Liberty Noodles is dead, shuttered little more than a year after the 7-year-old concept evacuated its Lower Greenville spot for more expansive digs on Lovers Lane. What did it in? Advanced weapons. Creator Jeffrey Yarbrough says business boomed out of the chute. But when General Tommy Franks and the 4th…
McCormick & Schmick’s used to be a toy store: FAO Schwarz, that ages-old chain purveyor of toddler titillation. FAO was bled into anemia by Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us and is now suffering just as the season of shopping psychosis intrudes. This is the sort of pressure that popped FAO…
Rumors have been flying that Nikita, the Cold War Eastern Bloc vodka depot/diner, is about to be sold. Or close. Or crumble like a bad wall in schizophrenic Germany–all after a breathless run of fickle lust that once strung endless and eager lines around Nikita’s West Village loins. Not so,…
“Hi, my name is Arthur King. I’m one of the owners of Gingko Tree China Bistro in Flower Mound. We have been open since May 24, and we are very excited to be here. As far as information goes, we are a Chinese Restaurant…We have a lot of different menu…
Just as our review of The Wharf@Bayview Marina hit the streets, the doors of The Wharf, tucked over Lake Ray Hubbard, slammed shut. Word came via e-mail from the restaurant. “THE WHARF IS CLOSED,” it barked. Khanh Dao is out. Partner Mike Chen is in. The coup d’état at Steel,…
Everywhere there are the fakes, the counterfeits, the phonies. They make their way to our wrists (my Rolex impersonation suffered band failure, fell to the pavement and was crushed by a real Toyota Corolla), our wallets (keep an eye on those new Andrew Jacksons) and our lips (please don’t bite…
Ten years ago, Eduardo Greene had the world by the tux tails. His restaurants, Eduardo’s Aca y Alla and Cayuse, were hot–veritable petri dishes of buzz, the stuff Dallas craves almost more than money. He had scores of devoted fans, smitten by his savoir-faire and fierce sincerity. Eduardo’s was a…
Many things float: dead fish, wine corks, Ivory soap, Enron limited partnerships. Sometimes restaurants float, too–in Texas, no less. That’s the fascinating thing about The Wharf @ Bayview Marina, a bobbing house of “North Florida” cuisine on Lake Ray Hubbard. “We’re actually floating on the water,” says manager Gary Weaver…
Why is Continental cuisine so hard to kill off? Like badly cropped sideburns, it’s ugly. It tastes like an overachieving Swanson TV dinner might if it had loads of self-esteem. And it generally comes with music delivered by people who didn’t get over purple velour the first time around. Loosely…
Perhaps Lola owner Van Roberts operates on a different plane, maybe the kind derived from a salad where the porcinis are subbed with magic buttons. Whatever you make of his latest culinary plunge, The Tasting Room, his balance-sheet projections seem to emanate from a different dimension than those generated by…
Like Tristan Simon with his symbiotic Henderson Avenue empire, restaurant concept baron Phil Romano and his Nick & Sam’s sidekick Joe Palladino seem bitten by the hub-and-spoke bug. Just after opening the semiprivate nightclub Medici two weeks ago, the pair is sewing up a joint venture with Fernando and Gino…
One of the inverted glass bowl chandeliers hanging from the ceiling is busted. Not blemished like a chipped tooth, but damaged like a hockey player’s smile. It’s a natural, accidental impairment in a dining room packed with faux threadbare touches. The creamy walls are blotched with a crackle finish–fraudulent architectural…
The Mercury, Mico Rodriguez’s posh dining nook slipped into the upscale Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, quietly dribbled out of the thermometer tube last week. “We just weren’t able to sustain a following, especially since we opened up September 7, 2001,” says Rodriguez. “It really was doomed, I think,…
Comic Jackie Mason once asked: “Jewish civilization is 6,000 years old, and Chinese civilization is 4,000 years old. So where did Jews eat on Sunday night for 2,000 years?” It’s a strange crossover, this Jewish love of Chinese cuisine. Does it stem from shared tastes for chicken soup, tea and…
Texas and Oklahoma linemen aren’t the only ones set to butt heads Saturday at the Texas State Fairgrounds. Consolidated Restaurant Operations Chairman Gene Street is going to bang skillets with cooks from Newton’s, an Oklahoma City restaurant, to determine which state can sizzle the best chicken-fried steak. “I need to…
There’s a virus infecting Deep Ellum. Not the mosquito-borne kind–this is a restaurant virus, one of temperance, sobriety and restraint. Symptoms range, but they all generate the same basic characteristics: dull names; utilitarian menus; simple furnishings; lousy ambience; street fronts inhospitable to lines of cars from Stuttgart and Bavaria; resourceful…
Frankie Carabetta, the virile bar magnate who has sown taps and shots all over Uptown (there’s even a bar on McKinney Avenue, Frankie’s, named after him that he has absolutely nothing to do with), is busy pumping out more progeny. At this time next week, Knox Street Pub & Grill…
Saffron is the Bentley of the spice rack. The golden, rich and pungent powder rendered from the threadlike stigmas of the flowering crocus is the most expensive spice in the world. At various periods in history, this bouillabaisse staple has been worth much more than its weight in gold. This…
Nick and Sam’s owners Joe Palladino and Phil Romano have a name for their 4,000-square-foot, semiprivate nightclub scheduled to open the second week in October. It’s Medici, which is Italian for affluent, royal family. Hmm. Could that moniker come off as a little snobby? “I think it might,” Palladino admits…
Like chardonnay, merlot is a wine that is simultaneously subjected to derision and gushing plaudits. While the masses lap it up, those with discriminating noses and fat wallets sneer at the stuff, even as they shell out thousands of dollars to prominently stuff examples from Pomerol or Saint-Emilion into their…
Chef Gilbert Garza, who’s been holed up in his tiny restaurant Suze for the past couple of years, hasn’t been making much noise. He is now, though, because his kitchen is crowded. “Garreth Dickey has been cooking in my kitchen for the past three weeks,” he says, referring to the…
My first taste of North Texas was a nibble of Arlington. I was staying in a tract home in a neighborhood with far too many tricycles and souped-up Hyundais. I’m not sure if this was the cause, but I soon developed a potent thirst for wine. In Arlington, I soon…
