“Employees need to practice good hygiene and stay home if they’re sick. But nothing special for H1N1 flu.” (Doug McBride of the Texas Department of State Health Services, on food service industry efforts to prevent the spread of the flu formerly known as swine from kitchen to dining room. As…
Closing in on 8 p.m. on a Friday and Nori is just about empty. A couple early diners abandoned the place about an hour before, and the lone guy in the bar looks ready to leave too. Waitresses laze in a circle, bored into listlessness. Funny thing, though: the cooking—or…
Yes, those little jars of whitefish roe, dyed black and resting on grocery shelves until someone gets the urge to bake up a caviar pie…or whatever.This is the stuff nausea is made of: inky, heavy with brine, slimy in texture. Once opened, the air around the jar picks up a…
Ah, the woes get woe-ier. Read on…..
The chef and owner of both Irving’s La Margarita and the new Masaryk in Addison counts as influences such great chefs as Patricia Quintana, Rick Bayless…and his father, Juan.Juan DeLeon started the Irving restaurant in 1990, after time at Zodiac Room and Esparza’s. His death five years later left Gabriel…
“Italians don’t really understand pizza.” (Alan Richman of GQ, making the case that Americans have perfected the pie in all its forms. As stated in GQ’s June issue.)…
Once again we bow to demands of our marketing thugs…um, professionals…and shamelessly plug Hot off the Grill, our weekly email newsletter summarizing just about everything you need to know about openings, closings, deals and such. This time, for example, learn about Salum’s new tasting menu, margarita classes at an Italian…
When chef Anthony Zappola left for Craft in Los Angeles, the restaurant promoted Harris to the top spot.Formerly sous chef in Tom Colicchio’s Dallas outpost, Harris arrived from Craft New York, where he had been working since graduating from culinary school–also in the Big Apple. Yet oddly enough, he’s an…
“We’re seeing comfort foods, back-to-the-basics foods do real well in this economy and that’s speaking to some of the success we’re seeing with hot dogs.” (Todd Hale, senior vice president for consumer and shopper insights at Nielsen, on the 5.3 percent booset in revenue for hot dog companies–would manufacturers be…
City of Ate is taking the day off in honor of those who died in service, such as sgt. Darrell Cole, USMC. According to the Medal of Honor citation, on Feb. 19, 1945 on the island of Iwo Jima, Cole, armed solely with a pistol and one grenade, coolly advanced…
Just our way of saying congrats (or otherwise) to people in general… People we’d like to shake hands with:Our own Patrick Michels, who designs graphic art for Pairing Off, contributes occasional stories, takes pictures and keeps the blog afloat through his technical know-how. He earned a finalist slot in the…
Most people would label Aurora a fine dining restaurant. But what about a place like Suze? Or Bob’s? The former is a small, neighborhood joint and the latter a massive steakhouse. So can we refer to a tiny, unpretentious joint serving great food as fine dining? Should we label all…
An interesting week, all in all–and one in which we were reminded, once again, what makes press releases so damn fascinating.But first for the runner up. We like this one because, no matter how one chooses to interpret it, the comment sends shivers up the adductor magnus: “Alien Secretions lead…
There are several reasons why 47 year-old food writers should never line up against a bunch of former college athletes at the start of another minor league football season. To begin with, there’s the left medial collateral ligament, that thing called the adductor magnus, a bone on bone sensation where…
Mention a bout with mezcal and at least one of your acquaintances will fire back with the “did you eat the worm” question.But insect larvae added to bottles of mezcal are a relatively recent marketing gimmick rather than some age-old tradition–an attempt to counter the spell its cousin, tequila, holds…
Believe it or not, the executive chef for Del Frisco’s trained as a saucier in France, where he worked for Michelin three-star restaurants.When he came to Dallas in the mid-80s, he opened The Riviera, for almost a decade one of the city’s premier restaurants. After that, he ran the kitchen…
“No more RICE!” (U.S. Marine corporal Harold Thomas as Army aircraft began dropping rations and other supplies to men held at the POW camp in Niigata, Japan, in late August, 1945. Captured in Peking–now Beijing–China on the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Thomas had been a prisoner of the Japanese…
Daddy Jack’s 1916 Greenville Ave. 214-826-4910 If you could travel back in time to, say, New England, Baltimore, or even the bayous of Louisiana in the 1950s, you’d expect to find dozens of places like this. The now venerable seafood shanty on lower Greenville has it all: doo-wop bopping from…
He and his wife, Gina, have raked in much deserved stars and awards and verbal fanfare since they opened Bijoux. The Dallas native began his career in California, however. Gottlich headed west after graduating from Johnson and Wales to work in a French restaurant. From there, it was off to New…
“Mrs. Butterworth has always had a first name, but it’s been passed down over the years to various managers, and none of the adults around here thought to use it until an employee’s son asked what it was.” (Allison Meyer, associate brand manager for Pinnacle Foods Group, announcing a contest…
There will be good Tex-Mex and rumors of good Tex-Mex. Mostly rumors, though—at least in the Dallas area. It’s a sad fact: apart from some fabled taquerias and a few notable exceptions, Tex-Mex restaurants in this part of the world survive on mediocre cooking and the forbearance of diners. They…
I lost a lot of respect for Sarah, our editorial assistant. Just a little while ago she admitted an affinity–well, more than an affinity, an absolute love–for 7-Eleven’s nachos.While I respect that the convenience store provides nachos, with an all-you-can-pile-on policy for condiments and all-you-can-pump yellow cheese-resembling goo, only the…
