So the kid wrecked his car. First son, first wreck–a noteworthy day, a family milestone, an occasion that calls for (after calling for the wrecker, the body shop, the insurance company, the ex-husband, and biological father) comfort food. It’s one of those times when it’s very difficult being the modern…

Cafe 450 has had a long life measured in restaurant years; the restaurant is a bit of vestigial bohemianism dating from the days when Lower Greenville was to Dallas what Deep Ellum is now. Basically a concrete box hung with bad art and populated with young, black-clad young waitresses and…

I’m a member of the marginal luck club. That is, luck shows itself in my life so mysteriously and obscurely–you might say, in fact, so obliquely–that it may not be discernible as good fortune to those to whom more obvious blessings are distributed by Whoever Dispenses Such Things. I’ve never…

Texans tend to think they own Mexican food, but the truth is, they could learn a thing or two from the Windy City, where the enchilada has gained some real respect. Rick Bayless, chef-owner of the upscale Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago, is one of this country’s primary pepper…

All day, plaza shoppers and shop proprietors had been asking Don Lindsley and Angus MacKay, “What time are you going to open?” All day, 6 o’clock was the answer given, but at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday two weeks ago, Angus quietly unlocked the door and flipped the “open” sign on for…

The dry, sweet fragrance from the sheaves of dried lavender and the long bowl of lavender buds in the entry are your first impression of Lavendou, the charming Provencal bistro that recently opened out north. The owners have gone to considerable trouble to re-create in the restaurant the sights and…

It’s only natural, in a time and a city where our main entertainment is eating, that novelty should be the primary appeal of a restaurant. In any discussion of his business, you’ll hear a local restaurateur complain about the famous “fickleness” of Dallas diners, who are said to be on…

The number of bagel stores in Dallas is mind-boggling. In the past few years, the bagel has burst out of its East Coast boundaries and overrun the restaurant landscape like kudzu. Pizza-flavored bagels, chocolate chip bagels, bagel pizzas, bagel sandwiches, bagel chips–you name it, it has been bageled. There are…

Where do chefs get those baby greens and weird mushrooms? You always assume they have access to sources that the ordinary mortal cook can’t get to, and, funny thing is, you’re mostly right. Because you want half a pound of weird mushrooms, and the pros purchase a case at a…

Monica is a Deep Ellum woman. She lives in Deep Ellum, she works in Deep Ellum, she hangs in Deep Ellum, and when she wants to buy a bottle of wine, some ham and cheese, or a box of tissue, she doesn’t want to drive all the way to McKinney…

Ricky Tillman–another urban pioneer, but on the real frontier in the Bishop neighborhood of Oak Cliff–is working out his neighborhood challenges in another way. He’s closed on Monday evenings, he says, not just because his staff needs the time off, but because that’s the big night at Vitto’s, the pizza…

There are people who will never move to New York because of, for instance, the scarcity of Dr Pepper, a beverage that inspires fanatical loyalty in some people. The plant in Dublin, Texas, is the oldest continuously working bottler of Dr Pepper and true connoisseurs know that Dr Pepper from…

We knew we would be missing the extremely important vice-presidential so-called debates when we decided to have dinner at Big Shots Sports Cafe last week. But we rebelliously chose an evening of probably mediocre food, out, instead of an evening of assuredly bad entertainment, in. Also, we were anxious about…

Last week, City Cafe hosted an event pairing wild mushrooms with Pinot noir–a perfectly natural pairing if you believe the law of the land, since the same cool climate that produces fungus is also encouraging to the Pinot noir grape, the same reasoning that leads us to eat snails with…

One of the drawbacks of eating out professionally is that you necessarily forgo one of the prime delights of restaurant dining–having a home away from your own. The real delight of dining out comes when you’ve eaten at a restaurant often enough to be recognized, welcomed as a regular. When…

Al Dente has been one of the most popular restaurants on Lower Greenville for years, repeatedly named in one people’s poll or another (including ours) as The Best Italian Restaurant. It only proves once again what a dubious prize is popularity. The accolades only raise expectations to unreasonable heights. Al…

Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Jerez, Navarra, and Tias Baixas may not be as familiar as Russian River, but they should be. Spain is one of the great wine-producing countries of the world, but in America it always has been overshadowed by France, California, and Italy. The Great Match, the first…

OK, this is the kind of ridiculous experience you let yourself in for when you have a job like this one. Good Chinese food is rare in Dallas, so we especially wanted to try a new takeout Chinese restaurant that we’d heard was excellent. Uncle Chow has a good pedigree;…

Treebeard’s is a chain out of Houston–not a promising origin for a cafe with a Louisiana bill of fare, but Treebeard’s is a regular destination for downtowners who lunch, and rightly so. Red beans and rice and etouffee are reliable. The gazpacho, every vegetable hand-chopped so the result is like…

I’m scheduled to speak to my fourth-grader’s class next week about what I do for a living. Of course, I’m nervous–you can’t bluff fourth graders. I’m supposed to discuss with the class how to describe a taste, using words besides “awesome,” “gross,” and “bummer.” Yes, I face that problem weekly,…

Life has its rules of thumb (“Never start a sentence with ‘but'”; “Your line at the bank will always be the longest one”). Some rules lose their meaning as the culture changes (“Don’t date a guy with a tattoo,” a rule made before you had to take two tattoo-wearing genders…