Start Spreading the News

For a foodie there has never been a more exciting time to live and eat in Dallas.  In the last few years, chef-driven, innovative, provocative and adventurous restaurants have sprung up all over like goosebumps on the back of my neck when I hear someone mention Twerking or Groupon or Honey Boo Boo. Well, not really like that's because that's more of an eerie, sickening feeling like the world has just violently veered off its roller coaster tracks.  Maybe I should just say it seems like there are really a lot of terrific places to dine in Dallas and all the new ones mostly work and the good ones keep getting better.

Some married friends we knew a decade ago when they lived in Dallas have returned here to live. When P and P's kids were little they lived in the far north suburbs and there weren't that many remarkable restaurants to lure them downtown/uptown.  Oh we had Kent Rathbun's Abacus, which is still around, although it doesn't seem as aspirational as it used to.  We had The French Room at the Hotel Adolphus which is where you need to go just once in your life so you can experience what it must have been like to formally share a fine repast with Marie Antoinette while the peasants were eating cake and thinking about how to get a head in life. (Sorry).  I think Avner Samuel must have had a decent place at that time since he opened and closed about 6,000 restaurants before hitting the jackpot with his awesome NOSH on Oak Lawn a couple of years ago.

P an P relocated due to brilliant career moves to the Northeast, first in New Jersey and later, sublimely ensconced in a palatial apartment atop the Omni Berkshire Place Hotel.  With 24-hour room service in The City That Never Sleeps I think in the same situation I might have ended up weighing as much as Paula Deen's facial spackle. Careers brought them back to Dallas, and with kids all grown, they bought a futuristic, steel-framed house in a remote part of Kessler Park, which ten years ago was a carjacking just waiting to happen but is now teeming with nearby bistros and charming cafes in the Bishop Arts District.  Think about the trendiest, friendliest, least pretentious, pedestrian-friendly place you know and that is absolutely nowhere near Dallas.  Kidding aside, that description actually defines Bishop Arts, with standout restaurants like Driftwood, Hattie's, Bolsa, Boulevardier, Lucia, Eno's...the list goes on and on.  And the crazy thing is, when the P's lived here ten years ago every one of those joints was called Wigs by Consuela or Pepe's Body Shop or This Site for Lease.

Pretty Sure No One Ordered the Breast of Chicken

And another hotbed of deliciousness has popped up out of seemingly nowhere--the Dallas Design District, which used to be an evening and weekend ghost town of high-end household wares with European names and triple digit price tags, is now hopping with some of the brightest and best new places in the culinary universe.  We met our friends at the Meddlesome Moth  (its website address makes me laugh out loud, www.mothinthe.net) and it was so dang busy they had people stacked vertically as they waited for their tables. We got a round of drinks and kind of moshed sideways until we ended up crowding into a corner of a semi-private dining area with a table full of snockered bridesmaids and an embarrassed MRS degree candidate wearing a veil over her Trojan Magnum earrings. Looming over the table was a gigantic, vintage photo of a twenty-something Sophia Loren seated in a swanky nightclub looking askance at table mate Jayne Mansfield's upper body wardrobe malfunction. Apparently, it was very chilly in that club.

Being a balmy, 115 degree evening, we decided to stroll across the street to FT33, my favorite restaurant in the world for at least the next fifteen minutes.  I've raved and blogged about it before and as always, it did not disappoint.  Chef Matt McCallister was behind the line looking all tatted and focused but I didn't see his ravishing wife Iris, who I was hoping to run into so my street cred could be personally validated.  It wasn't necessary though; the food forward, seasonally-inspired modern cuisine spoke for itself and the P's were dutifully impressed by FT33's industrial chic ambience, fun, professional service and ridiculously savory cuisine.  We shared the generous charcuterie platter but all selfishly hunched over our entrees like convicts in the state pen.  I had the duck breast and never once thought of Jayne Mansfield.  Until now, that is.

I still haven't mentioned DISH, which is sophisticated, sublime and sexy, or Victor Tango's, a silly name for a seriously good place, or Sissy's Southern Kitchen, which makes me squirm to say out loud but always delivers swoon-inducing Southern-fried comfort on a plate.

Coming back to Dallas from New York, our friends the P's are astonished to find the restaurant scene so vibrant and eclectic and I feel proud to say I play a small part in that, even if it is only in cyberspace. So consider this:  Maybe instead of Big D we should start referring to our town as the Little Apple.

Sometimes Once Is Enough

So...a few weeks back I rhapsodized about the meaty wonders of Del Frisco's Grille.  I had a steak that night that to my admittedly somewhat impaired memory was equal to or better than the best I'd ever tasted. Perfectly cooked medium with a hot red center, that slab of cow was nicely seasoned and as melt-in-your-mouth delicious as a Kobe beef-scented snowflake.  We went back last night because I couldn't stop fantasizing about their New York Strip.  It was like I was Charlie Brown and that dish was my little red-headed, bovine dream girl for whom I wanted to buy fur-lined gloves at Christmas time.

We pulled up to the crowded valet stand and debarked amid the myriad Clairol's Dallas Blonde #11 girls who are now all sporting straggly sausage curls and several shirt guys who'd clearly spent the day surfing at Lake Grapevine judging from the sun-kissed streaks in their longish hair and bronzed biceps flexing 'neath their rakish untucked polos.  There were at least six 18-year-old hostesses (it's another month before they'll head off to UT for fiendishly delightful freshman sorority girl high jinx) and all of them seemed slightly confused about exactly how the computer monitor thingy in front of them worked as evidenced by their precocious little frowns and distracted hair tossings.  One of them did finally connect the dots and discovered with admirably controlled glee that indeed I did have a reservation. Then an exquisite line of actress-worthy empathy formed between her expensively maintained brows while she informed us that our table was being cleaned and we would need to stand awkwardly in the doorway for a few minutes while someone less fortunate than she did some sort of manual labor she'd witnessed but not actually ever experienced firsthand.  We dutifully obeyed.

I went to the men's room and got in line behind four guys in appallingly expensive jeans, heads glued to their smart phones with studied intensity as if they were international hedge fund traders or suffered from serious Words With Friends addictions. It seemed like it took each one of them longer than customary to do their business and I concluded they were either artfully arranging their tousled locks or doing lines off the granite countertop.  I finally wound my way back to the front and Hostess #5 showed us to our two-top, which was front and center by the plate glass exterior window overlooking a crowded patio scene of attractive twenty-somethings who managed to look freshly showered and impeccably groomed despite the fact that it was 98 degrees at 9 o'clock in the evening. Or in Dallas terms, winter.

Our waitron unit was a cute young thing (again with the straggly sausage curls) in seven shades of black.  We were watered but not breaded.  Deciding to skip an appetizer we both ordered the wedge salad and the New York strip.  D doesn't usually order steak in a restaurant due to an unfortunate, recurring tango with acid reflux syndrome, but I convinced him the plate was well worth a little post-prandial regurgitation.  The wedges came and went with much enthusiasm and happy grunts of "best ever" and our server was genuinely delighted that our plates were so clean she could take them back to the kitchen with no need for wasteful ware-washing.

The moment I'd dreamed about finally arrived.  Our steaks were deposited in front of us with great ceremony and they were Playboy centerfold beautiful minus the staple in the midsection.  Mine enjoyed yoga, cooking and long, romantic walks on the beach while D's was more of a party girl who liked kicking it up at western saloons but was seriously considering a career in nuclear physics. Happily grasping my fork and knife, I plunged into the center of the steak and swallowed a mouthful of perfectly seasoned fat with a companionable sliver of gristle. What the what? Surreptitiously I stuck my fork in my mouth and charmingly withdrew the offending offal and put it back on the edge of my plate. Sadly, the next bite was worse.  I carved that quivering mound of artery-clogging grease into a pile of blood-soaked scraps that would have given even serial killer Dexter pause but never found a forkful to swallow that didn't threaten to  re-emerge as some nightmarish incarnation of the Blob.  Somehow the pile of scraps on my plate had grown to something well over twice as large as the original 12-ounce steak, dwarfing the tiny, oven-scorched mound of twice baked potato chunks.  Server Girl happened by, and with eyes as large as Cracker Barrel saucers asked if everything was all right.  I gently asked her to find a manager, whom she summoned quickly, if a little fearfully.

I explained to Manager Bruno that I was really not a chronic complainer but the piece of steak I had been presented was far from worthy of the Del Frisco Prime reputation.  He took one look at the greasy, fat streaked gristle bomb in front of me and mercifully, removed it from my sight immediately. He did everything right, asking first if they could bring me another one (I shuddered "no" with my napkin clasped against my spasming oral orifice) and then Server Girl brought us this enormous Coconut Cream Pie, which, dear readers, you know is not in my culinary wheelhouse.  D asked to have it boxed up and I choked out a request for the check, which was brought promptly and with genuine apology for the misfortunate experience and a heartfelt entreaty to give them another chance to show that the beef purchaser and broiler man had not actually been inflicted with temporary blindness or homicidal tendencies.  I noticed they had not charged me the $38 for the steak but questioned whether the unordered $10 Coconut Cream Pie was really supposed to be on my tab.  Again, very graciously, they corrected my bill, which was still nearing the century mark due to the salads, D's steak, a couple of cocktails and a glass of perfectly adequate red zinfandel.  Although the steak was repulsive their service recovery was first rate.  Being in the restaurant business, I know mistakes sometimes happen and I bear no ill-will to Del Frisco's Grille.