This is the Texas Pastrami sandwich at Parker & Barrows in Bishop Arts. I’m not sure if it really is pastrami. But it’s damn good fatty smoked brisket. And the sandwiches are huge. This was from my second visit. The first time I had their take on a Reuben, which was also quite good.
King Wally says check it out.
The Vetted Well burger at The Vetted Well. Unique for having baked beans on it. It was far more novelty than it was good.
After crawling out of our bunker this morning, Zoë and I walked around the neighborhood to assess the damage and poop on some snow. I had gone earlier, so only Zoë made with the poopings.
Bone in rib eye for two, mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, hollandaise and bordelaise sauces with Barolo.
Deconstructed banana pudding (bottom)** Caramel pretzel (top) with Sauternes.
Post dessert of cookies.
Don’t get me wrong, this was a very good meal. But compared to the meal we had last year at John Tesar’s other, now closed restaurant, Spoon, this was fairly meh. There are literally a trillion other fine steakhouses in Dallas and, unless I am willing to buy an once or two of their 240 day dry aged beef*, there was little here to compel a return visit.
*I was not.
**Bottom
Like any food nerd I take pictures of stunning dishes whenever I can. But sometimes I forget to post them. This was eaten about a month ago. Mot Hai Ba is quickly shooting up to near the top of my favorite Dallas restaurants.
I happened to bring my camera to work the other day and managed to take a few pix around downtown.
And the good news is, they’re my kind of pod people. Never in my decade of living in Dallas can I recall the council doing one thing right. And now, twice in one day I read stories on the Unfair Park about the council doing, or about to do something incredibly right for a change.
Unpossible!
Must be Pod People.
First there was this:
Please recall my rant from 2008 about bike helmets. A silly ordinance used to shake down taxpayers by issuing chick-shit tickets.
And then
What a glorious day to be a Dallas resident where I can finally bike to Love Field without a helmet and fly on a cheap airline and not have to be subjected to schtickful flight attendants.
And in, hopefully, 11 days, Pecan Lodge will reopen in Deep Ellum.
Now I just need to get that craft beer / pie house opened up across from work on Elm, and Dallas would be perfect.
I was reading this article on The Atlantic website when I noticed the familiar statue.
“That looks familiar”, I thought. “Isn’t there a statue like that in Deep Ellum. Holy shit, that is Deep Ellum.”
In 2013 while eating BBQ from Lockhart Smokehouse and pie from Emporium Pies and sipping a Peticolas Velvet Hammer, I realized that Dallas had become a city I actually liked living in.
For the most part, this video represents much that I like about my city.
I have to confess, while the online menu looked amazing, I was a little apprehensive about going to a restaurant of one of a “celebrity” chef – John Tesar.
I have no idea what I was thinking. This was, perhaps, one of the most elegant meals of my life.
After a half dozen delicious oysters, we had a trio of crudo consisting from upper left, geoduck, cuttlefish and uni. Each was completely different from the rest but each was delicious. The uni was amazingly fresh and almost perfect. I say “almost” only because of my belief that nothing is perfect.
The main courses consisted of skate with a duck confit dumpling – easlily one of the best dishes of 2013
and a perfectly cooked filet of sturgeon.
Dessert consisted of these two beauties. Above is some chestnut concoction with a Makers Mark ice cream to the right, which was awesome.
And this tropical fruity dish with tapioca beads and deliciousness.
The awesomeness of this place is that there were not one but three free courses – an amuse bouche, a pre-dessert and a post dessert.
Crazy!
If you’re not eating here you’re fucking crazy and must not like good food. And for that I feel deeply sorry for you.
A+
For 2013, I’m going to handle restaurant reviews a bit differently. Instead of a letter grade, I’ll be giving restaurants a “Description of Future Interest” such as: Won’t Go Back, No Need to Go Back, Must Go Back, This Restaurant has Entered my Sex Dreams. Also, because writing is not my strong suit*, the reviews will be shorter, but hopefully more frequent.
Max’s Wine Dive calls itself a dive, but can a “dive” serve duck confit? I don’t like bars calling themselves a dive. If you think you’re a dive, you’re not a dive. And you can’t be a dive if your bar is in in sterile strip mall. You’re only a dive if you appeal to white trash alcoholics or hipsters who need a place to ironically sip Pearl. The wine list was ok at best**. And there was no sign of Max. So I have no idea how this place got its name.
The food was good, with the tuna and duck (not on the same dish) as highlights, but the atmosphere was atrocious. The place was way too well lit for either a dive or a wine bar. And some jackhole dumped enough quarters into the juke box to treat us to a seemingly endless stream of Elton John and Billy Joel. Neither of which should ever be played in a dive.
No Need to Go Back
I feel bad about this, because this is a place I was wanting to like – a fast food restaurant specializing in healthier choices such as grass fed burgers and pastured eggs, but Start did nothing for me. The grass fed burger I had was good but could have used a sear or some more seasoning. It was just kinda bland. And the tater tots were terrible. Even though they are baked, they tasted of rancid seed oil with virtually no crispiness.
“But Steve”, you ask “Isn’t Start very good compared to regular fast food?”
Maybe. If you’re comparing to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Jack…, yes. Unfortunately, Start doesn’t price itself at ordinary fast food prices. For what I paid at Start I could have had an even better grass fed burger and excellent sweet potato waffle fries at Goodfriend. And for that reason, Start, you’ve been Chopped.
No Need to Go Back
If it’s a cold winter evening and maybe you’re not feeling so good about yourself and the only way to lift your spirits is comfort food, a bottomless glass of free sangria and a restaurant staff drunk off their collective gourds, then Jack’s Southern Comfort Food is for you. Although I would suggest you invite someone along to share in the hijinks.
First of all, the food is very good. There’s nothing fancy here. Just good comfort food. The Pigs in a Pashmina are decadent mash up of smoked sausage, cheese and puff pastry that will make you forget just about anything shitty that happened that day. Their upside-down pot pies (with the filling poured over a home-made biscuit instead of crust) will also bring a rib-sticking smile. And if you have room for dessert, the buttermilk pie is a must.
And if you’re interested in a dinner and a show, Jack’s is a great choice. Out waitress informed us up front of her four-shot/four beer afternoon break. And while no such proclamation was made by the chef, it was clear something was up when we came to inform us the pork belly would be delayed a few minutes as the restaurant filled with the smoke of burnt pork belly.
Oh, and until they get their liquor license, they give away free sangria, which is nice.
Will Definitely Go Back
* Probably not good for a blog writer.
** Yes, that means a dearth of Willamette Valley Pinots.
As I'll elaborate in a future blog item, it's not always easy to crap out blogs. Even if it's just pictures. Please to enjoy downtown Dallas, Slobberbone and the Homegrown Music and Arts Festival from back in May.
| Synopsis | Wow! This place is in Dallas? |
| Starters |
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| Entrees |
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| Dessert | Cheese plate -- Gorgonzola Dolce, Pecorino Toscano & Robiola with almonds and quince mostarda. |
| What I Liked | What’s not to like. The food is awesome and the staff is professional and inviting. Seriously, is this place really in Dallas? |
| What I Didn’t Like | They don’t have a full bar. A pre-meal cocktail would have made the evening perfect. But this is merely nit-picking. |
| Conclusion | A |
| Synopsis | A confusingly named lower Greenville eatery is visited by the King and quickly shutters and moves to the old York Street location. |
| What I Liked | Ummm. Well, the foie gras was ok. |
| What I Didn’t Like | Ummm. Well, there wasn’t much to dislike either. |
| Conclusion | One thing that I’ve learned from watching way too much of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is that a restaurant should find what it’s good at and focus on that. The concept of World Piece Café is an array of foods from around the world, but not in the 900 page Cheesecake Factory menu fashion. But how can a restaurant do a Moroccan tangine and Flemmish beef stew and do them both really well? I submit that they can’t and shouldn’t. Leave the cavalcade of world flavors to the overly flaired Happy McFunster’s. And hopefully that is was they will be doing. As we were leaving, we were told that they were moving into the recentlly vacated York St. location and changing the name to Bistro Watel’s. I’ll probably give the new location a try since it is walking distance to my house. |
| C | |
Note: The map is to the new location.
| Synopsis | Five Sixty is celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s 360° rotating Asian-fusion restaurant high atop Dallas’ iconic Reunion Tower. Certainly when I think Asian food, the go-to guy is going to be an Austrian pizza thrower. |
| The Food | Yes, that was just a cheap shot because the food was amazingly amazing*. (I picked up that bit of wordsmithery from watching way too much Olympic curling). Appetizers In retrospect we may have peaked early with the lobster and scallop shumai and the tiny crab cakes. After each bite I would affirm that the one in my mouth was the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I repeated my hyperbole until both plates were sadly empty. If Nazis held me at gunpoint and forced me to chose my favorite, I would probably spend the rest of my life tormented by the image of the crab cakes being marched into a death camp**.
Entrées It’s doubtful that I will be able to come up with some Holocaust metaphor to describe my experience with the entrées. But I will certainly try. The Green Thai Curry Seafood Medley was very good, very green and very medley with its prawns and scallops and sea basses. But I can’t honestly characterize it as being 560 feet better than what I could get at Bangkok Inn, just down the street from The Wallagio. The Wok Fried Whole Sea Bass on the other hand, was fantastic in every way. As stated, it’s a whole sea bass and it’s spectacularly rolled out frozen in wok fried crispy awesomeness. The waiter then gently removes the tasty flesh from each side of the beast and then rips the spinal column out to complete the task. I was then presented with a huge plate of both salty/crispy skin and soft, moist, delicate inner meat. It was accompanied by a near flavorless ginger ponzu sauce and thai chili sauce for which I had to request extra ramekins. Dessert I'm not a fan at all of soufflés. They just tend to be way too eggy for my tastes. But I was feeling adventurous and decided to order their chocolate soufflé. I’m sorry. I mean their Valhrona Chocolate Soufflé. And I am now of the belief that if you inundate a soufflé with enough fine chocolate, you can achieve something that doesn’t taste like Bosco on a hardboiled egg. Indeed, this soufflé was quite delicate and delicious. |
| What I Liked |
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| What I Disliked |
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| Conclusion | Despite the atmosphere this is a very good special occasion destination restaurant where great food will be consumed. A- |
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*Essentially a joke for someone who may not even read this.
**Who doesn’t love a good Sophie’s Choice reference in a restaurant review?
| Synopsis | Dallas Fish Market is a seafood oriented (what clued you in??) fine dinning restaurant in the heart of the Dallas’ moribund downtown. Admittedly, we went on a Sunday. But the area was deader than a Johnson & Johnson heiress. What? Too soon?? |
| Dishes |
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| Likes | Everything. The food and service were superb. The staff, knowing that we are sharers, thoughtfully served the lobster corn chowder in separate bowls. |
| Dislikes | Their espresso machine was broken. That’s totally unacceptable. How am I supposed to enjoy my dessert without a nice espresso. What are we, savages???? |
| Conclusion | Dallas Fish Market is an excellent seafood restaurant that will more than satisfy any fish based yearnings. And if you go on a Sunday you’ll pretty much have the run of the place. Regrettably, I visited DFM in 2009 and can’t use it towards my resolution goal. |
A
Still South Dakota. Found a cute campground that most of the year is a hopping family holiday retreat. But it’s cold and snowy and latish Oc...
