There are some foods that aren’t legally available in Texas due to federal import bans. Haggis from Scotland, for example, is banned because of restriction on importing sheep’s lung. The Kinder Surprise, the Italian-produced chocolate egg filled with toys, has been banned because of the choking hazard that comes from…
Remember Tony G. from the Russian Banya in Carrollton? His sauna is hot enough to turn your brain cells to mush and the dumplings served at his cafe are still unforgettable. It has a lot to do with Tony himself. His thick accent, his brooding personality, and the way he…
Meat Fight 2013 from Voice Media Group on Vimeo. If you prefer your pictures stationary, check out this Meat Fight 2013 slideshow. If you prefer them with too many words, here’s a recap of this year’s event, which raised $50,000 for charity…
Now that Meat Fight and the recaps of Meat Fight are over, all eyes can turn to the grandest of all food-centered holidays, Thanksgiving. Sure, lots of other holidays involve eating, but Thanksgiving is completely about the food. Supposedly there is a little in there about being thankful and glossing…
It’s been a foregone conclusion for months that Pecan Lodge, Dallas’ Mecca of smoked meat, would leave its perch in the downtown Dallas Farmers Market, which has been turned over to private developers apparently unmoved by the Lodge’s cult following. The question, until today, was where the smoke trail would…
Abraham Salum announced a significant change yesterday at his restaurants Salum and Komali. Ian Tate has been named executive chef at both restaurants, replacing Anastacia Quinones, who’s been cooking there since February, 2012. Tate brings experience from his time at Brownstone in Fort Worth as well as Rathbun’s Blue Plate…
With the holidays approaching, the nation is once again sweating with fantasy-football fever, sending the NFL’s popularity further into the stratosphere and office productivity further into the tank. But there are more important things in life than football, or at least one more important thing: Food. Specifically Thanksgiving food, which,…
First, some background info for those who don’t keep up on the finer details of McKinney Avenue restaurant news. Colleen O’Hare and Jeana Johnson of Good 2 Go Taco teamed up Barcadia owners Brooke Humphries and Brianna Larson to create sorta-casual, sorta-refined restaurant on the corner of Monticello and McKinney…
The Western Mexican state Michoacán has been called the country’s sustainable avocado Mecca, praised by celebrity chef Rick Bayless for its production of incredible Hass avocados. It also may be one of the most lawless places in North America. “Michoacán isn’t a problem. It is a nightmare,” George W. Grayson,…
On Tuesday morning, news broke that employees from both Smyth and Cedars Social, two of Dallas’ finer cocktail bars, had staged a walkout, temporarily shuttering both bars. The unnamed employees complained at an unnamed pub, according to the Central Track story, citing creative differences as the reason for their hastened…
Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison and Stevie Ray Vaughan walk into a bar owned by Jesus and they all eat a cheeseburger and drink a Velvet Hammer and laugh about stuff. There isn’t really a punchline here because this actually happened in Denton last night. Well, sort of. The LSA Burger…
The first time I encountered the phenomenon, I was sitting at the bar at Sheba’s Ethiopian Kitchen, my fingers pinching a small portion of raw beef from the bread-lined plate in front of me. Two men were at the end of the bar, also eating with their hands but from…
We all spend time hunting down the best in life, but as a food critic I’m inordinately slammed with requests for superlative restaurants. If I’m out in the world, at the bar or the grocery store or a really long stoplight, and someone finds out that I eat and write…
Some rooster. Michael Wyatt’s coffee roasting studio has been toasting beans for weeks each morning in South Dallas without making a sound. Meanwhile, what sounds like an old and soon-to-be-dead rooster across the street from my apartment manages something that sounds like cock-a-doodle-cat-mating every single morning. Full City Rooster, though,…
It’s been more than a year since schools in California, Illinois and New Mexico banned the sale of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos on campus, but the pungent Plano-made snack food is still the source of trouble for kids. New evidence suggests that eating several bags of the stuff can cause, along…
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 first in an occasional series. By definition, dessert offers a conclusion. Growing up, if we wanted dessert at home, we’d first…
For months, things had been pretty tired at Trinity Groves. With only Babb Bros. BBQ and a hot dog restaurant opening since the project began, the options at Dallas’ restaurant incubator felt a little one dimensional. Then Kitchen LTO opened, offering a rotating concept that changes every four months, and…
For a city that’s quick to tear down most any building, Dallas has embraced its history with gusto. Not that it’s possible to pretend that the Kennedy assassination never happened, but across the city people are enthusiastically touting their history and connections to event. Really, it’s a surprise we haven’t…
North Texas has had its fair share of brewery openings the past two years, but nary a one that is dedicated strictly to Irish beers. Shannon Carter is set to change that. Last month the City of Keller approved Carter’s plans for Shannon Brewing Co., which he hopes to officially…
Some of the best pie in North Texas just got a little bigger. Emporium, the pie-in-the-sky-idea that started out as a pop-up in the Bishop Arts District less than two years ago and quickly won over waistlines throughout the city, just opened its second shop in McKinney over the weekend…
For a couple weeks, all we knew about Miss Chi is that it was coming. The signs of its arrival were all there, specifically an actual sign with the name of the restaurant and a couple posts about it on the Facebook page for Tanoshi Ramen. Since then we’ve been…
See our full slideshow from Sunday’s Meat Fight here. Sometime on Saturday I started prepping my wife for her first Meat Fight, the annual barbecue competition organized by our long-time columnist, Alice Laussade, and her husband, Mike. It’s more meat than you realize, I cautioned. You don’t want to finish…
