If we could somehow bring bickering groups together and help them find common ground, would we end up with a perfect world? The difficulties are enormous. For instance, we asked Andrew Lostetter, a bartender at Sense and single malt Scotch aficionado, his opinion of the typical Dewar’s fan. “You think…
Sushi is a commodity, one with a vigor that shows no signs of dissipating. It has conquered strip malls, fast food and grocery stores. Sushi has come a long way since the days when eating raw fish and crunching the glass bead roe of smelt and flying fish seemed the…
On an October evening, James Winkler works a crowd of some two dozen mostly young, attractive professionals. The group sits in rapt attention as he evangelizes for a substance that is as intimidating and inscrutable as it is coveted: wine. They laugh at his anecdotes, such as the one involving…
There’s a scene in the football-bashing film North Dallas Forty in which a doltish offensive lineman sets out to meet some investors who plan to use his name on a chain of restaurants. Before leaving the clubhouse, he’s confronted by the comparatively brainy Nick Nolte, who christens the place “Joe…
t’s Thursday, October 13. Thank God it’s not Friday, because as luck would have it, we find ourselves in the Richardson Hotel. Richardson has beached itself on hard luck–the victim of popping tech bubbles. Instead of buzz, the Telecom Corridor is a hall of echoes. But help is coming. Accounting…
Mention gin, and people instantly respond. Often it’s with a disrespectful groan. Kenny Daniel, bartender at Primo’s, just shakes his head ruefully when you say the dreaded word. “The worst hangover I ever had was over gin,” he says. “Three days.” A woman by the name of Ashley, whom we…
Food is the new whatever used to occupy the portion of our minds devoted to culture. Unfortunately, that implies a certain amount of the old “wine snob” mentality. Diners flashing authority in culinary matters expect to learn arcane details when scanning menus, and woe to chefs who fail to identify…
When the inaugural Savor Dallas event wrapped up last February, Jim White and co-founder Vicki Briley-White declared the thing successful. After all, some 4,000 people showed up for a two-day bender, along with dozens of local restaurants and hundreds of wineries. Yet glitches occurred: A registration area staffed by volunteers…
Self-styled “foodies” regularly fire off tedious monologues on the evils of processed foods and commercial farming. Personally, we think curbing outbreaks of scurvy is a reasonable payoff for all those crates of tasteless vegetables sitting in grocery bins. In any case, the Burning Question crew is more offended by popular…
Odd to open a restaurant named after a child’s card game. In the past, chef Chris Svalesen has been more succinct. “Fish” was the downtown restaurant that made him famous. He later went obscure, naming his next restaurant after a Fahrenheit measurement: Thirty-Six Degrees, the optimum temperature at which fresh…
It’s Saturday night in Eden, and the gods are angry. We’re sitting inside the small converted ranch house watching a restaurant in the midst of a serious meltdown. The air conditioning unit malfunctions. Butter melts on the plate, and our waitress, already frazzled, wipes damp wilting hair from her glistening…
Once a restaurateur reaches a certain level of success, he or she often branches out. It’s nothing unusual to see a second Monica’s pop up in the ‘burbs or another Mi Cocina open somewhere. Well perhaps Iris owner Susie Priore doesn’t understand the concept of local expansion. She’s teaming with…
Curb appeal is important in this city, or so we’re told. Gotta look good at the valet stand, so upwardly mobile guys lease well-appointed Beemers. Best to sign over a good chunk of credit to bartenders and waitstaff, too. Otherwise dates, colleagues or friends might discover you earn a paltry…
Here’s a prediction: Fuse will last as long as a lit fuse. But it won’t go out with a megaton cherry-bomb pop. It will go out with a pfffft. A dud. Then someone will try to salvage it and change the name to Gasket, or some other thing that can…
Dallas restaurants have plunged deeply into the effort to ease the anguish caused by Katrina. Behold Project Lagniappe (Lagniappe is a Creole expression for an unexpected gift). In large part spearheaded by Whit Meyers of the Entertainment Collaborative (Green Room, Jeroboam) and the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association, Lagniappe consists of…
Each year when we reexamine the people mixing cocktails around the city, a certain, shall we say, insecurity creeps into our minds. Thousands of bartenders work in Dallas and its surrounding ‘burbs and most pour a decent drink. By the time the fifth martini begins severing contact between brain cells…
Things aren’t always what they seem. Take, for example, Main Street Blues Room. At first glance it’s a rustic tin utility building more suited to storing old tractor parts than housing a restaurant. The name itself evokes lurid images of precarious dives, boozehounds slumped at the bar, sultry music and…
Never know when a craving for chicken tajine might strike, but just hang on. Rocky Boustani signed a deal to set up an upscale Moroccan restaurant called Tangerine in the space once occupied by Sipango. Expect mostly authentic cuisine with a few contemporary touches and a couple nods to the…
Investor Steve Hartnett is thinking in the round. And he’s thinking Grapevine. After all, Grapevine is equidistant between Dallas and Fort Worth. It has the Gaylord Texan resort. It’s accessible by steam locomotive (its name is Puffy). That’s why Hartnett, former partner in Consolidated Restaurant Operations (Cool River Café, III…
Just because you’re upscale doesn’t mean you can’t kitsch. Riccardi’s does it, with flair maybe, but it does it. Riccardi’s is tucked in the space that was once the elegantly flashy Mediterraneo, back in the day when the restaurant was going to be the Benz in the FoodStar restaurant group’s…
Some time back in the ’80s, college baseball players began donning “rally caps” late in losing games. Nothing magical, really, just regular ball caps twisted into bizarre shapes. We doubt there’s a statistical correlation between manhandled hats and come-from-behind victories. In fact, deep down most of us know spells designed…
Buzz past Manny’s Uptown Tex-Mex Restaurante during prime time on a Saturday night, and you’ll likely glimpse a chaotic scene. Hungry would-be diners mob the entry waiting for a table. They loiter in clusters on the lawn, bump elbows at the bar and mill about the patio. Sometimes people wait…
