Eating Uptown: Bella

I am seldom here to shock you. I am here to entertain and quasi-enlighten. So please brace yourself for a truly shocking revelation.

I'm not exactly the trendiest dude.

If, by the time I've spotted a trend, then chances are that trend is probably three trends ago. Shit, now I've wasted my allotment of "trends".

So it is with some measure of sadness that I must place Bella into a what appears to be a growing fashion in Dallas of having "restaurants" with impressive looking menus but really people just go there to drink – and, of course, to be seen. Let's call these places Doucheterias.

It was, after all, the impressive looking menu that drew me to Bella – lambburger, seafood trio, chili rubbed pork chop. It all sounded good.

And, while waiting a substantially long time for our meals, we observed from our patio table, a veritable parade of overly tanned, roided up, faux hawked "gentlemen" drive up in high end automobiles with their "dates" replete with double Ds. So, in other words, they looked like me on Halloween.

If only the food could make up for the stench of douchebagguery.

After taking well over 30 minutes to present our meals (in a nearly empty restaurant when we placed our order) we were finally presented with our slop.

The seafood trio was like something one might expect at Captain D's. The shrimp were simply horrible – rubber little beasts tasting of yesterday. But to make up for the bad flavor of the shrimp, the scallops were simply flavorless, but also rubbery. The only pleasant part of the dish was the seabass. It was perfectly flacky and tasty. But it's fucking seabass. It's hard to screw up.

But as bad as the seafood trio was, the chili rubbed pork chop was the real star of the show. But by star of the show, I mean it in the way that Mike Myers was the star of The Love Guru. If you're a restaurateur and care so little about food as to serve something that resembled a flattened (yes I said "flattened") McRib, then just serve your silly expensive drinks and maybe some finger foods.

Do yourself a favor and just get some fish and chips at Black Friar a few blocks away.



D

2626 Howell St. Suite 100 Dallas, TX 75204


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Eating Uptown: The Old Warsaw

This review kinda makes me sad.

You see, The Old Warsaw should be the kind of old school fine dining restaurant that I would embrace. After all, it is the old school atmosphere of Morton’s, and to some extent the Uptown Truluck’s, that make each of these some of my favorite local eateries. But, alas, the place just didn’t have IT. And I wish I knew what IT was. Because then I would open up a restaurant with IT and make a fortune.

Things started off well. My Bombay Sapphire martini was nothing short of perfection. And it arrived in a very timely manner. But then again, it should have. Maybe it’s the economy or perhaps the Mavericks game going on down the street, or maybe it was because it was Lost night. But this cavernous restaurant had only two tables going.

Next came the lobster bisque. Usually the highlight of any story, here we got a minor misstep. It was luscious with large chunks of lobster. But it was not the flavor explosion I anticipated – very good, just not great.

And this is essentially what was wrong with this place. My appetizer of crab stuffed jumbo shrimp was very good, just not great. My halibut was very good, just not great. It was also a bit undercooked and oddly paired with rice. It may be just a prejudice of mine, but I don’t associate rice with fine dining. Risotto, yes and perhaps a nice pilaf. But this was just rice.
Dessert consisted of a slice of very good (but not great) coconut cake and an extremely mediocre slice of carrot cake.

Ultimately, this is restaurant with very good food that I have no desire to ever go back and revisit.

B



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