It sounds easy, but operating a successful neighborhood restaurant is tough: ingratiating yourself with a cadre of regulars, serving decent food, enticing nomads from foreign neighborhoods and protecting the comfort zone you’ve created (never invite assassination attempts by pulling a menu staple after it’s become an icon). To understand the…
Pool cues or bamboo sticks? Chopsticks or billiard chalk? These were once the riveting questions posed up the Dallas North Tollway. But plans to plop a Cool River Café in the former Voltaire/Bamboo Bamboo space appear to be snuffed, though Consolidated Restaurant Operations Chairman Gene Street holds out a chance…
Flowing water is said to provoke soothing meditation, especially among those with feng shui (the art of furnishing a room to harmonize with its spiritual forces) on their dumbwaiters and incense residue on their lapels. Moving water has an almost-primordial appeal–aesthetic, psychological, physiological–perhaps hearkening back to the days before we…
While (some) restaurants are evacuating Deep Ellum–East Wind Vietnamese Restaurant and the much-rumored but unconfirmed flight of Sambuca Jazz Café to the former Salve! space on McKinney Avenue–some battle-hardened mavericks armed with taps and pearl onions are actually moving in. Nick Hidi, who earned his nightclub stripes operating a spot…
B movie actor…excuse us, Governor Schwarzenegger scored a respectable second in the coveted Foot in Mouth contest for his astute assessment of gay marriage. It “should be between a man and a woman,” he said. Wonder how the big guy explains Michael Jackson. It’s disturbing when those with an actual…
McCormick & Schmick’s used to be a toy store: FAO Schwarz, that ages-old chain purveyor of toddler titillation. FAO was bled into anemia by Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us and is now suffering just as the season of shopping psychosis intrudes. This is the sort of pressure that popped FAO…
Liberty Noodles is dead, shuttered little more than a year after the 7-year-old concept evacuated its Lower Greenville spot for more expansive digs on Lovers Lane. What did it in? Advanced weapons. Creator Jeffrey Yarbrough says business boomed out of the chute. But when General Tommy Franks and the 4th…
No wonder people crowd into Hooters. It has a pert name, firm menu, low-cut prices and a revealing window to the kitchen. We can’t think of anything else necessary for success in the service industry. Oh, yeah. There is one more thing: babes. “Sexism runs rampant,” says Glenn Hartzell, bar…
“Hi, my name is Arthur King. I’m one of the owners of Gingko Tree China Bistro in Flower Mound. We have been open since May 24, and we are very excited to be here. As far as information goes, we are a Chinese Restaurant…We have a lot of different menu…
Rumors have been flying that Nikita, the Cold War Eastern Bloc vodka depot/diner, is about to be sold. Or close. Or crumble like a bad wall in schizophrenic Germany–all after a breathless run of fickle lust that once strung endless and eager lines around Nikita’s West Village loins. Not so,…
Everywhere there are the fakes, the counterfeits, the phonies. They make their way to our wrists (my Rolex impersonation suffered band failure, fell to the pavement and was crushed by a real Toyota Corolla), our wallets (keep an eye on those new Andrew Jacksons) and our lips (please don’t bite…
When the Nasher Sculpture Center opened its doors not long ago, some bozo said, in a televised blurb, “This will put Dallas on the map.” Now, we’re not certain who made the comment, nor are we quoting verbatim. One of our favorite pastimes involves consuming massive quantities of bourbon while…
Just as our review of The Wharf@Bayview Marina hit the streets, the doors of The Wharf, tucked over Lake Ray Hubbard, slammed shut. Word came via e-mail from the restaurant. “THE WHARF IS CLOSED,” it barked. Khanh Dao is out. Partner Mike Chen is in. The coup d’état at Steel,…
Many things float: dead fish, wine corks, Ivory soap, Enron limited partnerships. Sometimes restaurants float, too–in Texas, no less. That’s the fascinating thing about The Wharf @ Bayview Marina, a bobbing house of “North Florida” cuisine on Lake Ray Hubbard. “We’re actually floating on the water,” says manager Gary Weaver…
Guys like P.T. Barnum and Ben Franklin recognized early on that people could be easily fooled. Barnum drew frenzied crowds to his bizarre presentation of “feejee mermaids” and such. Once, when the mob lingered too long inside his hall of attractions, preventing new paying customers from entering the scene, he…
Why is Continental cuisine so hard to kill off? Like badly cropped sideburns, it’s ugly. It tastes like an overachieving Swanson TV dinner might if it had loads of self-esteem. And it generally comes with music delivered by people who didn’t get over purple velour the first time around. Loosely…
Perhaps Lola owner Van Roberts operates on a different plane, maybe the kind derived from a salad where the porcinis are subbed with magic buttons. Whatever you make of his latest culinary plunge, The Tasting Room, his balance-sheet projections seem to emanate from a different dimension than those generated by…
The other day we stumbled across a truly bizarre line penned by essayist G.K. Chesterton. Now, we’ve read a number of strange and disturbing things in our time: Vanna White’s account of her success and career, John Lydon’s retelling of his impecunious boyhood, anything written by William Murchison in The…
One of the inverted glass bowl chandeliers hanging from the ceiling is busted. Not blemished like a chipped tooth, but damaged like a hockey player’s smile. It’s a natural, accidental impairment in a dining room packed with faux threadbare touches. The creamy walls are blotched with a crackle finish–fraudulent architectural…
Like Tristan Simon with his symbiotic Henderson Avenue empire, restaurant concept baron Phil Romano and his Nick & Sam’s sidekick Joe Palladino seem bitten by the hub-and-spoke bug. Just after opening the semiprivate nightclub Medici two weeks ago, the pair is sewing up a joint venture with Fernando and Gino…
Comic Jackie Mason once asked: “Jewish civilization is 6,000 years old, and Chinese civilization is 4,000 years old. So where did Jews eat on Sunday night for 2,000 years?” It’s a strange crossover, this Jewish love of Chinese cuisine. Does it stem from shared tastes for chicken soup, tea and…
The Mercury, Mico Rodriguez’s posh dining nook slipped into the upscale Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, quietly dribbled out of the thermometer tube last week. “We just weren’t able to sustain a following, especially since we opened up September 7, 2001,” says Rodriguez. “It really was doomed, I think,…
