One good thing about The Ranch House is that if it weren’t for Interstate 30 just a few yards away and Lake Ray Hubbard (which is really just a gully with big hips) nearby, you’d think you really were on a ranch. And I’m not necessarily talking about the décor,…
When we get hold of a good word, we like to run it into the ground. Especially when it makes us appear smarter than our associate degree in kitchen physics would imply. But not everybody feels this way, especially longtime Dallas chef Avner Samuel, who is now at Bistro A…
Ten minutes since arrival. Chips. We are swimming in chips. Two large baskets. And it’s taken 10 minutes to get these. They are crisp, well salted, and without that pubescent facial sheen that makes you feel as though you’re about to eat scraps of Southwestern-style no-wax flooring. Each basket is…
He created the defunct Italian restaurant chain Sfuzzi. He and Phil Romano founded Nick & Sam’s, though now he’s divorced from the project. Today, Patrick Colombo is in the predictable swamp of construction delays with his pair of projects slated for the upcoming West Village project at Lemmon and McKinney…
Whit Meyers says the last thing he wanted was a shiny new penny, and he didn’t get it. Jeroboam, the new dining spot he and his partners in the Entertainment Collaborative developed in the Kirby Building, is a little clumsy, a bold portrayal of frays. Yet this is perhaps the…
After sitting vacant since February with little more than a flock of non-rent-paying origami birds hanging from the ceiling to keep it occupied, the space that once housed Anzu, that hip, cutting-edge (at the time) Japanese/Pacific Rim exploit that shuttered after a bankruptcy filing, has been taken over. The prime…
I’m assuming the thing that is so thrilling about opening a Mongolian grill is that it’s dirt cheap to operate and has fat margins. There’s a specified roster of ingredients to stock and prep, labor is limited to drink-fetchers, a busboy, and a spatula swashbuckler who hovers over a griddle…
Frankie’s Sports Bar and Grill is a typical picture-tube-studded suds dispenser with a pool table, a smattering of video games, a few gruff bartenders, and a rec-room-like atmosphere with a sunken dining area. What isn’t so typical about this sports bar is that it has valet service (which is just…
The interesting thing about Baja California Grill is that it was never meant to be named after that tendril of Mexican desert jutting out of the end of California. It was supposed to be called Hotel California Grill. But this got the panties of the band The Eagles in an…
The restaurant’s press kit says that when you discover Jimmy Lu’s, there’s no turning back. Apparently, that’s not exactly true. Jimmy Lu’s Chairman and CEO Chris Harrison has sold out of the roughly 4-month-old North Dallas restaurant serving Asian collision cuisine, leaving the reins in President Jimmy Lu’s hands. Harrison…
What’s most surprising about Thai Tango is not the food, or the décor, or how snazzy the logo looks in lights illuminating its own little corner of a strip mall still under construction. It’s how far the place is from Dallas. Compost heaps and dung berms aside, when I think…
We guess there’s more than one way to get burned in the restaurant business–even if you’re a nameplate that’s been floating around the Dallas digestive tract since 1948. But somehow, this one just seems a bit more, how shall we say, tear-provoking than the typical scorch, even for our cynical…
Lombardi Mare, Alberto Lombardi’s seafood extravaganza, has had a shift in the head. Executive chef Tony Knight has departed, or is departing, or might not completely depart, or something. “I’m just looking for other avenues, going a different route,” he says. Knight adds he’s been doing some consulting for Lombardi…
A piece inserted into the trifold menu at The Prison in McKinney says that the circa-1880, three-story building was designed by architect F.E. Ruffini, crafter of numerous late 19th century public buildings in Texas. The blurb describes the Collin County prison as a “high Victorian Italianate structure with bracketed cornices…
Though he won’t reveal–on the record at least–the reasons for the fracture, Peter Tarantino has severed his ties with Anthony Bermea’s Caribbean Red, where Tarantino was general manager, after just a few weeks. “I did my job. We did our stunt. And now I’m gone,” he says with uncharacteristic succinctness…
Noodles are invading Dallas. Finally. Sort of. Since Liberty opened a couple of years ago, those in the know were expecting noodle houses–spots plying hybrid noodle dishes from all over Asia–to limply blanket the city with their tasty, cheap, and allegedly healthy culinary fibers. It didn’t happen. Perhaps it’s because…
The rumors aren’t true, she says. There is no impending Rooster ruckus. Rooster owners Todd and Amanda Tracy have not put their roughly 4-year-old restaurant on the block, which for a Rooster is a very serious matter. Instead, Amanda Tracy says they’re just a week or so shy of breaking…
t’s hard to know what to make of Jimmy Lu’s, so shrouded are its subtleties, so disguised are its flavors. Maybe disguised isn’t the right word, but I’m at a loss. I consulted the press kit, a stylish collection of tightly focused propaganda slipped into the sleeves of a glossy…
Nightlife whiz Richard Fiaschetti says he distorted the spelling of his new restaurant and bar moniker because he didn’t like the way the correct spelling looked on paper. But he likes how the logo looks painted on the dining room windows. Kaoss Restaurant and Bar at Main and Murray is…
It’s like a corral or a Ponderosa steakhouse. At Village Grill, you walk through the door and are immediately channeled down a walkway, like cattle, toward the ordering counter. Behind the counter is a large poster of the menu. There’s also a little decorative collage of wagon wheels and hay…
It seems like the departure rumors have been around longer than she has. But after more than four accolade-studded years as executive chef and general manager at Laurels atop the Westin Park Central, Daniel Custer is pulling out of Dallas. She had always planned on leaving here, she says, because…
Thai Bistro’s maxim is “a true dining experience”; at least that’s what’s italicized on the front of the menu. I’m not sure what a true dining experience is, or even a false one. Perhaps the latter would include wax fruit, Velveeta, and veggie venison served in a karaoke bistro on…
