I’m not much of a Ghostbar type, but I recently visited the club at the W Hotel for a farewell party for one of our writers here at the Observer. It was a Thursday night, and we arrived at 10 p.m. (pretty early by club standards) and the bar was…
We’ve been down this road to Crazyville before. Jim Schutze wanted to nuke it. That made Scott Reitz mad. At first. But then he came around too. Now, this fine morning the Dallas Farmers Market Stakeholders Association posted this to their Facebook page: “Question: How close is too close for…
Searching for photos of amazing ballpark food is like a self-inflicted wound. At the end of it all, I’m overwhelmed with the pain I’ve caused myself. Thanks to everyone’s inclination to take pictures of food they eat, here’s an ode to great ballpark food. (With one caveat: no hotdogs. That’s…
To prepare for this fall’s Best of Dallas® 2012 issue, we’re counting down (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes. If there’s a dish you think we need to try, leave it in the comments, or email me. All Good Cafe’s Chicken-Fried Steak made last year’s 100 Favorites list,…
Deep Ellum Brewing Company announced it has shipped a couple of kegs to Massachusetts. This is the first time the brewery has offered its beer outside of Texas, so I called their sales ninja Tait Lifto to find out why they’d set up their next accounts so far away. “It’s…
Bliss Raw Cafe, the raw, vegan restaurant in University Park, closed late last week. Paula Sepulvado announced the space will soon be occupied by Be Raw Food, a similar concept run with her partner John Vandelicht. Sepulvado had been eating at the restaurant for the past year and used the…
Back in March, Phoenix-based Sprouts Farmers Markets announced the purchase of Sunflower Farmers Markets. They officially closed on the deal about a month ago and now Sprouts-labeled products are beginning to trickle onto the shelves of the Sunflower at 1800 N. Henderson Ave. Eventually all the Sunflower stores will be…
A reader sent me the website last week. There’s a new pizza in Dallas and it comes in a cone. An Epic Cone. You can buy one inside Excuses Cafe, which used to be One Bar before a round of special-use permits pushed the owners to reclassify their business as…
To prepare for this fall’s Best of Dallas® 2012 issue, we’re counting down (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes. If there’s a dish you think we need to try, leave it in the comments, or email me. You might want to bring a fan. While a portion of…
Anglophiles rejoice — Uptown will soon be home to another den of fish and chips and football. (And by football, we mean soccer.) Owners Larry Martin and Edgar Carlson, who are also behind the chain Sherlock’s Baker Street Pub, will open the British Beverage Co. in the Quadrangle at 2800…
Green Grocer, a Chicago-based specialty-grocer, announced today it’s opening a second location (and first outside of Chicago) at 3614 Greenville Ave. The 4,000-square-foot retail space is five blocks south of Mockingbird Lane across from Café Izmir. Green Grocer is a one-stop specialty market for everyday grocery goods and locally produced,…
If you wanna talk cocktails in Fort Worth, you’re likely speaking of one person and one person only: Brad Hensarling. The thirtysomething behind dive bar The Chat Room and creative cocktail den The Usual has almost single-handedly shaped the Cowtown craft drink scene, and today he expands his empire with…
This week I reviewed Dalat, a new Pho place on Fitzhugh Avenue that stays open late and takes a whimsical approach to Vietnamese cooking. I also took a closer look at Gandolfo’s, the deli truck that hails from NYC. Elsewhere on CoA we noted the opening of Ten Bells Tavern,…
Every once in a while someone mistakes Scott for a food expert and risks ruining dinner by trusting him to answer to a burning question. Got a question about food or restaurants? Send it via Twitter @scottreitz, Facebook @ Cityofate or in the comments. I’m from Charleston, and I’m going…
Camera count: 1 million Someone yelling “egg roll” in the kitchen count: 53 Bistro B (Authentic Asian Cuisine) is all kinds of awesome. It’s delicious awesome. It’s cheap awesome. It’s what-the-fuck awesome. It’s scary awesome. It’s “Aww, dammit, this Thai iced tea has those chewy brown gelatin bubbles in it…
Cheryl Hurt has only been the manager at The Mecca for three years, but she talks like she’s been with the restaurant for all 74 of them. I called her when a reader emailed to tell me the restaurant was making a move form its spot on Harry Hines to…
The Slow Food Dallas Leadership council is hosting an inaugural pop-up dinner at 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Chef Claudine Martyn, a long time Slow Food member and regional governor for Texas and Oklahoma is at the helm and is using a bevy of local ingredients for dinner. The menu includes Spicer’s…
While Dallas is trying in earnest to advance in the craft beer movement, both in terms of brewers and drinkers, it just can’t compete with the craft church movement. An infographic created by FloatingSheep.org (and reported by TheDailyMeal.com) compared usage of the words “beer” and “church” on Twitter and mapped…
The words “Desi-style pizza” beckoned me with a neon glow from the front window of India Chaat Café, a small, brightly lit restaurant tucked into a strip mall at Preston and Frankford. I walked in expecting Americanized, watered-down food, or maybe the Bollywood version of Pizza Hut, and was surprised…
To prepare for this fall’s Best of Dallas® 2012 issue, we’re counting down (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes. If there’s a dish you think we need to try, leave it in the comments, or email me. I had my first patty melt ever at Katy Trail Ice…
Watching Dalat, the subject of this week’s review, evolve over the past few months has been a lot of fun. I dropped in for my first visit just before they opened, mostly because I wanted to see what owner Khahn Nguyen had done with the old RedFork space, and also…
Recently we sat down with Jon Alexis, owner of TJ’s Seafood Market at 11661 Preston Road, to discuss the seafood business, which turns out is pretty easy — he’s passionate about his business and doesn’t need much prodding when it comes to chatting about it. He recently singed a 10-year…
