As we exited The Cosmopolitan Bistro one Saturday evening, a manager chased us out to the curb and stuffed our fists with a stack of bright gold $5 gift certificates. He apologized because the band that was supposed to play that night stood him up for a higher-paying gig elsewhere…
The olive dominates. It’s a persistent cartoon, a huge green oval impaled by a skewer, slipping through the orifice in the red “O” in Dolce Oliva’s name as if it were a martini glass rim. You can see it above the faux granite bar, where plaques flaunting the words juicy,…
Sushi in Mesquite shouldn’t be an oddity. Raw fish on rice billets is as mainstream as Vatican smoke gazing. Yet it is. What’s the best-selling entrée at Kamikaze? “Grilled chicken teriyaki,” says manager Shell Stafford. This explains why Isaac, a Kamikaze sushi chef, fawns when you sit down at the…
It’s not surprising that David McMillan is not intimidated by altitude. His first Dallas stint put him 27 stories up in the sky in the Wyndham Anatole Hotel tower. There he brought maturity to a kitchen coming down from the star power of young chef Doug Brown. Maybe swinging a…
“Nothing here is spicy.” This declaration from a Little Havana server, after a question on the heat level of the beef tips, is perhaps unintentionally tone-setting. After all, Little Havana is pure poseur: A bar in search of a theme, it settles on a Caribbean Island long led by a…
There are two great things about Jaden’s: The restaurant’s Web site does not use the words “hip” and “urban.” It doesn’t use “trendy” or “chic” either, so this restaurant gazelles out of the starting blocks–at least on paper (though there is a Jaden’s talking points memo that says it’s “one…
Urban bistro. It’s a familiar culinary idiom, but what does it mean? Maybe Paris. Paris is urban. They love bistros in Paris, where the word means “pub.” They love dogs there, too. Sidewalks groan under the accumulated evidence. Leashes are woven through the cafe tables–kinky culinary bondage with a bark…
Albania. Where’s that? It’s not a country most Americans–let alone Dallas residents–have much familiarity with, and for good reason. Locked into obscurity and solitary confinement throughout most of its history on account of its rugged, mountainous topography, Albania nonetheless has had a tendency to incite violent intrusions. This is because…
Like a pair of tectonic plates, itching to lurch forward but frozen into place by geological procrastination, Watel’s changes little before making sudden leaps. It was in place on McKinney Avenue and Harwood Street for more than 10 years before scrambling up the avenue not far from Allen Street in…
His business card is simple: Chef Joseph. His trajectory is not. He trained at La Gastronome in the Basque region of France and Spain. He practiced at the Arizona Biltmore L’Orange and the Ritz Carlton in Spain. He was installed at the hip upscale Voltaire before it became that downscale…
Every once in a while a dining experience is of such a piece that the food is almost beside the point; you’re just content to revel in reality gone slightly askew, maybe with a drink. You-Chun Korean Restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol, but it does serve water. It’s dispensed from a…
Whither steak? Haven’t we had enough already? Are any arteries left in North Texas that don’t proudly wear the badge of sclerosis crimp? Is there a credit rating nearby not creaking under the strain of prime beef? Are you vexed by the under-representation of creamed corn, sautéed mushrooms, mashed potatoes…
An Open Appeal to Dr. Robert Rey: You may find this hard to believe, but before last week I had never heard of you. I had no idea you were one of the pioneers of the transumbilical procedure, which sounds suspiciously like a financial instrument designed to skirt Securities and…
Italian stares at us perpetually, teasing with promise. It draws us with its sassy Latin vibrato and Ferrari-like lust with hints of Fellini-esque expressiveness. But the stare is an empty leer. What you get is Ed Wood warbling Lou Reed while tooling down the road in a Kia Sorrento. Italian…
Here’s a twist: accidentally stumbling into the restaurant business and finding love. Usually the love comes first, spawned by the illusion of glamour inherent in the prospect of running your own canteen. A short time after the buzz wears off, these once spellbound operators start tearing their hair out by…
Out there in the cyber yards there’s a place called slick.com (political satire at its best!), a repository of assorted detritus and tripe. Here’s something useful: “The Code of Dalton.” “The Code of Dalton” lists a number of felonies and misdemeanors, outrages not covered by criminal codes. For example, under…
The sushi bar is serpentine. It also has an interesting endpoint set piece: a waterwheel. Yet the most fascinating element in this Japanese restaurant squatting in a former Uptown video rental outlet rests on the bar surface. It’s there, between the grout lines framing the large black ceramic tiles: The…
What can you say about Greek food? It’s hard to say, because there is so much to say. People tend to forget that Alexander the Great, well before he matured into an Oliver Stone gigabuck cinema dud, spread Greek culture, including cuisine, via brilliant military campaigns. Greeks are credited with…
The Landmark Restaurant has been in the Melrose Hotel for a long time, so it’s easy for it to tumble out of your dining awareness. Perhaps you spend most of your Melrose time in The Library bar, trying out different martinis while women of varying abilities croon to piano (put…
Over on Travis Street, a man wearing a sandwich board stands on the sidewalk in front of Samba Room. He advertises dollar sushi and sake. This is how far we’ve come: a Cuban bar shilling sushi and rice brew for a buck. The city shudders, sobbing great streaming tears of…
Chaucer’s is what happens when investors have lots of money and space on their hands. You’d never know it from the outside, though. A few metal chairs and tables outside the front doors constitute a patio effort. Near the edge of the window is a lighted “open” sign, the kind…
You can hear it, if you listen closely enough. Not the din of chitchat hanging in the high ceiling caverns like a thick blanket of smog, not the staccato of clashing flatware, but the jingle of coins muffled in plastic cups and the near-melodious throb of slot-machine bells. “No, it’s…
