A traditional Rioja dinner usually calls to mind roast lamb, Manchego and Ibérico ham. The menu Catch Dallas built for its recent wine dinner with La Rioja Alta took a different approach, pairing one of Spain’s most classic producers, La Rioja Alta, with hamachi crudo, miso-glazed sea bass and a center-cut filet. The evening made a persuasive case that long-aged Rioja is far more versatile at the table than its reputation suggests.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The lights went out at the downtown Neiman Marcus on Wednesday, September 30. After more than a century on Main Street, the flagship store closed for good, and the Zodiac Room on the sixth floor closed with it.
Some longtime customers showed up that last day dressed in black. A few left flowers at the entrance. That might sound dramatic if you never had lunch there. If you did, it makes perfect sense.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Michael “Mico” Rodriguez died last week. He was 68.
Mico was my friend. For a while now, the two of us had been working on a book about his life, and there is a lot of life to tell. So this isn’t an obituary in the usual sense. It’s a few things Dallas ought to remember about the man who changed how this city eats Tex-Mex.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Avner Samuel is cooking in Addison now, at La Stella Italian Steakhouse and Music Lounge, and his latest tasting menu reads a lot like the old days on Oak Lawn. There’s live scallop with osetra caviar, scrambled eggs under black truffles, foie gras on Wagyu. The six courses he recently served are headed for the regular menu soon.
If you dined at Aurora, you’ll see it right away. If you didn’t, some background helps.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Ask Cindy Pedraza about her mother’s first job and she’ll tell you the detail that stuck: she always smelled like chocolate.
That was the 1980s. Andrea Pedraza had taken a part-time job at Dallas’ first chocolate shop, and it turned into a 25-year career. She learned European technique, rose to head of production and became a master chocolatier. Then the recession hit, and mother and daughter lost their jobs around the same time.
In 2009, they opened a shop of their own and called it CocoAndré.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Because they transform boring travel time into pure fun, portable gaming PCs are becoming more and more popular. It no longer seems uninteresting to wait for a reservation, endure a lengthy trip, or unwind in a lounge. The portable gadgets deliver console level entertainment on the go, making them an excellent way for travellers to stay entertained, connected and mentally refreshed between destinations.
Continue readingFiled under Crave
Let’s get one thing out of the way. If your idea of opera is a man in a horned helmet singing for four hours about doom, this is not that opera. (Save the Wagner for March, when The Dallas Opera brings in Lohengrin.)
This one is about a lovesick small-town mechanic, a schoolteacher who is a little too smart for him, a swaggering American soldier, a con man peddling fake medicine, and a bottle of cheap red wine that half the village believes is a magic love potion. Nobody dies onstage. Somebody gets tipsy. Everybody goes home happy. If it were a movie, it would star Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and you’d stop to watch it every time it came on cable.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Most Dallas diners can name a favorite Lebanese spot, a go-to Indian buffet and three Persian kebab houses without thinking twice. Afghan food rarely makes the list. That’s a shame, because it’s some of the most generous, comforting cooking in the city, and right now you can find it from Lower Greenville to the Sycamore neighborhood of south Fort Worth.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
