It’s disconcerting to stroll into a shabby diner and be confronted by a Soviet military uniform near the kitchen. Disconcerting and, somehow, appetizing. This is how Taste of Europe whets. After all, there’s little in the scope of human history more fascinating than Russia, from its tyrannical tsars to its…
We are, generally speaking, a timid culture seeking vicarious means of adventure. There’s no need to look far for examples. When Robin Williams shouted “carpe diem,” Americans seized the opportunity to purchase T-shirts bearing the message–and that’s just one example. Metal playground fixtures? Too dangerous. A Mexican restaurant serving menudo?…
Brant Wood (not the Wood in Deep Ellum’s Trees) calls a portion of Café Brazil’s business day “deep night,” the wee-hour stretch when folks commune to work off whatever self-abuse they have inflicted for the evening. “We do as much business deep night as we do during the regular day…
There has never been a more cumbersome union than the matrimony between municipalities and sushi rolls. Yet the latter spread with bunny-like vigor, despite the mismatches. Sushi Boom in San Francisco has its San Francisco roll (spicy tuna and avocado). SuShi Ya in Chicago has its Chicago roll (shrimp tempura,…
It was plain after Jeffrey Yarbrough turned in his chopsticks that noodles had gone corporate. We have the names: Big Bowl, Pei Wei, Noodles & Company. Yarbrough, who launched his Dallas groundbreaking noodle shop Liberty years ago on Lower Greenville, tried to give the concept a boost by dropkicking it…
“Are you a G.I.?” asks the woman behind the counter after an order is put in for Rhine River’s currywurst. Currywurst is knackwurst with a mild curry-ketchup sauce slobbered over it. It’s impossible to take this description too literally. After depositing a knackwurst on the plate dusted with dried parsley,…
Next Tuesday, our celebrated urban core will be needled out of its tequila-addled mind when the Dallas version of Iron Cactus Mexican Grill and Margarita Bar debuts. The three-story, 14,000-square-foot restaurant, imported from Austin, comes complete with a cylindrical tower housing a winding staircase, a rooftop deck that overlooks Dallas’…
Poets, sages and thinkers of great magnitude have grappled for centuries with the fundamental mysteries standing in the way of human progress–stuff like hunger, indigenous populations, the environment, that sort of thing. None of them, however, dared tackle the most perplexing question of all: Is there a correct way to…
Here’s an experience worth its weight in foie gras: gnawing on bloody-as-hell steak in a garishly masculine steak house and not hearing a single note sung by Frank Sinatra. Or Tony Bennett. Or Nat King Cole. Skip Harry Connick Jr., too. Delete any croons from other packed rats as well,…
There are two ways to digest Django on the Parkway: with music or without music. Django must be consumed this way because Django entwines two personalities that come into relief only when the music is sifted out. This Addison venue, now thoroughly washed in burnt brick-red stucco substance on the…
Grand Lux Café, the upscale casual diner invented by Calabasas Hills, California-based The Cheesecake Factory Inc. , is being fitted into the Galleria in the north part of a pair of expansion wings flanking the Westin Hotel. The only other cities with Grand Lux are Chicago, Las Vegas and Los…
Convenience is the crack of modern culture. It’s why the remote is the power metaphor of the tract castle and the mobile phone has displaced indoor plumbing as the critical necessity of existence. It’s why cash flows through the air (billions, watch your head) instead of going postal. It’s why…
In the end, we’ll all chug and chew from a Brown bag. Or a box, if Melrose chef Doug Brown has his druthers. Brown, the culinary wunderkind who did his teething at Nana Grill and now governs the menus at Melrose Hotel properties in Dallas, New York and Washington, D.C.,…
Humans long ago declared victory in our long struggle to overcome the forces of nature. We spray on tans, burn Duraflame logs, flash huge CZ rings and dine on farm-raised salmon. Of course, our old foe never really accepted defeat and still threatens humankind on occasion with harmless little pinpricks,…
New York magazine proclaimed it the new hanger. Is this a compliment? Hard to tell, especially when you consider ancestry. The hanger steak, a grainy beef cut that a flock of clever chefs nudged into tender meat with intense flavor, quickly landed on bistro menus. But its pedigree is not…
This exchange actually occurred between two members of the Burning Question crew after a night of research in which we visited The Meridian Room, The Old Monk, Candle Room and Sense: “Did I do anything stupid at Sense last night?” “We went to Sense last night?” Later, after we completed…
“It’s not dead.” So says broadcaster Jim White, who has hosted the KRLD Restaurant Show for the past nine years. KRLD NewsRadio 1080 dropped the cleaver on the show last month because, White says, parent Infinity Broadcasting demanded KRLD yank it from its budget. But White says he’s drafting a…
In the auto industry, dipping into the past for design cues has become a mania. Examples form a long string of oval headlights and fenders rounded into ripe hips or etched with sharp creases lifted from bygone eras: PT Cruiser, Ford GT, Mustang GT, Thunderbird, Chevy SSR, MINI Cooper. But…
The gold glint of chardonnay is tarnishing. Merlot is passé. Gad, even cabernet is sliding slightly in popularity. Syrah, pinot noir, pinot grigio (why does so much of it taste like two Bayer dissolved in Evian?) are ascendant. So are the wine-producing regions in Oregon and Washington. And Italy. France…
Most of us recognize outstanding service instantly, whether in the form of an act, such as unfolding a napkin and pulling out a chair, or a record of self-sacrifice–like spending a few weeks in the National Guard. A set of handy idioms (“the customer is always right,” “have it your…
Cars and dining go together like Botox and TV news anchors. Whole restaurant segments and a rash of clever inventions have been spawned from the marriage of food and motoring: diners, drive-ins, cup lids, drive-up windows, talking Jack heads, cup holders, probably even disposable diaper wipes (keep a tub in…
The more things stay the same, the more they change. Just ask Ron Corcoran, founder of Sipango. Last summer, he plugged founding chef Matthew Antonovich back into the ever-morphing nightclub-discothèque-Cal-Ital-Tuscan steak house to reanimate its long-gone culinary luster. Antonovich returned after a five-year string of cooking and non-cooking pursuits, such…
