The saga is finally over. After the owners of Proof Pantry refused to allow The Dallas Morning News' food critic to pay for a meal that she was planning on reviewing, Leslie Brenner has finally published her thoughts on the One Arts Plaza restaurant and dropped a cute little bombshell in the proce ... More >>
When David Uygur isn't hand-crafting pasta, making desserts out of pork's blood, and generally dazzling the palates of Dallas diners, the man has to eat. The chef behind Lucia doesn't make it out much thanks to his busy restaurant, but not even a chef can survive on staff family meals and kitchen sc ... More >>
Could David Anthony Temple's long awaited Twenty Seven finally be coming to fruition? The rogue chef says he's aiming to open his first restaurant at the start of next year in Deep Ellum. Temple gained popularity years ago as one of the first chefs to shore up Dallas' rather anemic underground dini ... More >>
Italian food isn't exactly something Dallas is known for, yet the city's most-lauded restaurant is a tiny Italian spot in Bishop Arts. People are still clamoring, four years later, for a coveted reservation at Lucia, the brainchild of chef David Uygur and his wife, Jennifer. The reserved Uygur has e ... More >>
When Jon Alexis took over TJ's Seafood in 2009, the fish counter was still just a guppy of an enterprise. Sure, it had more than 20 years of fish peddling under its gills, but at that point it was still a small shop tucked into a North Dallas strip mall. Alexis' parents had run the business for 10 y ... More >>
Veteran's Day is one of those holidays that doesn't get as much fanfare as the ones where you get presents or chocolate. Whatever your feelings on United States foreign policy, the men and women in the United States Armed Forces give up a lot, and this holiday is meant to honor those sacrifices. For ... More >>
The Blind Butcher probably isn't the first place you think of when you're craving something sweet. They're a self-proclaimed "Beer Meat" Mecca, and they've rightfully earned a spot on Scott Reitz's list of "100 favorite dishes" with their pastrami egg rolls. Yet, this is where I found myself on a ... More >>
We get it! David Uygur, Teiichi Sakurai, Matt McCallister and other highly lauded chefs are worthy of infinite praise. They've opened restaurants that have defined the Dallas dining scene and offer cooking that demonstrates unparalleled refinement. They were also the chefs we celebrated last year, a ... More >>
Even for restaurateurs, Josh Yingling and Matt Tobin are incredibly busy. When they're not running their successful restaurants and plotting new ones, they can't just survive on artisanal sausages and brisket-topped burgers alone. Despite their insane schedules, they still manage to make it out for ... More >>
Last week, Goodfriend Beergarden and Burger House announced a new menu was in place. Owners Matt Tobin and Josh Yingling worked with chef Eric Salome, who used to work at the Omni Hotel, to develop new menu items that include a number of new burgers, a changing seasonal salad and a cheese board. Oth ... More >>
Specials typically have a less-than-savory connotation within the restaurant industry. If a chef orders too much meat for Friday and Saturday night dinner services, he might throw what's left in the grinder the next morning, creating the makings for a meatball special for Sunday brunch. Day-old fi ... More >>
The past three years have been kind to Josh Yingling and Matt Tobin. After opening Goodfriend Burger House in East Dallas to rave reviews and a dedicated neighborhood following, the duo struck gold a second time with Greenville Avenue gastropub The Blind Butcher. Whether it's the unlikely ascent of ... More >>
In a week or so, you'll be able to order a pig's foot that's been stuffed with ground pork parts at the Meddlesome Moth. Trotters, as they're called, can be found on a few menus across the country, but they're hardly commonplace, especially in Dallas. Chef Robbie Lewis says he was inspired by his ... More >>
Usually, when you have a good formula, you don't fuck with it. The pizza at Zoli's is widely considered by food-eaters in Dallas among the city's best (and is considered by our critic as the best), so it was surprising to some when the New York-style pizzeria made some sweeping changes to its menu, ... More >>
Last week, Leslie Brenner, the restaurant critic for The Dallas Morning News, officially gave anonymity the middle finger, publishing an interactive feature on the News' web site complete with portraits and video. In the story and video, Brenner announces that after years of masticating dry-aged ste ... More >>
Greenville Avenue continues to add restaurants after the city widened sidewalks, added parking and generally increased the number of potential customers walking around the neighborhood. The latest to open, Clark Food and Wine, began serving customers last Thursday. See also: Bohemian Cafe, the New ... More >>
For most chefs, the flavors that dominate their cuisine come from a very personal place, like a decades of mom's home cooking or a few years of intensive training at a French culinary school. For others, though, that passion for a cuisine develops in relatively unexpected places. Braden and Yasmin ... More >>
Since Lucia first opened, the Oak Cliff Italian restaurant has been honing its reputation as Dallas' toughest reservation. Diners who want the opportunity to twirl a forkful of David Uygur's cacio e pepe have to call the restaurant a month in advance to book a table. Prime slots are consistently gob ... More >>
Chipotle needed a better vegetarian option. Until recently, the only thing a meat-adverse diner could order in the restaurant was a set of tacos or a burrito stuffed with black beans and a mix of grilled onions and bell peppers. The results were filling (everything at Chipotle is filling) but obviou ... More >>
When she's not busy planning her new restaurant, Remedy, Chef Danyele McPherson likes to focus on the parts of her life that aren't just in the kitchen. "Food is my passion," says McPherson, "but I also like to do other things, too. I like to ride bikes around Dallas and have beers with my friends l ... More >>
It's 9 on Wednesday night when I drag my friend out to Joyce and Gigi's in East Dallas. She's in nursing school and should be writing a paper that's due the next day, but fortunately one of us has her priorities straight: half-priced drinks and dessert to share. The restaurant's two-year anniversary ... More >>
Lactobacillus fans, this one's for you. As part of their Super Sour Power Week, Strangeways has 35 different sour beers on tap through Sunday, October 26. So what are you waiting for? Make like a wild yeast strain get at it. What it be: Super Sour Power Week When it do: Now through Sunday, Oct. 2 ... More >>
We get it: You're too good to put sauce on your barbecue or ranch on your pizza. Us? We like our food better when it's wet, especially when these condiments are involved. Have a condiment you like better? Dip your laptop in it or something. These are better. The BBQ Sauce at Slow Bone (above) Cool ... More >>
Danyele McPherson has been waiting for her turn in Dallas' culinary spotlight for some time. After a stint on Bravo's Top Chef and working in the kitchens of Stephan Pyles and The Grape, McPherson has finally landed her own soon-to-open restaurant on Lower Greenville. The highly anticipated Remedy i ... More >>
After well-received stints at two Dallas institutions and her currently-airing appearance on Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, Rosanne "Roe" DiLeo is seemingly up for anything. This time, Chef Roe won't be dodging pans slung by a cursing Englishman or setting a new standard for bar food at The Liberti ... More >>
For the past few months we've been nibbling like rabbits on vegetables while visions of ourselves in bathing suits flicker on the projector screen in our brains. But now there's a snap in the air, and skimpy clothes and frail fabrics will slowly take the back seat to wardrobes with bulk. You could h ... More >>
It's pretty impressive if you think about it: Gathering 7,000 vegetarians and otherwise curious omnivores together to celebrate meat-free living might be hard enough, but to do it in Dallas? Texas is a land that celebrates steakhouses, where smoked beef brisket is its own food group, and where beans ... More >>
I've been poring over local-restaurant news while trying to lay out my restaurant-review plan for the rest of the year, and the list I've compiled is strangely void of burger restaurants. I couldn't be happier. Don't get me wrong. I love burgers. (Especially this one.) But there are only so many fe ... More >>
Craft beer is more popular than ever, which means that chefs have been as interested in creating dishes that pair beautifully with an IPA or witbier as they were previously in cooking to suit fine wines. Local gastropubs and fine-dining restaurants alike are bulking up their beer selections, and the ... More >>
Follow the Cheap Bastard as she scours the city, looking for a good -- or at least non-lethal -- lunch for less than 10 bucks. Grandpa and grandma double-date count: 4 Praline count: 7 One could go to El Fenix at lunch. But it's much more fun to go for Old Lady Dinnertime (OLD). It's in the 4:50-5 ... More >>
It seems like the only people who don't romanticize opening their own restaurant are people who have actually opened one. Home cooks are lulled into the fantasy by guests who gush over dishes that have been slaved over for a day. Diners see mistakes they're sure they could fix with the wave of a spa ... More >>
For all of the fit-throwing, cursing, and discussion about food critics in Dallas, we've kind of lost sight of the fact that John Tesar is actually an incredible chef. The controversy surrounding you-know-who's three-star review of Tesar's second Dallas restaurant Knife may have died down, but the h ... More >>
The first thing that becomes immediately apparent when walking through the front door of the Bohemian Cafe is that every employee, all the way down to the dishwasher, is exceptionally nice. Customers are greeted with warm, genuine thank-you-for-comings, guided to the Kolache counter and coddled unti ... More >>
Any restaurant that turns out a lasagna like the one pictured above has got to be jockeying to be the Best Italian Restaurant in Dallas. And it turns out Carbone's, the Italian restaurant responsible for that plate up above, won just that award in our recent Best Of Dallas feature that celebrates ex ... More >>
As if we haven't heard enough about Misery Loves Company's spanking-new restaurant in One Arts Plaza, Proof Pantry over the weekend announced that it would be expanding the extremely limited lunch options starting tomorrow. Owner Michael Martensen hinted to the Observer in August that the restau ... More >>
Like any other job, being a server comes with its share of shittiness. Working all day on your feet is exhausting, patrons can be dicks, and you have to work really, really hard to earl that $2.13 an hour plus tips. And on top of all of the usual stresses, a new report shows, women who wait tables ... More >>
The Dallas of 20 years ago exists only on the margins of the current culinary climate. There are more restaurants in this city than ever, and the focus of the chefs who run its best restaurants has shifted dramatically in the last five years. No longer is Dallas known for its decadent-but-boring ste ... More >>
Hey Leslie Brenner! I don't know you. I'm Alice. I don't know what you look like, but lots of chefs in town tell me they know what you look like, and that you're never truly dining secretly in their restaurants. I imagine that you look like the above illustration that took me one hour to draw. You' ... More >>
Follow the Cheap Bastard as she scours the city, looking for a good -- or at least non-lethal -- lunch for less than 10 bucks. People saying "Ooooooh" at their food: 14 Times I wondered why there was a full-length mirror next to the shitter in the ladies' restroom, angled so that one could watch on ... More >>
"Dinner in Trinity Groves?" It's a question that so often sends my potential dining companions running for the hill country, a trail of withering dust the only evidence they ever existed. This restaurant empire, rising from the clay of West Dallas, isn't the only destination that has given me troub ... More >>
Like everyone else in town, we've told you already about Leslie Brenner's recent visit to Proof Pantry. The dining critic at the Dallas Morning News visited the restaurant last Thursday in preparation for a review, and the meal went as most meals do until owner Michael Martensen raised a stink riv ... More >>
The ascension of Dallas' culinary scene has been a curious thing to watch from the sidelines. As a diner, Dallasites have more restaurants to choose from than ever, helmed by some of the country's brightest up-and-coming chefs. At the same time, this progress has been slow-going, and Dallas has been ... More >>
The change has been a long time coming. The Front Room first opened in 2012 in Hotel Lumen, with Scott Townend serving as executive chef. Back then, the restaurant was branded as a Park Cities diner, with a dressed up but casual menu that seemed well suited to the Park Cities. But the soups, sala ... More >>
In the process of revamping the formerly-meh Dallas Farmers Market into something that at least marginally represents local growers, the private operators who bought the Market from the City of Dallas have made some serious changes, like kicking the parking spaces out of the produce sheds and tighte ... More >>
If it seems like we're always talking about Kitchen LTO, the Trinity groves "permanent pop-up" restaurant, it's because it's hard to ignore a restaurant that completely changes the concept every four months. Some chefs' short-lived tenures are more exciting than others, but no one's start have been ... More >>
Signs of life from Herrera's, the much-loved Tex-Mex chain that left Maple Avenue not long ago, was recently spotted by a tipster in West Dallas on Sylvan Avenue, not far south of the river. I called owner Nora Ontiveros but she didn't answer. Maybe she's busy, you know, resurrecting an entire resta ... More >>
When we talk about the burgeoning culinary scene that exists in Dallas today, it's sometimes easy to forget about the chefs who spent years trying to convince us that great food was worth a little extra cash. Abraham Salum's eponymous restaurant Salum has been a fixture of the Dallas food community ... More >>
"Dallas has the most restaurants per capita of any city in the U.S." Have you heard this one before? The statement is as pervasive here as "Hey, where is the valet stand?" and "I'll have my steak well done." Usually, it's issued as a sort of bragging right. Dallasites who are proud of their city b ... More >>
Picking the best of anything can really lead to some stress, if only because there are so many great restaurants and food businesses in and around Dallas. And since we're in the middle of a dessert here, you might think there may not be too many seafood restaurants to choose from either, but that's ... More >>