments from people claiming to be wait staff or former wait staff. Their take? Diners are to blame.Before I point out the obvious,…

OK, so our Hot off the Grill newsletter type person is no town crier…although because the mysterious writer used the work “Rolodex” this week, a throwback tone is in order. To find out the reason for such an archaic choice of words, or to get an inside look at Samar–Stephan…

The news from Robert Wilonsky at Unfair Park here…

Please forgive the rambling nature of this rant. It’s Monday, there’s no sign of the “Knockers” post due at 11 a.m., nor of some other stuff. I have a nice sunburn from the FC Dallas game. And on Saturday afternoon I waited in a 30 minute line, just so I…

Who’s Who Burgers69 Highland Park Village214-522-1980I’m almost certain Laura Bush walked by as I readied to try my first Who’s Who burger in about five years. I say “almost,” because if it really were the former first lady and only cognizant person in the White House, federal agents would have…

When Bliss Raw Bar opened last month, it seemed to confirm that raw food had entered swirl of food trends considered acceptable by the mainstream. Although misinformation of the “anything raw is better than anything cooked” sort still exists, most raw foodists have settled on the idea that a diet…

I saw this today on our Twitter network: “World: quit bringing children to bars. I don’t care what time of day or night it is. Inappropriate.”But in many places around the world (well, Europe, anyway) parents regularly drag their kids to the pub. Prudish Americans think there’s something evil about…

There was a time when basic vodkas roamed the barroom earth. They came in normal bottles–real glass when you stepped up to the Smirnoff or Stoli level. Clean, but with a warming, alcohol burn, they mixed readily into orange juice or ginger beer or whatever.But along came Bond (James Bond)…

Nothing like six hours in a bus to Beaumont and another six from Beaumont to make one rethink a food blog format. So over the next few weeks, we will be tweaking things a just a little bit…hopefully for the better. After all, we’re almost halfway through the year. Why not?…

Avanti2720 McKinney Avenue214-871-4955Some of those classic restaurant pasta dishes get a bit tedious after a few turns of the fork.Fettuccine alfredo, for instance, combines ribbons of flat pasta with Parmesan, butter and–often–cream. While there’s a familiar tang from the cheese and definite richness, the dish offers little intrigue. It’s just…

Part of the ferocious Dallas Diesel defensive squad in the process of shutting down the Demons in Beaumont last weekend. A certain food critic (#40) seems annoyed that his sideline is chanting “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!”My time with the minor league team is done, but their season continues: 7 p.m. on…

Lisa Petty is on vacation–a much needed one, we presume. Although she mentioned something about building a school in some Guatemalan village when asking for the week off (the first time, anyway; the second time she claimed to be aiding flood victims in Azerbaijan), we found airline tickets to the…

The transition from waiter to bartender isn’t always easy. Neither is the discipline necessary to handle service industry responsibilities and a college class schedule. Leonard waited tables at Ferre. He started in the same role at Villa-O before shifting behind the bar. So far, everything is going smoothly for the…