Kent’s count Former daní foods chef Kent Rathbun finally has an opening date for Abacus, his new McKinney Avenue restaurant. Sort of. “It would be reckless to give an exact date,” he says. “But I’m standing on carpet right now.” He hesitatingly adds that Dallas should be able to sample…
A far cry Texan boasting to the contrary, Texas wines are a ways from world-class status. In fact, despite a respectable showing from a few wines at the Lone Star Wine Competition in Grapevine last week, some were downright hard to swallow, plagued with striking flaws such as badly browning…
If there’s anything Texans like to do it’s revel in their history, jubilate in their provincialism, bask in their brashness. In short, they like to brag. “We wanted a name that sounded epic,” says Brinker International restaurants alumnus Tye Phelps when asked why he named his new restaurant Love &…
It’s amusing to ponder, but a collection of cork dorks have wrapped themselves in the Constitution and may cause the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Texas state law. This past spring, a troika of Houston wine aficionados, including former state rep. Roland R. Pennington, filed suit against state…
When I first told a friend over the phone I was hitting an Irish pub called Slattery Rand’s, she came unglued. “Why the hell would anyone name a restaurant that?” she asked. “That’s disgusting.” It’s not so much a restaurant as it is a pub, I said. “So what?” she…
There was a mustachioed man in shorts, wearing thick plastic glasses and sitting on a chair propped against the back wall. On the table in front of him, two TV remotes were parked next to a phone book. The remotes worked a large television tucked behind the counter. The screen…
Dragonfly wash-out All the ingredients were there for a really sudsy soap opera: greed, sex, back-stabbing, courtroom battles. But now it appears the frothy Dragonfly saga is coming to a close, or at least changing course. Charlott Norman, the limited partner who wrested control of the shuttered nightclub from general…
It twirls around once every 55 minutes, like clockwork. And you can time your meal and thus the quality of service to its creeping revolutionary swirl. When we put in our order at Antares high atop Reunion Tower, we were staring deep into Dallas’ downtown core. It wasn’t until we…
Scott Ginsburg leans forward in the booth and tears a piece from the crisp white butcher paper covering the table. He has left his wallet in the car, he explains to the waiter, so he asks whether it’s OK if he just writes out his American Express card number to…
Years ago, in faster times, my friends and I frequented a Thai restaurant on Chicago’s North Side, a place I’ll never forget, though I can’t seem to remember the name. But the decor and ambience stick in my mind. Seat backs loosely attached to the chrome chair frames were gouged,…
Thai Garden has a one strike against it from the outset: It doesn’t have a liquor license. That makes it difficult to enjoy some dishes to their fullest. It makes others hard to swallow. Take the lunch buffet ($6.50), for instance, which mingles Chinese and Thai fare. Under normal circumstances,…
Deep tapas Michael Costa and Dean McSherry of DMC Hospitality just snapped up 20 percent of Ketama, the tapas and flamenco bar in Deep Ellum. And they didn’t waste any time in stirring things up. Not that the place was in dire straits. It just needed some tweaks on a…
The asphalt stretch from Dallas to Fort Worth is long and hard. Also brutal, at least judging by the wreckage littering the highway recently. Angled on the shoulder was an old Chevy truck with a tall makeshift cargo box fashioned out of lumber scraps. It’s right front wheel was missing,…
What is it with all this term-twisting of x’s in Mexican-inspired cuisine. I mean there’s “Mex-Tex” and “Mex-Mex” and now, Cabo restaurant is billing itself as the “original ‘Mix-Mex.'” I called Cabo’s parent, BFX Hospitality Group, and asked for some clarification. But all it got me was a bout of…
Galloping Garza “I’m just floppin’ around, man,” says chef Gilbert Garza. First he flipped from the executive chef position at the badly listing Toscana. Then he hooked up with Sea-Worthy Restaurants (Rockfish Seafood Grill) for a potential equity stake in Mother Pearl’s Seafood House on Lemmon Avenue and a corporate…
Black hole Brian Black almost stepped in it. It turns out that one of the locations the former Mi Piaci operating partner was interested in developing was Antonovich’s Tuscan Steak House, the Plano restaurant that had the lifecycle of a mayfly. “What a mess,” Black says. “Pretty soon the bill…
I pulled the first fortune from a cookie before any food arrived. A little girl found the plastic-wrapped thing in a large, empty wooden planter sitting on a brick partition. I opened it and broke the cookie to get the slip of paper. “It is more important to do your…
For many non-Asians, there’s little reason to plumb the tangle of strip stores and businesses brooding on Royal Lane as it threads past Harry Hines Boulevard and butts up against Stemmons Freeway. It’s a starkly asphalted stretch with convenience stores, professional offices, importers, and wholesale businesses. And restaurants. This piece…
Fish story It seems former Fish restaurant chef and partner Chris Svalesen likes to help those afflicted with a fishing Jones anyway he can. Svalesen says his new restaurant, dubbed Copper River, will be only the third restaurant in the U.S. (the others are in Seattle and Alaska) to serve…
Good move. About a month ago, Alfredo Mirza, owner of a duo of clumsily monikered venues dubbed Alfredo’s Italian Seafood Restaurant and Alfredo’s II, closed the latter, merged it into the former, and renamed his restaurant Alfredo’s. “We just centralized into one,” says Mirza. The move was logical, he insists…
Torrefazione Italia, located just in front of the pricey kitchen-accessory haunt Sur La Table, is a merchandise mart for the swanky caffeinated set. Café trinkets are everywhere — packaged, priced, and primped for purchase. Gift sets clutter the café’s counter surfaces and nooks. Coffee-sampling kits clog the checkout counter. A…
It’s easy to take potshots at corporate restaurants, those cookie-cutter cafés, brasseries, and bistros with homogeneous faux European menus devised by pencil pushers who scoot around in leased BMWs. They’re slick, focus-group hatchlings with recipes and ingredients devised and taste-tested on spread sheets. “It’s the independents who pump the creative…
