A week or so before the end of the year, I dropped by Nonna to soothe my soul with some pasta and pork fat, two ingredients that have been known to bring people together in ways that even the pope cannot. I had every intention of enjoying them together in…
Traveling gives you some perspective, especially when you deeply invest yourself in one city’s food scene. But I sometimes wonder if the excitement you experience while exploring a new destination has a way of coloring what you eat. Every blister on a pizza crust seems heightened, eggs gush with golden…
The new Chipotle coming to the corner of Abrams Road and Richmond Avenue pushed its tentative December opening date to January 24. If you’ve been craving “Responsibly Raised®” meat with black beans, mild salsa, cheese, guacamole and lettuce wrapped in a tortilla large enough to swaddle a kitten, you’ll have…
We are living in a city dangling on the precipice of a culinary revolution. I’m sure of it. In the past year I’ve dined all over Dallas and watched chefs take up knives, hoping to carve out a little more of their customers’ discretionary income. On the one side you…
Everything looks settled in at Oishii. The Oak Lawn restaurant had been closed for nearly a year after a fire damaged the dining room and neighboring Sal’s pizza. But while a year-long closure is surely tough on a business, the neighborhood favorite pan-Asian spot looks all the better for it,…
Christmas is getting close, which means you should be finalizing your plans for Christmas Day dining. Many of you still cook at home, frittering away over some roast that you’ll likely mess up, but you should ditch the goose, forget the crown roast of pork and let someone else do…
The Uptown location of Primo’s Tex-Mex closed permanently Wednesday, according to manager Brandon Kundak. Kundak refused to comment on the reason for the closure, instead thanking his customers for their 20 years of loyalty. Owner Frank Linero was unavailable for comment, but his second Primo’s location, which opened in Garland…
Trinity Groves is blowing up. The announcement that AmberJax will open this Saturday is the third piece of news to come out the the restaurant incubator this week. Chino Chinatown recently announced a December 30 opening and Kitchen LTO released details about the contest for the participants in their next…
In Happy Endings, food critic Scott Reitz travels part of the globe that says “Dallas” in search of great desserts and great places to eat them. This is the second in an occasional series. If you’re dining on Greenville Avenue and you’ve got a discerning palate for sweets, there’s a…
Fancy a Moscow Mule? The drink that may leave you with a headache in the morning has been the source of far more discomfort for bar owners everywhere. The Wall Street Journal published an article earlier this week about the rampant disappearance of the copper mugs commonly used to serve…
If you’re a fan of Sriracha, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the trouble surrounding the California plant that produces the sauce. For those of you who have had your head in a bowl of pho the past few weeks, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered a plant that makes…
Service goes a long way in the restaurant business. A waiter’s friendly demeanor can convince a small party to order two desserts instead of one, or stay for one last drink instead of slipping out the door for a nightcap. Service is what makes a customer come back to a…
We all knew this day would come. At the end of January, Kitchen LTO chef Norman Grimm will have braised his last shank, seared his last scallop and theatrically melted his last chocolate OMG. Grimm’s name will be striped from the marquee, and a new menu and dining concept will…
Have you been to Trinity Groves lately? It’s pretty amazing how many restaurants have opened in just a short period of time. Most of the newest restaurants are all lined up in the building north of Singleton Avenue, and each has a neon sign glowing above the front door. It’s…
Back in November we let you know that Mattito’s, the Tex-Mex restaurant on Routh Street in Uptown, was on the move. Hopefully you’ve quit driving around in circles wondering where they went. The new location opened at the beginning of December, and if business earlier this week was any indication,…
Remember this choriqueso from El Tizoncito? The picture, taken in 2011, was so bad it gave me the idea to look at all of my photos from that year in a hunt for the worst, and it turned out that the heap of cheese and sausage one commenter likened to…
I think the change sneaked up on me a bit, the same way a Saint Bernard puppy puts on five pounds every time you take your eyes off it. Think about how much the local beer scene has changed over just the last two years in Dallas. The amount of…
If you spent some time at any of a few area barbecue restaurants this weekend, you might have bumped into Texas Barbecue Guru Daniel Vaughn and TV Person Andrew Zimmern as they palled around eating Texas barbecue. Zimmern was in town filming for an episode of Bizzare Foods America, which…
It was cute when it started. Looking for a way to differentiate their table settings, restaurateurs began replacing traditional linen dinner napkins with dressy cotton dishtowels. There had already been a gradual relaxing of rigid dining protocols as a result of the recent recession, and laid-back dishtowels were a logical…
The sign has been taunting from the shopping center on Live Oak for some time. My Family Pizza, the small restaurant chain formerly known as Pizza By Marco, has been working on a new location in East Dallas. They opened for business yesterday. This location is more of a take-out…
I’ve been driving past El Come Taco’s plastic banner for months now, wondering when they were going to open. The last time I peeked in the window, in mid-October, the place was still full of loose wires and construction dust. It looked like the had a long way to go…
Your poor liver. If the slew of holiday parties you’ve been guilted into attending have you desperately needing a night off, you should avert your eyes, close this window or otherwise prevent yourself from reading one more line in this post. This Sunday, bartenders from Dallas and Fort Worth bars…
