Eating vegan in Dallas used to mean one of two things. You either knew exactly where to go, or you ordered three sides and called it dinner. That has changed. The city now has a handful of fully vegan kitchens worth a drive, and some of the best meatless plates in town come from restaurants that also smoke brisket and grill steak.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Some of the most talked-about sushi in North Texas is coming out of a gas station on a farm road south of Ennis.
Bristol General Store, at 5710 FM 660 in the tiny community of Bristol, was just named the No. 1 gas station restaurant in America by the car rental company SIXT. It topped a national list of 20. The ranking weighed TikTok views for 70 percent of each score and Google ratings for the rest. Bristol came out on top with a 4.7 rating and more than 380,000 views, edging out Billeaud’s Meat & Grocery in Broussard, Louisiana.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
There are a dozen places on Bishop Avenue selling tacos and margaritas on any given Saturday. Veracruz Cafe sells both, but that has never been the reason to go. The kitchen cooks from the Mexican state of Veracruz, the long Gulf Coast state that gave the restaurant its name, and the menu reads like it.
The restaurant describes its food as Mesoamerican, Mayan, Huasteco and Aztec. That is a big claim for a corner storefront at 408 N. Bishop Ave., but it tells you this is not a combination-plate operation. You can still get fajitas and nachos here. The good stuff is everywhere else on the menu.
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David Longoria announced it the way he ran the place, with no fuss. “HELLO, we are closing BBQ shop,” he posted last Thursday. Friday was the last day.
Longoria’s BBQ, the corrugated-metal joint at 100 Christopher Drive on the Everman edge of south Fort Worth, is closed after 31 years. In his goodbye post, David listed what the shop had earned: a dozen magazine stories, two spots on the most famous Top 50 barbecue list in Texas, and a Travel Channel episode. He wrote that he was “closing the doors and cutting the light one last time.”
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Juan Contreras saved $3,000 the slow way. As he has told the story over the years, he spent seven years working as a janitor at Love Field and at Tyler Street United Methodist Church before he had enough to lease a little building on West Jefferson Boulevard. In 1989 he opened a café there and named it El Padrino, after a restaurant he had worked at back home in Nuevo Laredo.
Thirty-seven years later, his family has been told to leave.
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Meridian has a new fall and winter menu, and Executive Chef Eduardo Osorio built most of it around the hearth at the center of the restaurant at The Village Dallas.
The menu went live this week. It leans on cold-weather produce, a handful of North Texas farms and the live-fire cooking that has defined the place since Osorio reopened it last fall after a yearlong renovation. The backbone is still modern American cooking with Italian and Mediterranean influences, but the new dishes run richer and warmer, which is exactly what you want once patio season starts winding down.
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Orion Pictures released The Silence of the Lambs on Valentine’s Day 1991. Somebody in that office had a sense of humor.
Thirty-five years later, Jonathan Demme‘s thriller still works on every rewatch, even when you know what’s waiting at the end. If you want something for Halloween weekend that scares you without a hockey mask, start here.
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Branson has a reputation for neon, dinner shows and traffic on the 76 Strip. Drive 10 minutes in almost any direction, though, and you’re in the hills with nothing around you but trees and a fire pit. Glamping has caught on fast out here, and it’s a good way to do the Ozarks without giving up a real bed or a hot shower.
From Dallas, figure on roughly seven hours in the car, so this works best as a long weekend. Here are four places to stay, plus where to eat, what to do and one spa worth the splurge.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
