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The Last Dragon Cocktail at On Premise Needs a Little Work

The bar at On Premise seems like a study in contradictions. The "steampunk" aesthetic, created by minimalist decor, the presence of metal gears and exposed filament lighting, is broken up by shiny, faux-gator banquettes. The crowd is equally disparate, ranging from dining families to drunk people who've just caught their...
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Best Tattoo Artists in Dallas: Richard Garcia

When Richard Garcia was a kid constantly drawing his favorite comic book characters, he knew he someday wanted to make a living as an artist. But even in art school, where he spent four years working on photo-realistic drawing with graphite and charcoal, he never considered tattooing a viable option...
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Dallas’ Most Interesting Restaurants No. 27: FT33

Leading up to our annual Best of Dallas® issue, we're counting down the 50 most interesting restaurants in Dallas. These spots bring something unique or compelling to the city's dining scene, feeding both your appetite and soul. In a city where fine dining can get a little stuffy, FT33 brings...
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Ignore the Decor, Not the Dosas, at Saravana Bhavan

Saravana Bhavan’s dining room will never win a beauty contest. The building at the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Valley Ranch Parkway in Irving reminded me of a miniature Holiday Inn Express or some corporate diner when I first walked in the door. Or maybe a Bank of America? The...
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Dallas’ Most Interesting Restaurants No. 29: La Banqueta

Leading up to our annual Best of Dallas® issue, we're counting down the 50 most interesting restaurants in Dallas. These spots bring something unique or compelling to the city's dining scene, feeding both your appetite and soul.  From the street, La Banqueta does little to differentiate itself from the other...
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Where to Buy a Pig (or Goat or Lamb) for Your Next Roast

Now that the weather is starting to cool down (sorta), the idea of building a bonfire in your back yard to roast whole animals might sound like a decent idea. If you have a large group of friends to feed, a backyard roast is a cool way to get it...
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The 2015 Dallas Observer Music Awards Showcase Guide

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, we were getting ready to host the first-ever December version of our Dallas Observer Music Awards. Perennial DOMA nominees Sarah Jaffe and Old 97’s were squaring off for best album honors, with an upstart rapper, Blue, the Misfit, looking to score...
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10 Pieces of Dallas Public Art We Love

1. Drinking Fountain #1 In the Dallas Records Building at 509 Main St., Lauren Woods made a public sculpture out of what was once a “Whites Only” drinking fountain. The county had put a plaque on top of the remnants of the prohibitive sign, but she decided to replace that...
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Hey Collin County, How D’ya Like DART Now?

Two years ago, DART proposed running a bus route from the city of McKinney to Parker Road train station. The transit agency was hoping to gain a foothold in the northern boom towns of Collin County, both to advance its vision of a seamless regional transit system and, more pragmatically,...
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You Think Flooding Was Bad Last Weekend? Better Grab a Bible.

Ten weeks ago I had my hair shirt on with my sandwich board sign hanging from my shoulders predicting possible Biblical-scale flooding catastrophe as we entered the season of the fall rains. Might be time to grab those Bibles soon. All those stories you saw on TV last weekend of people...
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The 5 Best New Acts in Dallas of 2015

With the 27th annual Dallas Observer Music Awards just around the corner — in fact, voting is open right now at 2015musicawardspoll.dallasobserver.com — we're looking to spend the next several weeks taking the opportunity to highlight some of the nominees for this year's awards. And when we say that these...
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Kin Kin Turns Out Curry by Numbers

On a recent Friday evening, one when the summer heat had broken and a cool breeze ushered in the coming of fall, the dining room at Kin Kin felt practically empty. The new Oak Lawn Thai restaurant had quite a few diners, but not enough for its size. Kin Kin...
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5 Art Exhibitions to See This Weekend

Why are you leaving? Where are you going? Will you come back? If you've ever stuck your nose down in an art history book, you've likely learned that master French artist Paul Gauguin spent several years in Tahiti. It's also likely that you've seen one of his resulting paintings, “Nafea...
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10 (ish) Things to Do With Pumpkins Besides Carve Them

Pumpkins in parking lots. Pumpkins in patches. Pumpkins on church lawns, mountains of pumpkins rising up beside the front doors of every grocery store in Dallas. The arboretum is building houses out of them. How many Jack O' Lanterns can one city carve? (And don't tell us you use fresh...
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A First Look at Armoury Deep Ellum

The red "A" hanging over Elm Street was first illuminated about a month ago, alerting pedestrians that their next late-night dining option was ready for business. Armoury Deep Ellum (or Armoury D.E.) brings a familiar mix of cocktails, beer and food in a dimly lit space reminiscent of the steampunk...
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5 of Dallas’ Best Desserts

Each week, I set out to dig into at least one of Dallas’ best desserts. This quest has landed me everywhere from dumpy little dives to some of the city’s most elegant restaurants. Whether I’m gulping down a milkshake or savoring dessert/art that’s almost too beautiful to eat, I love...
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Wild Detectives Embraces the Delicious World of Tostas

Toasts are kind of a big deal these days, if you haven’t heard. Perhaps it’s their visual appeal compared with traditional sandwiches — those colorful and vivid ingredients exposed to light. Or maybe it’s that toasts have half the carbohydrate load of their fully breaded counterparts. For whatever reason, toasts...
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Brunch at Braindead Brewing Doesn’t Need Life Support

In his 1965 dissertation, Geoffrey Gorer wrote of the “ethical duty to enjoy oneself” that seemed to permeate Americans’ collective attitude toward death. This attitude, Gorer explained, contributed to the rejection of public displays of grief and mourning. Analogously, this attitude has the potential to explain Americans’ relatively recent and...