It’s hard to arouse taste buds in a restaurant named after a bug, especially a large prehistoric specimen that incessantly engorges itself with mosquitoes that may or may not be swollen with human blood. Yet somehow this swift, darting fly fascinates. Is it its elegance, the deft darts it employs…
For the first time in its history, the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association endorsed a Dallas mayoral candidate. The GDRA tossed its heft behind Dallas City Councilwoman Mary Poss for mayor on the very day the restaurant smoking ban went into effect, March 1, and a day after a Dallas judge…
It’s hard to believe this downtown street-level dining room was once a seafood restaurant hailed by Esquire magazine as one of the nation’s best. This ringing praise occurred at a time when most Dallasites thought “Downtown” was the song that made Mrs. Miller famous. (No, not that Mrs. Miller; we…
Probably the only difference between a marriage and a business partnership is that business partners generally don’t get to see belly-button lint on the vanity or have the sheets fluffed over them after dinner at El Chico. But that’s the only difference. They both begin with a glint in the…
You understand, of course, the consequences of forwarding an alcohol-related topic to the Burning Question crew. We are experiential reporters, meaning we never simply ask experts for their input. Instead, we visit the sites, drink the drinks and suffer the nauseating aftereffects. Curiously, our sense of dedication and willingness to…
Red glamour is baffling. The restaurant Citizen sports a portrait of Chairman Mao, that lovable Chinese leader whose four-year orgy of state-sponsored terror, rape, cannibalism, torture and starvation, known as the “Great Leap Forward,” left untold millions dead. How is it that a Warhol portrait of Mao is considered cutting-edge…
Consider the curious relationship between Americans and ground corn. Each food item we purchase or consume in public conveys information regarding social status and culinary knowledge. Nothing is more confusing, however, than the tangled messages we send and receive when ordering a meal. For a male diner, steak says strength–and…
Chef David Burdett and Cameron Morris have been around for a while, creating little catering hybrids founded on comfort food with upscale touches. At Rooster, they carved a pioneering “new Southern” patch in the Dallas landscape. Then they took over Brent Place at Old City Park, crafting food in the…
It’s no mystery why bibs are strapped to diners before they arm themselves with pipe wrenches and little twin-pronged awls to mutilate whole lobsters: Lobster butter-splatter makes a Loony Toon tie look like hell. The real mystery is why bibs aren’t strapped on before adults are allowed to play with…
Like virtually every Dallas restaurant that doesn’t deploy a platoon of white-coated servers who can say “excellent choice, sir” in 14 different languages including legalese, bureaucratese and NFL huddle-grunt, Maguire’s M Grill & Tap is riddled with televisions. It’s fortunate that we live in an age of relentless CNBC stock…
Frankie Carabetta, the robust bar and pizza maestro who linked with Ed and Michael Ruibal of Landscape Systems of Texas to compose Rocco’s pizzeria (since sold), McKinney Avenue Tavern and Corner Bar on McKinney Avenue, has shucked his McKinney Avenue bonds and infiltrated the famous Routh Street Café space that…
“Why not have a salt party?” asks David McMillan, holding a plate piled with a gray-white substance. The executive chef of Nana apparently doesn’t get out much. Either that, or he thinks of tame suburban gatherings–Tupperware parties, for instance–as wild, wicked affairs. In the 1960s, shindigs lauding plastic containers were…
Though it was conceptually groundbreaking as it ushered in a fusion of tastes from Thailand, Korea, China, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam and India under one roof, the orginal Liberty Noodles was mostly a bore. From the start the food was plodding, sloppy, indistinct and unworthy of a second glance. It didn’t…
Almost everything that can be done has been done to the sandwich, an innovation named after the fourth Earl of Sandwich from the town of Sandwich, a municipality in southeast England. It’s been injected with special sauce, prodded with deviled this and that, smeared with Jiff and fruit, frilled with…
Dallas millionaire and Porsche/Audi/VW dealer Scott Ginsburg concedes that his biggest mistake with his Voltaire and Bamboo Bamboo restaurant adventures was in thinking his chefs could also grip operations. “From a pure enterprise point of view, the first thing you need to do is choose a manager, and I failed…
They say history proves again and again how nature points out the folly of men. In this case, “they” are Blue Oyster Cult, a band from the days of open shirts and infinite hair. We’re not certain whether they are the “they” mentioned in all the other “they say” references,…
Indian food has had a tough time here. The land of steaks as thick as phone books and spuds the size of VW Beetles is inhospitable to cuisine more complex than a T-bone. Stripped down to its basics, Indian grub incorporates some two dozen herbs and spices, including coconut, chilies,…
So much public health concern, so much smoke. Earlier this month a horrified New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg reportedly dispatched the NYPD to Madison Square Garden to halt a Rolling Stones concert. It seems guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were puffing onstage in violation of the city’s strict no-smoking…
The really profound thing about 36 Degrees, longtime Dallas chef Chris Svalesen’s newest venture, is the appropriateness of the name. Not simply that the name represents the optimal holding temperature for fish, but also that it perhaps describes the number of stages Svalesen’s vision will pass through before it is…
Former Sfuzzi co-founder Patrick Colombo, developer of the Italian restaurant Ferré and the chic wine bar Crú, both in the West Village, says he is close to consummating a deal on the space that was most recently Alvin Granoff’s Eccolo Ristorante and Enoteca before it was Alvin Granoff’s Ecco Italia…
We always run into trouble at Paris Vendome. We’re not sure why, really. It’s a classy place, and people often use the word “class” when describing the Burning Question crew. Of course, they attach the word “low” to it, but still. Last time we visited the West Village bistro, a…
Brewpubs have had a hard row in Dallas. When a measure passed the Texas Legislature in 1993 permitting the brewing and sale of beer at the same site, some 40 brewpubs popped up in Texas within just a few years, eight in Dallas alone. The corpses–Coppertank Brewing Co., Moon Under…
