Destination Dining: Farm Stand

I was in Los Angeles this week on business and had the happy chance to reunite with some former colleagues from a couple of lifetimes ago.  You know those kinds of friendships, where even though you haven't seen or talked to each other in 14 years, you pick up in the middle of the sentence you last left off with like there was no time lapse in between.  We caught up, we reminisced, we laughed until tears came to our eyes, and we marveled at the passage of time and how little it had affected our outward appearances.  (You can probably guess that last part was after we had donned some wine goggles.)

After first gathering at my hotel we ventured over to a restaurant in El Segundo. El Segundo is a little

It Doesn't Smell That Bad

prosaic community just south of LAX which, though right on the water, is still affordable due to its airport sound pollution and ever present aromas from the water treatment plant and factories that the city's founding fathers had brilliantly built smack dab in the middle of the beach.  It is fondly referred to as Smell Segundo, and if you do venture to the beach it is advisable to wear close-toed shoes and a hazmat suit. But other than that it is lovely. There is a Back to the Future 1950's Main Street complete with barber poles, a Fix It Plus and a Repair Square strip mall, and several yarn shops.  It also has a few quaint little eateries, diners, and donut palaces along with a handful of really great restaurants.  One of these is the Farm Stand and that is where we went.

Farm Stand is like so totally LA.  Start with your basic Farm to Table concept, add vegan, organic, local, seasonal, non GMO ingredients, toss in a reduced carbon footprint, then stir.  Sprinkle with salty ocean air, spritz with a little smog and serve.  Our server looked just like American Idol runner up David Archuleta wearing white disc earrings the size of Kennedy half dollars.  His name was Edgar and he was good at pretending not to be annoyed every time he approached our table to take our order and we had still not looked at the menu due to everyone talking all at once punctuated with shrill laughter.  Several hours elapsed until we finally ordered a bunch of plates to share, and I must say his enthusiasm to be still serving us seemed genuine.  No doubt he is actually an actor. All waiters in LA are, you know.  Big secret revealed!

Farm Stand's menu is dotted with handy symbols so you can tell at a glance if the dish is consistent with your Southern California sophisticated palate and dietary needs.  A green V means it is vegetarian, while NO means non-dairy.  A black squiggle denotes vegan optional and a wheat stalk crossed out diagonally in red means gluten free.  A star indicates that Sandra Bullock ate it one time and ##@$! means a drunken Mel Gibson went into an anti-Semitic rage and yelled obscenities at passersby while eating it. So handy!  The restaurant is very committed to reducing its carbon footprint so its bussers and dishwashers double down as migrant workers. You can see them through the windows to the outside, their backs laden down under heaps of fresh produce harvested from nearby gardens in California's virtually endless summer sunshine.  Awesomeness.

Being the urban sophisticates we are, we ordered seven or eights plates to share and I grandly instructed Edgar to just sequence them as he saw fit.  He interpreted this to mean that he would wait until everything was ready, and brought every dish to the table all at once.  What with water and wine and plates and cutlery already in place, he had to use the adjacent table to put some of the food on.  The two diners seated there seemed a bit startled but not the least bit disturbed by it. SoCals are so chill.

The coarse hummus with pita was garlicky and delicious, as was the diced cucumber, minted yogurt dip topped with walnuts.  Pumpkin ravioli with basil cream was a standout, as were the all natural meatballs in ancho chili cream sauce.  (I wondered what an unnatural meatball would taste like but my inner moderator thankfully squashed it before it spilled out of my mouth, which anyway was full of Superfood Soup--a healthy yet slightly underwhelming concoction of herbs, barley, organic chick peas, organic lentils, organic pintos, caramelized onions, garlic, turmeric, yogurt, and sauteed mint.) After a couple of spoonfuls I was so jacked up on vitamins and greenery I did a little Muscle Beach flexing, showing off my taut, well defined and undefiled body until Edgar's boss came over and kindly asked me to stop it.  I meekly obliged, but not before twerking just a little bit because I am such a fan of Miley.  (He lies!)  At least I didn't set myself on fire, Jimmy Kimmel prank video style.

The meal was really delicious, but not so more than the company.  My old friends are definitely non GMO, totally organic, and their carbon footprints smell like chocolate.  Smiles!

O Canada

We just got back from a week in Montreal, a city unlike any other in North America in that everyone speaks French and a lot of men wear mismatched plaid shirts and shorts, usually with socks and sandals. The women are beautiful and chic but smoke several packs of cigarettes a day, resulting in throaty, really sexy speaking voices.  Of course you could say "I am looking for a houseplant" in French and it would sound lustily seductive.  I was hopeful that the haut cuisine of La Belle France would translate across the Atlantic, but sadly, it does not, except for a preponderance of baguettes and orange marmalade.

To be fair, we didn't take any fancy clothes so our options were limited to sidewalk bistros and casual pubs.  It doesn't matter whether the food is Canadian or Afghan or Japanese, the menus all share one food item peculiar to Quebec (but quickly snaking its way west through the other provinces.) This item is called Poutines, and where it is listed prominently on virtually every menu in town, it is usually followed by two or three exclamation points, as if to say "you've been searching the world over for something fresh and exciting and now you have found the most incredible delicacy, enjoy"!!!

Mmmmm, Cheese Curds

Poutines are disgusting.  They are overdone French Fries topped with oozing cheese curds and slopped with thick brown gravy. Denizens of Montreal are inexplicably mad for them; they are sort of the Sprinkles Cupcakes of Canada. They eat them all day long.  They eat them at breakfast with cafe au lait, at lunch with a spork and a beer, and at dinner with exquisite sterling silver cutlery.  When I ordered my first (and only) poutines and the waiter set the plate in front of me, I trotted out my best high school French and said Excusez-moi, serveur, mais vous avez placé juste à tort le petit-déjeuner du chien en face de moi.  He was astonished that I had compared this mess to the dog's breakfast and insisted that I try it.  I made a big show a taking a huge bite, which seemed to satisfy him, so as he turned his back I delicately removed it from my mouth by hacking it onto the sidewalk.  I poured the rest of it in in a potted fern next to me, which promptly died.

In Old Town Montreal, with its ancient buildings, sorbet shoppes and a Cirque du Soleil tent, we had a wonderful Croques Monsieur (ham and cheese sandwich) with about twenty-five pounds of French Fries.  I made hexing signs at our waiter when he approached me with a bowl of glistening curds and a ceramic boatful of gravy, and he skittered away nervously.  The India Pale Ale I drank with it was delicious and cold.

We went to a place called Dunn's Famous (I was like famous what since it seemed like a dangling

Dunn's Famous....what?

modifier but I was shushed.)  It turns out they are famous for their smoked meat sandwiches.  I asked if smoked meat was like pastrami or brisket or corn beef or something and the waitress just tossed her curls at me and said I'd have to see for myself.  (She said it in French, so she might have actually said something entirely different regarding my diminished mental abilities, not sure.) I ordered the Smoked Meat Reuben and it was exactly like pastrami/brisket/corned beef.  I think Dunn's is famous just for being famous like that dreadful reality show family where everyone's name begins with a K.  You know who I mean.  Don't make me say it.

Piazzetta on Rue Ste Catherine

Piazzetta looked interesting, with its bright red sidewalk cafe and attractive servers.  They had some weird toppings on the menu I'd never seen in a pizza place before, like beef tongue and chicken feet and of course freaking cheese curds, but I went sort of All Italian American and ordered the single serving pepperoni, "fully dressed." (I guess modesty prevails in Montreal to some degree since naked pizza is frowned upon.)  It was a rectangle of crispy flatbread with a modicum of mozzarella, some tasty sliced tomatoes and 12 discs of bland, slightly pink meat that reminded me of Canadian bacon but with less spicy heat.

Honestly, the best meals were the daily breakfast at our guesthouse, called La Conciergerie.  Every morning we welcomed a generous repast of yogurts, fresh fruit, cereal, juices, and muffins, all ratcheted

Ooh la la, Le Petit Dejeuner Etait Magnifique

up by accompanying rarities never found in your more mundane "breakfast included" places. Two days we had boiled, spotted quail eggs, and another time yellow plums from Southern Ontario.  The owner dispatched a lackey every morning to the local patisserie, so we could also indulge in fresh, aromatic croissants, little breakfast tarts and brioche with butter and homemade jam.  I sort of never wanted to leave but I feared another pants fastener debacle and the owner was too nice a guy to be blinded by brass projectile jeans buttons.

All in all, it was a great trip if not exactly a gastronomically adventurous one.  I am glad to be back in Dallas and just starting to think about which inventive, chef-driven kitchen we might be gracing with our presence tonight.  I heard there's a new French place in the Park Cities that we might try.  If they feature poutines on the menu I'll probably make a scene.

Shrill, Party of 12

So, we thought we were going to stay in last night because this is Restaurant Week in Dallas.  You know, sort of the New Year's Eve Amateur Night of Dining that lasts forever in the doldrums of Summer when Olive Garden aficionados decide to trade up for 35 bucks and bring their bratty children to upscale restaurants so they can run wild while they nurse fruity sweet vodka cocktails.  Wow that sounded kinda haughty. Okay I own it, I'm that guy.

More out of habit than interest, I nevertheless speedfinger walked through Open Table and realized RW doesn't start until Monday night so I snagged an 8:15 reservation for two at Sissy's Southern Kitchen.  (I really hate that name.  Saying "meet me at Sissy's at 8:15" is a sure fire way to lose all street cred in the world in which I dwell.  Even thinking it to yourself is somehow diminishing.  I tried referring to it as SSK but D was like "huh?" so I had to say it out loud and I could see all respect for me beginning to dim in his eyes so I started acting all macho and karate chopped a phone book in half and we were good again.)

We arrived at the spectacularly busy front door (neighboring Hibiscus was Deadsville, btw) and told one of the three perky door women that we had a reservation.  She dimpled and asked us to "walk this way."  (I muttered "if I could walk that way I wouldn't need the talcum powder" under my breath but this elicited no laughs as I have used that line approximately 4,013 times.)  She then proceeded to seat us at a lovely table for two in the secondary dining room beside a party of 24.  Seriously?  They were on their third or twelfth round of drinks and the cacophony of great friends celebrating something really important was beyond deafening.  We lasted about 16 seconds and I went back to the hostess stand and asked why we were being punished.  She looked at me quizzically and I patiently explained that being seated adjacent to a private party wasn't very fun for those not invited to it.  She was nice about it and apologized and then led us to a secluded table between the back door and the bathroom.  Thank you.

Our server was sort of checked out, like she was thinking about a term paper that was due on Monday except this is Summer and she was older than most college students so I'm not sure.  Don't get me wrong, she was okay, just absolutely disinterested in the moment, or us, or both.  We ordered beverages because it seemed appropriate and we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.  I had a beet salad with pecans and goat cheese, which was good, and D dawdled with the Sloppy Slaw, which was a ramekin of blue cheese dressing with three leaves of torn cabbage swimming inside it.  Odd. Maybe it's a Southern thing.  Or a Sissy thing.  Snort.

Then an entire hour elapsed.  It wasn't unpleasant, given the choice view of pairs of girls repairing to the ladies room to plump up their hair and pull down their tight miniskirts and jocular shirt guys high fiving their way into the one-seater with frilly doilies and cans of air freshener festooning it.  I wanted to snatch a fried green tomato from the table next to me but the woman seated there had ESP or something and kept guarding it with her jungle red manicured talons and glaring at me beneath her finely arched brows.  Her date was kind of menacing and I came THIS CLOSE to explaining to him that I just wanted to taste a little of her tomato until I realized that might result in my being on the business end of his meaty, violence-prone fist.  The entire restaurant was full of large boisterous parties, all intent on breaking the sound barrier with shrill laughter and booming, hearty guffaws.  I longed for comparatively quieter atmosphere of the American Airlines Center when the Dallas Mavericks annihilated the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals, Game 6.

At last our food arrived.  I had their famous fried chicken, which was garbed in a thick brown burqa of unseasoned coating and pressure-cooked to within an inch of its life. I peeled off the crunchy, greasy outer layers and managed to eke out a few forkfuls of nicely seasoned poultry. The chicken came with 2 gallons of mashed potatoes and one of those stainless steel gravy boats like you see at Denny's.  I had a little and asked for the rest to be Fedexed to the starving children in Africa.  Our server noted the request with no outward sign or acknowledgement of my flat out hilarious repartee.  D had the chicken-fried flat iron steak, which for some reason he thought was chicken but I corrected him twice and he was annoyed but I ended up being right, as usual.  He ate half of it and had the rest wrapped up for our pups' lunch.  Too bad it is still in his trunk and it is 11:45 the next day and 114 degrees in the shade.

The place was absolutely jammed and got even more so as I payed our just north of $60 tab, which is very low on the Dallas continuum of restaurant going.  Perhaps there is a correlation between cheap prices and bustling crowds, I don't know.  But as I left the restaurant and awaited the valet parker, I wondered to myself in a wry, Carrie Bradshaw voice, if Sissy's Southern Kitchen wouldn't be more appropriately named Jim Bob's Grub.

No LA in NOLA

One Can Never Be Too Loose on Bourbon Street

I just returned to Dallas from a four day conference in New Orleans.  I personally love The Crescent City, the City That Care Forgot, for its Spanish/French/Whatev architecture,  upside down cemeteries, the Mighty Mississippi and its churning Delta Queens, the charming people with "dese and dose" accents and megawatt smiles, the smell of Bourbon Street on a hot July night, redolent of high-spirited frat boys who've knocked back a few two many hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's...well maybe that last one, not so much.  Ahh, but the world class Creole cuisine really makes my bons temps roulez.

The conference was for an association of venue managers and was positively jam-packed with intense educational classes, helpful workshops, inspiring keynote speeches, crazy trade show antics and extravagant theme parties (use your wry, ironic inside voice when reading that sentence.) Sadly, there was not a lot of free time in the agenda to explore all the new little chef-driven kitchens and hole-in-the-wall dives that make New Orleans so romantically gut-busting. Finally, on Sunday night, I discovered an evening free and quickly
speedfingerwalked through Open Table, only to find to my immense dismay that none of the places I was anxious to try--Root, August, or Maurepas Food, were available.  Heck, I couldn't even get into Stella, which I'd been to before.  My feet were killing me from walking about 400 miles that day so I lazily just went next door to where I was staying at the Hilton Riverside to a convenient little sanitized enclave of bistros and cafes and ended up dining at Ruth's Chris Steak House.

Red-faced, I feel shame for exposing myself like that in a food blog, and fear I might be shunned by the foodie universe in coming weeks.  (Of course there is nothing wrong with Ruth's Chris except the odd possessive in its name.  Many people mispronounce it and call it Ruth Chris's, but it's actually, puzzlingly Ruth's Chris.  I mean, what the heck is a Chris steak? Is there a breed of cattle called Chris?  Did perhaps a woman named Ruth buy a Steak House named Chris and didn't have the money to change the sign out front so just spray painted "Ruth's" across the top? These questions blur my mind but thankfully don't blunt my appetite. But I digress.) 

Perhaps He Fears Toe-Main Poisoning

The restaurant was jammed with fat white people who had apparently traveled to the Big Easy in July for the sheer pleasure of wearing high-waisted shorts and socks with sandals in the hot stickiness of high Summer. There was also a preponderance of canes; canes are not an unusual sight in the French Quarter, although they are usually sported jauntily by fancy dressed men in pimp hats and spats. These canes looked more like supplemental weight supports, like a third leg but denuded of socks and sandals. Even some of the children had them.

My server was precious. Actually, her name was Precious, or at least that's what her name tag said, and it was entirely appropriate. She talked me into a drink against my will, forcing me to add "easily influenced" to my resume just below "chain restaurant-goer." She told me she had just put a "loaf" in the oven for me and was going to fetch some whipped butter. I looked the other way as I spread it on a slice of crusty, fragrant bread not once, but twice. (I would have felt worse about it if the couple at the table next to me hadn't eaten two entire loaves each. The woman finished up the last one by dunking the end of it in her butter dish like a cop with a donut in a coffee shop.)

The fresh tomato and red onion salad with balsamic vinaigrette was quite the perfect excuse for eating my weight in blue cheese crumbles.  It was followed by a huge slab of prime New York Strip cooked perfectly medium.  It was on a sizzling hot plate spewing off sparks of smoking butter that made an artistic stain on my white shirt reminiscent of Van Gogh's work during his 1888 sojourn to Arles.  I had eaten about half of it when the snap at the waistband of my pants went berserk and flew right into Precious's eye, blinding her for life. She cursed loudly in some swampland patois and I was afraid she was going to summon a spell from Marie Leveaux or else open up a can of Cajun whupass on me.

It was definitely time to go.  I gathered my sagging pants in my left hand and tried to hide the impressionistic butter painting on my shirt with my right as I hastily scrawled my signature on the credit card slip.  I lost my balance on the way out and struck my head on a lamp post.  As I staggered away I could feel disapproving, squinty eyes on the back of my head from all the tourists still inside.

"Some people just don't know any better," they were thinking as they finished up their chocolate bread pudding with bourbon pecan sauce topped with non-dairy whipped cream.

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.

Two Ends of an Indie Spectrum

I haven't posted in a while because I've been revisiting places this month that I've already blogged about, I have been on the road a lot, and I've just felt lazy.  But rejoice, devoted readers, for I have an update for you today.

Most of the time I blog about restaurants that I've booked on Open Table because of 1) the lazy factor cited above and 2) for the most part, restaurants that go to the expense of being part of the Open Table network are going to rank somewhat higher on the food chain than your neighborhood greasy spoon.  Occasionally I do find myself in smaller, indie concerns, and I've just been to two in a row that live at opposite ends of that spectrum.

Hola Jose

Curb Appeal

Last night, before viewing the scintillating, jiggly watersports of  the Broadway musical Flashdance at the Dallas Music Hall, we joined our friends at the pizzaLOUNGE across the street from Fair Park.  (nORMALLY i would make FUN OF weird and random CAPITALization SHENANIGANS but I am feeling CHARitablE.  Sort OF.) This dive offbeat dining den was decorated by a couple of friends who had apparently downed a six pack one morning and then went to a few garage sales on a sunny Saturday afternoon with about $65 in their pockets.  It so worked.  Walking into the place gives you both instant street cred and a holla big dose of chill, and made me think of hookahs and hookers even though there were neither anywhere in sight -- or at least not at 6:30.  The DNA of pizzaLOUNGE is hipster-beatnik and it never wavers from that pose.


Sofa King Slices

The bartendress/server was not our usual gal but a tatted up and pierced little thing sporting a sideways baseball cap and clothing that looked like she'd swiped it from the costume shop for Rent when it was in town.  I ordered a Ketel 1 martini up with a twist and she asked me what "up" meant.  I told her shaken over ice and strained into a glass and she narrowed her eyes at me as if I had insulted her people.  I offered to make it myself to show her how (wouldn't be the first time for Dining Dave to do some quick OTJ training) but she kindly told me to shut up and sit down.  Drinks came quickly and we ordered our usual, one large Sofa King pizza.  There is an inherent joke about that name because of how great it is and that's all I am going to write about that. They have awesome, secret-sauced pies with very high quality ingredients like imported sausage from Jimmy's and their hand-crafted crust is delicious and baked with puppy love devotion.  It's a super cheap date and fun and the polar opposite of pretentious.


Up, Up, and Away

This Was More Than $65

Then today I met an impossibly smart and sassy business contact (Hi Iris!) for lunch at a place she suggested called Ascension Coffee House. If pizzaLOUNGE is hipster-beatnik then Ascension is hipster-coolest-kid-in-the-cafeteria.  Its interior is light and airy and decorated by a professional armed with a lot more cash and a fine eye for detail.  The inside smells of freshly roasted coffee beans harvested from crazy tall plants by rare, albino chimpanzees raised in the farthest reaches of Middle Earth.  Their passions and obsessions focus on nuanced coffee-procuring and local produce-sourcing and artisinal cheese-mongering and saving the Sudan, mostly in that order.

I had an iced coffee and was asked if I wanted whole, 2%, non-fat or soy milk in it.  I said all four and our server feigned wry amusement, which was very polite of him.  They've got free WiFi but you aren't allowed to use it after 6 PM because WORK STOPS AT SIX.  (Word is this is a rule they really do enforce and not some outrageous lie I just made up to make you laugh.)  Lunch is either panini or salads but everything sounds quite good.  I ordered the Spanish Albacore Salad which promised Spanish tuna, arugula, egg and cornichons with olive caper relish and sherry vinaigrette. 

Where's the Tuna?

It was really very tasty but I had to resort to my bionic zoom lens to find the teeny little flecks of tuna that were parsimoniously assigned to my plate by a garde-manger who is probably borderline sadistic.  We are talking way less than one ounce of protein.  It reminded me of my impoverished childhood when at the end of a week, our large family might be out of groceries so my mom would take the One Remaining Navy Bean we had in the larder and tie a string around it.  Then all of us kids would line up in chronological order and the eldest would get to swallow the bean.  Then my mom would yank it back out and feed it to the next kid, and then the next.  Being youngest, sometimes all I got was Essence of the ORNB.

So tuna essence or not, the salad was super tasty because all of the other ingredients were so fresh and of such high quality.  The ambience of Ascension is welcoming and comfortable.  The dinner menu looks interesting and I definitely plan to return.  I might bring along some tater tots in my pocket for later, just in case.