When Citizen opened roughly four years ago, its mix of neo-Asian fusion with a traditional sushi bar threw off so much heat that it was nearly impossible to get near it on a weekend night. The bar area, with banks of white televisions (now converted to plasma screens) bolted onto…
Dallas restaurant legend Gene Street, chairman of Consolidated Restaurant Operations, confirms he’s set to gobble the servings of another Dallas magnate: Scott Ginsburg. According to Street, Consolidated is close to sewing up a deal to pick up Ginsburg’s recently shuttered Bamboo Bamboo on the corner of Keller Springs and the…
Tracy Miller and Alice Cottrell believe their restaurant is haunted. They’ve heard stories from construction workers, toiling well into the wee hours, telling of eerie sounds humming through the spaces in the historic Boyd Hotel where their restaurant took shape after the pair operated a catering company for six years…
Marie Grove is an unlikely candidate to rule a corner of Dallas nightlife. She conducts day-to-day business in flip-flops and jeans; her long blond locks unravel in irascible strands. She never raises her voice, even when the pressure of an August 2 restaurant opening seems unbearable. Instead of barking contractors…
Some of us have peculiar habits. Some of us suffer under peculiar rules. Abstaining from wine with dinner is a peculiar habit. Dry is a peculiar rule. This was brought home to me on a recent visit to Coppell when I stepped into Siam Thai Cuisine, a tiny strip mall…
It covers some 22,745 acres, but its maximum depth is just 40 feet. Normal water clarity is murky, even turbid. Yet Lake Ray Hubbard is regarded as a swell recreational depot with lots of good fishing (bass, catfish, crappie) and sailing, though there are no camping areas, beaches or swimming…
Joseph Gutierriz’s inauguration into the kitchen was spiritual. And short. At age 5, he was shipped off to seminary where he learned to cook for monks. “In Spain, in Catholic families, when you have a son that is a priest, you have a safe gate to heaven,” he says. In…
It’s always an iffy proposition to wander into a dining room as desolate as a godforsaken rock formation. Sure, it could be an undiscovered sliver of raw sublimity, a hidden bit of dazzle. But it could also be a puff of culinary stench of such potency that it keeps diners…
Perhaps the greatest piece of wisdom Voltaire never said was uttered by Confucius: “I have never seen one who loves virtue as much as he loves sex.” Which has absolutely nothing to do with restaurateuring unless you sub virtue with great food and sex with money. Bamboo Bamboo, a casual…
Monica’s Aca Y Alla can be called a lot of things. But hell? Yet that’s how owner Monica Greene describes it, as she attempts to compare the new soundproof room she plans to open in August in a former furniture store next to the restaurant. She calls the room Raziel,…
Our range guide was a veteran of the first Gulf War, so it wasn’t hard to steer the conversation to the lingering mysteries of the sequel. Saddam? “Dead,” he said tersely. WMD’s? “Buried deep in the desert,” came his reply. The paltry resistance of the vaunted Republican Guard? Only a…
At the heart of Smith & Wollensky is this slogan: “A steak house to end all arguments.” This comes clipped from a headline over a 1997 New York Times S&W steak house review by critic Ruth Reichl. The piece centered on an annual argument in her family over three New…
It wasn’t long ago that chef Tim Byres was tugged from New York City into Dallas to fiddle with noodles at Tom Tom Noodle House, the casual West Village Asian restaurant developed by Triple R Group. But Byres, who also crafted the menu for Triple R’s Nikita, wasn’t able to…
Right now, it’s a ghost town. Not one born of death and abandonment, but of birth and anticipated growth. There are a few things: a children’s store, an Asian fusion restaurant called Café Beignet and a toy store. But more is on the way. Much more. Above the storefronts rest…
It takes a peculiar form of eccentricity to staple a gelato hut, a Hawaiian fast-causal joint and a nightclub into one concept, but that’s what Dallas entrepreneur Ben Dai did. By mid-July, Dai and general manager Lon Goodwin will be operating a triplicate joined at the hip in Mockingbird Station:…
He pulls it out from a manila folder stuffed with other old photographs. “This is me,” says sushi evangelist Scott Melton, pointing to one of three boys in short-sleeved white shirts with slivers of black ties slicing across their surfaces. “It’s kind of Lee Harvey Oswaldish, isn’t it?” It was…
Indian cuisine is experiencing a mini-boom of sorts, what with the recent openings of Clay Pit Grill & Curry House in Addison and Dawat in Richardson. Now Saffron House, another Addison entrant, stuffed with “the finest replicas of Indian art,” makes it a trio. At Saffron House, “master chefs…transform meals…
There are three of them in Dallas. Thai is one. Indian is another. And Italian. OK, there’s Chinese, but that’s an easy one to decipher: no Chinatown. The former are three types of cuisine that, with rare exceptions, stumble in Dallas. No matter who inspires the food or where they’re…
He has only been working behind the bar since last New Year’s Eve, so he can’t really size up the extent of the dining room hemorrhage, he says. “I’ve never really seen it busy,” he deadpans as the television monitors behind him play out the Texas drama Giant. It’s Saturday…
The first set arrived at our table riddled with little pockets of grease. Pools, really, shimmering gold, some shallow, some preposterously deep. Pappadam is like horribly scarred skin with creases and sharp ripples and craggy divots carved from an adolescent scourge. These flat, fried lentil flour discs from Southern India…
The Web site claims his knack for choosing an appropriate dinner wine was one of his responsibilities as “a board member for a worldwide corporation.” And we wonder why the Enron and Tyco debacles snuck under the board of directors’ schnozzles. The site goes on to explain that Eddie Merlot’s…
It’s rare that you see buffet spreads this enormous outside of places where slot bells provide the background music. But Osaka Steak & Grill’s all-you-can-eat Japanese terminal is big–aircraft carrier big. Get in there early before the dinner rush reaches its fever point, and you’ll discover a din of world…
