The best appetizers aren’t the ones with the longest ingredient lists. They’re the ones where two or three things are genuinely good and nobody got in their own way trying to do too much. Here are three that look like they came out of a real kitchen and actually take almost no skill to pull off.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
There’s a specific type of evening that Dallas does well and doesn’t talk about enough. You’re at the bar. There’s a good martini in front of you. The room is the right amount of loud. And instead of committing to a full dinner, you order two or three things to share and make a proper night of it. The restaurants that understand this format — that a great bar bite is its own art form, not a consolation prize for not getting a table — are the ones worth knowing.
Here’s where to go and what to order.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Summer in Dallas is not for the timid. It is hot, it is relentless, and it demands a game plan. If you are hosting a pool party this season, the smartest thing you can do is stop trying to play bartender the whole afternoon and make one great batch cocktail that does the work for you. Then fill a tray with a few things people will actually talk about. Here is our version of a proper Crave-worthy pool day.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The cocktail party that works is the one that does less than it should. Twelve passed bites do not work. Three signature cocktails do not work. A sit-down menu pretending to be a cocktail party does not work. What works is five small things you can pick up with one hand, one good drink already poured into a pitcher, a bowl of nice olives somewhere visible, and a host who actually shows up to her own party instead of disappearing into the kitchen for the first hour.
That is the whole formula. People come to a cocktail party to talk to each other. The food is there to keep nobody from getting drunk on an empty stomach, the drink is there to give them something to hold, and the host is there to keep the room moving. Nothing else.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
