Destination Dining: FT33

After every food critic, blogger and tarot card reader in Dallas proclaimed FT33 the best new restaurant of the century late last year, I have been anxious to try it.  It took four weeks to snag a reservation for 2 on a Saturday night but we finally got in.  I was afraid all the hyperbole-and-a-half was going leave me underwhelmed and empty-pocketed so I put my game face on, hoping for the best but sort of expecting to be disappointed.

Industrial Chic

I wish the word WOW had more than three letters in it.

Chef Matt McCallister has redefined the term chef driven kitchen. Every plate, every ingredient, every nuance is his artistic self-expression.  The dishes hitting the table that night were like highly stylized, personal gifts from his kitchen.  His "season inspired modern cuisine" soars with freshness, balance and originality.   Okay, I am going to stop now because I am gushing so sweetly I am in danger of early onset diabetes.

Six apps, six mains, six desserts.  I guess the devil is in the details because two of those 666s were absolutely flawless. The menu is presented on a rectangular piece of press board, cleverly held in place by bindings on either side snugly fitting into top and bottom notches.  Down alongside the left margin of the page are the numbers 1 through 31, with a hole punched through that night's date.  A little later we discovered previous nights' menus had been cut into thirds and were used as coasters.  Clever and Green have never enjoyed a more symbiotic relationship.

Our crisply professional yet amusing waiter ran us through the short menu, highlighting certain items and explaining unusual ingredients we may not recognize.  (As restaurant savvy as I think I am, that comprised about half the menu, but I nodded along knowingly as he intoned exotic words and phrases like tassione greens and speculoos.)  He gave us a few minutes to ponder and then returned to the table with an inquisitive smile.  "Gentlemen, are you ready to order?" he asked politely.  I said what do you think I should have and without hesitating he suggested pork sugo, confit matsutake & hand-cut tagliardi as a first course and general tso's duck breast, lemongrass sausage, kimchi & fried wheatberries as my main course.  (I said fine after quickly checking the menu to see if he had just quoted the highest priced item in each category to boost his tip from the newby rube.  He hadn't.)

I never order duck.  I don't even think about duck.  And if I do, I don't like to think of them with breasts.  I couldn't quite picture pork sugo, had forgotten what he said matsutake was, and wheatberries sounded like something you'd find in the grocery store between Fruity Pebbles and Raisin Bran.

Matsutake is the Madonna of Mushrooms

Everybody Jump to the Left

OMGosh if those plates could sing they'd be belting out the national anthem (live not lip sync) at the Super Bowl this coming Sunday.  That sugo thing was actually a pasta dish with what tasted like North Carolina pulled pork sporting a sexy, savory mushroom sauce.  Sounds weird but it was gone in sixty seconds, no sharing.

Fine me $1,000 for all the duck dissing I've done in my life.  Those tender, medium rare slices of heaven kissed my tongue good night and then slid down my throat to cuddle lovingly in my stomach.  The dry sausage and pungent kimchi were welcome, tangy counterpoints to the rich duck breast, and the fried wheatberries provided a crunchy, fun alternative to a more plebeian rice offering.  My dessert (I know, I know, I don't eat dessert but the food was so good here I  had to try it) was the only dish to disappoint.  It was an okay chocolate torchon--a dense, fudgy disc with bergamot (isn't that a perfume?) earl gray (tea?) and cocoa nibs (the word nibs makes me giggle?)  The menu had informed me the pastry chef was Josh Valentine, the twirly mustachioed villain poseur on Top Chef Seattle this season, so maybe I was predisposed to dislike it since it came from him.  I don't know, maybe I've skipped so many desserts I've forgotten how to enjoy them.

At any rate, FT33 was and will remain a highlight in my dining repertoire.  Chef McCallister, I pudgily salute you.

Outside the Bubble

I think of myself as a sophisticated, urban guy, who is passionately into the Dallas dining scene.  (Your first clue might have been the title of this blog.) I'm the guy people go to for info when they want to take a date/client/friend/fatal attraction to a hip little spot that's newish and trendy.  They know that chances are, I've just been there.

I say this with some degree of self-mockery because in a restaurant crazy city like Dallas it is practically impossible to stay truly plugged in. (We have more restaurants per capita than any other city in America including New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.  We also have the most shopping.  I believe this is due to our complete lack of any topographical points of interest like mountains and beaches and rivers and forests,  so therefore we have nothing to do but eat and shop. And go to Friday night high school football games.  But I digress.)

Living two miles from downtown, the sheer density of chic dining options available to me within fifteen minutes by car (that's another thing we lack--walking) is astounding. There's been an explosion of small, chef-driven restaurants around here in recent years fashioned from reclaimed tile factories and vintage store fronts.  They're all excitingly creative and share the current fashion of the One Word Name.  (I believe when the economy returns we might become a tad less parsimonious and allow two or even three words when naming restaurants--but for now frugality rules.)

Since all of my comestible and hip factor requirements can be met in and around the city's core, I rarely venture beyond the loop unless I am driving to the airport or speeding up the tollway for large quantities of household cleaning products from Costco.  So imagine my surprise when I found myself sitting in a huge, suburban, chain restaurant last Saturday night and actually liking it.

This gigantic place was called BJ's Brewhouse and it was absolutely jammed at 8:30. The perky blonde hostess at the door smiled charmingly and said "Welcome to BJ's". I think she actually meant it. Our even perkier server (also blonde) was named Albany or Cheyenne or some other city and she was informed, efficient, and funny.  The menu had at least 248 pages with whole sections devoted to pizzas, burgers, sandwiches, salads, soups, pasta, giant stuffed potatoes, entrees, desserts, crafted beers, and funky food for kids. There was one part of the menu that was "Enlightened" (meaning more healthful and under 500 calories.) I chose from those offerings and ordered Thai Chicken Mango Salad with jicama, red bell peppers, red onions, mixed baby field greens, arugula, and bibb lettuce tossed in citrus-chili dressing and topped with a slice of avocado, mint, green onions, and sesame won ton strips.  It was astonishingly good and stupidly cheap.

My mother always said typical site-seeing tourist traps were swarming with people because they were the most interesting places to begin with.  I am going to apply my mom's logic to dining establishments and travel outside the bubble on occasion to where the masses like to gather.  I will no longer be a downtown dining snob.  I shall cease dismissing all chain restaurants as vast bastions of mediocrity. I will open my mind and my mouth and my wallet to the possibilities that cost efficient deliciousness might lie beyond the pale.

And next time someone asks me where they should go to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary I'm going to tell them Chili's.