Video: Wine-Bottling on Wheels

More photos in our slideshow here.Dale Rassett is a unique kind of trucker, crisscrossing the Southern U.S. with his mobile wine bottling operation in tow. Hoist up the back trailer door, load the empty wine bottles onto the conveyor belt, and in a minute or two they’ll come back out…

Chewing the Fat: A Concept Too Far

Who doesn’t love a good theme restaurant? Maybe it’s just the clever new names–rainforest burgers and such–for geezerly menu items, but you can’t deny those little extras. From a giant race car above the bar to the chance to sit next to one of Madonna’s sweat-stained concert outfits, concepts often…

Short Orders: Taverna

Taverna3210 Armstrong Ave.214-520-9933You can imagine Europe from a table inside Taverna, especially on a dim and sputtering March evening. The drafty windows, the clicking of rain, the homey clutter–it’s like you’ve drifted somehow into an old world cafe…until Uptown boy walks in.He saw fit to cradle designer sunglasses above the…

Girl Drink Drunk: ANTM Edition

In the quest for girl drink knowledge, I looked, this time, to my past–to the bottles that I remembered (from high school, mind you) containing a deceptively refreshing alternative to yucky, stinky boys’ beer.Ladies, remember the dawn of Sprite-like malt beverages? Yeah, well so do I. Before I matured on to…

Appetite For Instruction: Kathleen’s Meatloaf

Kathleen Ellington of Kathleen’s Sky Diner After 21 years in the restaurant business, Kathleen Ellington can spot a trend. The energetic redhead behind Kathleen’s Sky Diner knows what’s coming, what’s going and what’s here to stay…at least for a little while. That’s why she and her husband Robert overhauled their…

Green Grow The Gas Pumps

Sure, we’re feeling a little green. St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, and we have some celebrating to do. But we’re also feeling green in a much more environmentally-friendly way, too.Although there’s plenty of organic material left behind after the Greenville Avenue parade…But that’s not what we’re talking…

10 Questions: Kendra Harrell

How cool would it be to peddle beer? To sample it as part of your job?Well, Harrell is responsible for Saint Arnold’s, at least in this part of Texas. She holds tastings for lucky bar patrons, trots out seasonal brews for experts and pub owners and such. It’s the life…

Food For Thought 3.12.09

“The good news for the restaurant industry is that consumers typically get hungry about every four to five hours, generally three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.” (Bob Derrington, securities analyst with Morgan Keegan & Co., on the ability of restaurants to weather nasty little…

Marlo’s House is a Dutch Treat

You just gotta go. This little place wedged into a Garland strip alongside dollar outlets and shabby marts is worth the drive from wherever, if only for the novelty. It’s not often you find rural Pennsylvania finery replicated so perfectly, right down to the mismatched chairs, whitewashed latticework and cutesy…

Galilee Grill Delivers Buffet-Line Salvation

Galilee Grill TV count: 0 Kubbi I ate count: 32 Super buffets can be dangerous. They can be old-people-ridden. They can have room-temperature sushi next to room-temperature marshmallow barf Jell-O. They can include boobie dancers, sweat-panty lap dances and all-you-can-eat herpes. Or they can be so awesome that they make…

Pairing Off: Smoked Oysters And Anchovies Packed In Oil

Who eats these things anymore? Hell, you can hardly find anchovies on a Caesar salad. And tins of smoked oysters seemed passe decades ago.But someone must appreciate the metallic, acrid mush of the latter and hairy blast of salt that characterize the preserved fish–although likely with a few brewskis…while sitting…

On The Range: Tamales

Pig’s head tamales?Well, yes. Robb Walsh notes in his Tex-Mex cookbook that traditional emporiums use pig’s heads as their base meat when making their husky creations. The head is boiled until the meat and lard cook away, then the broth is used to moisten the masa harina (corn meal infused…

East Or West, It’s Still The Southern Hemisphere

The food at Lumi Empanada & Dumpling Kitchen, a newly-opened Vietnamese-Brazilian restaurant on McKinney Avenue in Uptown, is a sharp contrast to its surroundings.The restaurant looks and feels like an art gallery. But what’s really on display is a hot, innovative fusion menu, with finger foods, soups and salads, specialty…

10 Questions: Rip Esselstyn

He’s a former professional triathlete and current Austin firefighter. But Esselstyn is also the author of a vegan cookbook. The Engine 2 DietBut he doesn’t call it vegan. He’s eating “plant strong”–and has been for more than a decade. Then, when a fellow firefighter found out his cholesterol was dangerously…

Food For Thought 3.11.09

“The taste buds of a ‘master of coffee’ are as important as the vocal chords of a singer or the legs of a top model, and this is one of the biggest single insurance policies taken out for one person. It shows how valuable Gennaro’s tongue is to the Costa…

Chewing the Fat: Gettin’ Friskie(s)

When you’re pouring out Fluffy’s daily ration of Meow Mix, have you ever been tempted to try a bite? If the fancy does strike you, you’ll be happy to know that Popular Science declares cat food safe for human consumption, though not exactly the basis for a nutritious diet. The…

Dude Food: Burger House

Burger House 6248 East Mockingbird Lane214-828-2732Dude Factor: 8, or Seth Green, on a scale of 1 (Dustin Diamond) to 10 (Seann William Scott) Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”;} I recently…

From Chili To Salami

Mandola’s Market sounds like the lovechild of Jimmy’s Food Store and Eatzi’s. But it really shares in the heritage of Carraba’s and Chili’s Bar & Grill. In other words, it has a great pedigree and powerful potential…although we’ll have to wait until later this year for it to arrive in…

10 Questions: Brandon Durrett

The all-around athlete has sorta gone by the wayside. But in the restaurant industry, you still find those who work both the bar and the dining room.At Fuse, Durrett handles bartending duties some nights, works as a waiter on others. And on occasion he must run back and forth between…

Food For Thought 3.10.09

“It’s a nice effort that looks good on its face. But it’s fluff when it comes to the real need for information on the potential down sides of alcohol consumption.” (George A. Hacker of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, commenting on a certain vodka brand’s new “enjoy…

Short Orders: Cape Buffalo

Cape Buffalo17727 Addison Rd.972-381-9796Don’t order the tuna. Most people know better than to stretch the limits of certain kitchens, anyway. And it’s natural to make a few assumptions about this place.The name and facade scream “sports bar,” so you expect a mundane burger-and-fries menu and a lot of beer. Signs…

The Face Of Anonymity

Few issues trouble those outside the professional food writing industry as much as anonymity–or the lack thereof.Critics themselves have long ago exhausted the topic, although it still comes up in our conversations from time to time. Some hope against the odds for complete anonymity. Others, including at least one national…