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.