EATS

The first time I heard in a Dallas restaurant that we were in a "dry" area and if I wanted a glass of wine I'd have to join the restaurant's private club, I nearly fell off my chair. Of course Dallasites are used to it, but this Yankee was stunned.

But Rudolph Bush reports today that a group called Progress Dallas is pushing for a ballot initiative that would eliminate Dallas' dry areas. The Greater Dallas Restaurant Association is backing it, along with major grocery chains. Give it a read, and let us know what you think. Would you sign the petition?

Photo of ladies celebrating the end of Prohibition in New York City by Times Wide World Photo

Teresa Gubbins reports at Pegasus News that Urbino Pizza e Pasta has closed. I can't confirm it yet, but the phone is disconnected.

I just notice on Urbino's website, which still works, that I'm quoted -- completely out of context. "Very elegant for a pizzeria," it has me saying. In fact, what I wrote, in a "first look" blog post back in July, was "The biggest surprise? The glassware is Riedel! How very elegant for a pizzeria." I didn't at all discuss the quality of the food or service in the post.

In fact, the food on that first visit had been quite good; I loved the wood-fired pizza with excellent prosciutto, one of the pastas and a couple of the salads; I remember they were using top-quality baby arugula. I planned on reviewing it, but not long after that very good initial visit, I came back and the place had completely changed -- live music in the dining room was so loud there was no way my friends and I could sit there. We wound up on the patio, and it was still so loud we had to yell at each other. It seemed to have quickly morphed from a pizzeria focusing on great quality to an SMU drinking spot. The pizza wasn't nearly as good as it was the first time; pasta was soggy and overcooked; service was horrendous. It no longer seemed worth a review.

Honestly, it really saddened me to see something drop in quality so quickly.

Did you get a chance to check it out? What'd you think?

Ever have a rillettes sandwich? It's always the first thing I try to eat when I go to France. It's a pork confit-pâté that's spread on a baguette sliced in half, usually with cornichons -- either inside or on the side. For some reason, a "sandwich rillettes," which you used to be able to get in any cafe, is getting harder and harder to come by there. And that makes me sad.

So I was thrilled to find rillettes at Central Market Plano this weekend. I bought some mini-baguettes there too, and made sandwiches rillettes. The rillettes themselves were comme il faut -- fatty, salty, rich and pretty good. The sandwich totally hit the spot.

It's a little pricey -- the 4.5 ounce can is only enough for 3 mini-baguettes. But it's a lot cheaper than flying to Paris.

Hénaff pork rillettes, $6.99 for a 4.5 ounce can at Central Market Plano

The going's been tough! I must confess that the reason I didn't post about the diet last week is that I was discouraged. The grand total now is 16 pounds. I know -- that's good, right? I'm still a little bit ahead of schedule (the idea was to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks), but it took me two weeks to lose one pound. One reason I was discouraged is that a week and a half ago I was down 17, but I gained a pound back.

Diet and exercise-wise, it felt like a pretty good two weeks, too. So it's puzzling. Then yesterday was surreal. First, my family and I were invited to lunch at our friends David and Eva's house -- he's the one who made verrines for their baby shower. We were just expecting, you know, lunch, but this was an amazing five-course extravaganza. And I had invited friends for dinner last night, including the now super-svelte Kim Pierce. More on all that after the jump.

Then this morning, NPR's "Morning Edition" had an interesting story about why it's harder to lose weight as we age, and it has a lot to do with muscle loss. That makes sense. And though I'm not as old as the people discussed in the story, I am, bien sur, middle aged. I have been working some resistance training into my workouts, but I think I need to put more of a focus there. We'll see how it goes -- and I'm going to start keeping stricter calorie counts again for the next few weeks.

Just got an e-mail from Pyles, who is in Washington for a Share Our Strength charity event. Here's the nutshell:

"Yes, Vijay is no longer at Samar. There will be no replacement. Jon Thompson is now executive chef. He was executive sous chef and will continue his functions as he was. He has the same two sous chefs he has had - one from Hyderabad as well.

Nothing will change at Samar. It's been a wonderful association with Vijay and I am certain we will continue to work together either at Samar or a new venture. In the meantime, I will do whatever I can to help him in his endeavors."

Following up on my Sunday post, I spoke with Sadhu early this morning and he confirms he has left Samar.

"It has been in the back of my head to do something on my own for a long time," Sadhu says. The move has nothing to do with Samar or Pyles: "I've had a very good experience working with Stephan and have learned so much. He's a great man and I will always have a lot of respect for him."

So what's next? Sadhu plans to do a little foodie research overseas and then open his own Dallas eatery in about four months. He's currently considering several "very small spaces" in the Park Cities and Uptown areas where he can have an open-concept kitchen and interact with guests.

The reasonably-priced cuisine will be, no surprise, Indian with a middle eastern influence. "I want it to be a warm and inviting place where you walk in and smell the aroma of all the good spices, such as sandalwood, which I love to use in my cooking," he says. Sadhu even plans to mix his own blend of spices for the venture and is working to perfect that now.

As for a name? The front runner right now is simply Sadhu. "It would be an honor to use my family name," says the chef. That would also make someone at home very happy. "My son said, 'Dad, you've got to do it with your name!'"

Photo by Carter Rose

Yes, as of last week, according to D's Nancy Nichols (and, more specifically, contributor Andrew Chalk).

I find the whole thing mystifying since I just had dinner at Samar last Wednesday and chatted with both Vijay and Stephan. Neither hinted at any big changes, though I did pick up some unrelated bits of gossip.

So, I'll be tweeting, texting (and whatever else it takes) to get more details, but I'm out of the office on a photo shoot so this could take a bit. In the interim, our Leslie Brenner and Kim Pierce may have more to report.

Hmm, what kind of local eatery might Vijay open on his own? The chef, born in Hyderabad, India, told me last year that he doesn't do typical Indian food. "You can find curry anywhere. I go deeper into regional cooking. Many of our dishes are based on 400-year-old Indian recipes." Sounds like a delicious starting place to me .

I was checking in at the Dallas Farmers Market, in particular Pastabilities, where Ed Greer and Mike Koster have been holding forth just north of Shed No. 1 for 10 years.

Before I left, Ed insisted on giving me some Gwickles Pickles from Daingerfield to sample. They're thin, sweet-hot, ruffle-cut pickles with terrific crunch and flavor - and not too much bite. I've had sweet-hots before that were so hot, they made me cry. Not these.

I did something crazy with them. I mixed them with sliced endive for even more crunch. That's why there are no pickles at the top of the jar, which I thought to photograph after I had eaten. I keep imagining how good they'd be on a hot dog. Ed's selling the pickles for $6 for 16 ounces.

Meanwhile, I'm the last one on the planet to learn the reason Mike is absent from the store (although his Koster Cattle Co. pastured beef is present and accounted for). Mike has opened Koster's Famous New York Delicatessen in Prosper on State Highway 380 (near his ranch). Chowhound on Pegasus gave it a pretty good review in the fall, and notes that the burger is made from Koster's beef. Sounds like there's a field trip in my future.

Other cities have seen guerrilla restaurants come and go, but they're a new twist in Dallas. That's the topic of my Table Talk column in this week's Guide.

After looking for a fixed location and not finding one, Neapolitan pizza guru Jay Jerrier and his traveling oven struck up a time-share deal with Chocolate Angel Too in North Dallas.

Il Cane Rosso's team simply takes over after hours (starting at 5 p.m.) Thursday through Saturday nights. Customers seem to love it. When I was there, I saw families that included everything from first-graders to grandmas, and there was a bottle of BYOB red wine on nearly every table.

I kept wondering how they would handle the money part. Would you have to pay in cash? Could servers accept credit cards? Bada-boom, would you believe a POS (point-of-sale) program that Jerrier operates from a laptop? And yes, it takes plastic.

Il Cane Rosso fans, take note: The pizza oven ships out for repairs on March 8, so there will be a hiatus from Chocolate Angel Too. The oven gets back to Dallas in time for jay to fire it up on March 25. Then it's back to the regular sked.

Here's the Karen Robinson-Jacobs' Dallas Morning News account of what happened in court Friday in the continuing family tug-of-war for Avila's Mexican Restaurant. Here's an earlier, related post.

Jasper Russo just sent out an updated e-mail on the "snowmaggedon" sale at Sigel's Fine Wines on Legacy in Plano. It continues tonight and Saturday. Check out the list on the jump. There's a little bit of everything up for grabs, from Burgundy to a 2005 Silver Oak.

The continuing family battle over Avila's Mexican Restaurant pitting Ricardo Avila against his mother, Anita Avila, and his siblings has taken another turn today.

The sides squared off in District Judge Ken Molberg 's court, and Ricardo was ordered to restore the furnishings and equipment to the building that Ricardo had removed last weekend. The judge was clearly angered by these actions.

Karen Robinson-Jacobs was there, and her report will appear in tomorrow's Dallas Morning News. I'll link it from Web site later tonight.

In the meantime, check out intern Sam Todd's account over on SideDish. And Robert Wilonsky offers his take on the proceedings on the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park blog.

I didn't have the space to mention, in my review of Rick's Chophouse, that I loved the bread at Rick's. It's long, thin French bread -- a ficelle, like a thin baguette, wonderfully crusty, with a good crumb -- serious artisanal French bread. As it turns out, the bread comes from La Francaise French Bakery in Garland; the bakery calls them baguettes rustiques. Baker Jean-Christophe Blanc (shown in photo), who makes the bread there, used to bake at Voilà Bakery, which closed last year. According to Chris Alves, who owns La Francaise with his father, Blanc used to divide his time between the two bakeries.

Chris also told me that his parents, Samuel and Anita Alves, founded La Francaise in 1976, on the corner of Kingsley and Audelia in Lake Highlands. "My father was a pioneer," he said. "They were the first to introduce croissants and French bread to Dallas."

La Francaise supplies other restaurants too, including Chamberlain's Steak and Chop House, Kuby's Sausage House, Patrizio, Oceanaire and a few others. The bakery is wholesale only, but you can buy some of the breads (though not the baguettes) retail at Kuby's and Henk's European Deli and Black Forest Bakery. And Chris says that if you call La Francaise ahead and place an order, they'll be happy to sell you a baguette or two (or more) directly from there.

La Francaise Bakery, 201 Gold St., Garland; 972-485-4400

Photo courtesy La Francaise

While you were busy watching the Olympics last night, Charlie Palmer at The Joule quietly made its debut on ABC's The Deep End.

The high-gloss legal drama that I've only been watching at via TiVo shot six episodes in North Texas last year. Creator David Hemingson previously described the show to the DMN as L.A. Law with "the back-stabbing of The Devil Wears Prada and the sun-drenched bed-hopping of Entourage."
We have all of that in Dallas so I'm not sure why the show pretends to be set in L.A.

Anyway, actor Billy Zane looked picture-perfect in the Palmer dining room. I hear they also shot in the Joule's lobby and on the rooftop lounge. Speaking of, was that the lounge featured earlier in last night's episode? Afraid I missed that part.

Watching for Dallas locations in The Deep End reminds me of the Volkswagen "PunchDub" game.

UPDATE: This just in from Eats reader Johnny: "If you happened to record episode 3 of The Deep End, multiple scenes were from Fearing's and the Rattlesnake Bar at The Ritz." What, no screen captures?

In the Avila's Mexican restaurant saga that's pitting brother against brother (and sisters and mother), a district judge Thursday sided with the mother.
Ricardo Avila has been ordered to appear in court Friday before Judge Ken Molberg to talk about what's going on at the tiny Mexican restaurant on Maple Avenue. The judge Thursday granted a temporary restraining order to Avila's elderly mom Anita, who sought a civil injunction Thursday. The judge also ordered Ricardo Avila to "restore all property and tangible things taken or removed from" the restaurant within 24 hours of Thursday's order.
Calls to Ricardo Avila's attorney were not returned. The restaurant voice mail says Avila's is "expanding to a new location with a great patio and lots of parking."
Stay tuned.

FD Luxe's Jason Sheeler just told me that Ricardo Avila mentioned to him last year that Avila's invented the brisket taco. Could that be true? I thought only God could invent something as good as a brisket taco. (Full disclosure: Jason told me Ricardo Avila did not know he was talking to a journalist.)

Anyway, you all have been in Dallas much longer than me. What's the first brisket taco you remember? Does anyone know anything definitive about its provenance?

Meanwhile (and sorry for burying the lede), Side Dish reports that Avila's has closed.

Photo of brisket tacos (not from Avila's) by Evans Caglage/DMN

In case you've been sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to find out who the James Beard Award semi-finalists are, your wait has ended: the foundation has announced all 200 of them.

Yes, 200, 20 each in 10 categories including Outstanding Restaurateur, Outstanding Chef, Outstanding Restaurant, Rising Star Chef of the Year, Best New Restaurant, Outstanding Pastry Chef, Outstanding Wine Service, Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional, Outstanding Service and Best Chef in each of 10 regions.

Cutting to the chase, Stephan Pyles is a semi-finalist in the Outstanding Chef category, Samar is a semi-finalist for Best New Restaurant, and Sharon L. Hage is a semi-finalist in Best Chef: Southwest. Congratulations and best of luck to Stephan and Sharon!

Other Texas semi-finalists: Robert del Grande (RDG and Bar Annie in Houston) is also semi-finalist for Best Chef; and Tyson Cole (Uchi in Austin) and Armando Pomales (Cafe Central in El Paso) are semi-finalists for Best Chef: Southwest.

Interestingly, only four of the 20 semi-finalists for Best Chef are from the northeast: Jose Andres (Minibar, Washington, D.C.; Tom Colicchio, Craft NYC; Sam Hayward, Fore Street, Portland, ME; and Ana Sortun, Oleana, Cambridge, MA).

Finalists will be announced March 22 in New Orleans. A complete list follows after the jump.

Photo of Samar by Kye R. Lee/DMN; photo of Sharon Hage by John Ater/Special to DMN

For this week, both Mark Vamos and I headed north -- Mark to Plano, where he checked out The Holy Grail Pub, and I to McKinney, where I visited Rick's Chophouse in the Grand Hotel on the square. If you happened to watch the TLC reality show BBQ Pitmasters, you'll recognize chef Paul Petersen, who heads the kitchen at Rick's.

Rick's Chophouse
• Read and comment on the review
• Leave your own review of Rick's Chophouse

The Holy Grail Pub
• Read and comment on the review
• Leave your own review of The Holy Grail Pub

Photo of Rick's Chophouse chef Paul Petersen by Rex C. Curry/Special to DMN

Everyday with Rachel Ray magazine sent a team to taste pizza all over the country to find the best one. No, the winner wasn't in Dallas -- though it was in one of the four regions they carved the country into. It was Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix.

Nor did any Dallas pizzerias make the list of finalists, though one from Texas did: Dough Pizzeria Napoletana in San Antonio.

But three Dallas pie palaces made the big list: Campania Pizza and More, Coal Vines and Olivella's. I haven't been to Campania or Coal Vines yet. I have been to Olivella's and liked it a lot, but I liked the pizza at Nonna even more.

What do you think of Team Ray's picks? What would you have chosen in Dallas?

Photo of Olivella's pizza by Evans Caglage/DMN

I was checking out Empanadas N More, where owner Rosalba Benavides makes nearly everything by hand, and discovered that includes the corn and flour tortillas for her expanded Monterrey Mexican selections.

I had to try the barbacoa and the beef (deshebrada de res) soft corn tacos. Both meats were finely shredded, with distinctly different seasonings. I confess I loved the beef best; it was just so beefy. I added cilantro and onions and some of Benavides' hot sauce which is more about flavor than heat.

But the corn tortillas - there's just nothing like the fresh texture, the gentle "give" when you bite into them and their moist tenderness. Oh, they were good, and the tacos were only $1.65 a piece.

Meanwhile, here's an update on her empanadas, which are also handmade and fabulous. She now cooks the savory ones to order now so that they will be perfectly fresh when she sells them. This takes 20 minutes. Most of her customers either call ahead or take the time to shop, she says. She knows people want fast, she says, "but I'm not going to change."

She still has the luscious fruit empanadas ready to go, with the flavor stamped on the top with food coloring.

3949 Legacy at Coit (northeast corner, next to Tom Thumb), Plano; 469-467-0591; www.empanadasnmore.com.