Somewhere between the second mimosa and the whole grilled fish, Uptown Dallas starts to feel a long way off. Sunlight fills the glass walls of Avra’s Conservatory, plants hang overhead, and at the next table somebody is working through a tower of oysters at 12:30 on a Sunday without a trace of guilt.
Welcome to weekend brunch at Avra Estiatorio.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The old brick building at 2912 McKinney Ave., near Howell, was Theory Nightclub for a while. Today it opens as Marlowe, a lounge that would like to handle your entire night, from a 6 o’clock martini to closing time at 2 a.m.
It isn’t quite a restaurant and it isn’t quite a club. Come early for drinks and a few plates, swing by after dinner somewhere else, or settle into a banquette and stay while the lights come down and the music comes up.
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Sunday in Bishop Arts moves at its own speed. Dogs outnumber cars on some blocks, every patio seems to have a spritz on it, and around 2 o’clock you can hear a brass band before you can see it. Nobody is in a hurry, and that is exactly the right way to do it.
Here is how to spend an easy Sunday in the neighborhood, with a few places to eat at different price points, a couple of stops for shopping, and the best spots for a drink. Wear comfortable shoes. Everything here is walkable, which is the whole reason Oak Cliff folks guard this place like a family recipe.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Ask a room full of Dallas people where they ate as kids and you will hear the same dozen names. Some of those places are gone. A surprising number are not.
Your grandparents may have ordered these plates on a first date. Your parents probably bribed you with them after a dentist appointment. The dining rooms have been repainted and a few have changed hands, but the food would still look familiar to anyone who sat down there in 1965.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Before Torchy’s, before Velvet Taco, before every bar in town put a fried avocado on a tortilla and called it a special, there was Tin Star.
Rich Hicks opened the first one in Uptown in 1999. He’d come up through Macaroni Grill, where he was an area director at 25, and his idea was simple: take the taco seriously, put it in a fast-casual room, and charge accordingly. Brisket and queso. Pork and kimchi. A portabella taco with roasted corn and sweet potatoes that people still bring up by name. In North Texas at the time, that was a strange way to sell tacos.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
In 1986, Norma Manis sold the Oak Cliff cafe that carried her name. She had been feeding Dallas for decades by then, and the plan, as far as anyone could tell, was to finally sit down.
That plan lasted about two years.
Continue readingFiled under Crave, Steven Doyle
Maman’s fall collaboration with Martha Stewart is now at all three of the chain’s North Texas cafes, and one item is on a short clock. The oatmeal raisin sandwich cookie, two chewy oatmeal cookies with golden and dark raisins and cream cheese frosting, is sold only through September 30.
Continue readingFiled under Crave, Steven Doyle
La Calle Doce opened on September 15, 1981, in a renovated house on West 12th Street in Oak Cliff. Oscar and Laura Sanchez ran it, and they served Mexican seafood at a time when most people in Dallas ordered a cheese enchilada plate and called it a night. That was 45 years ago last week. The house is still there. So is the fish soup.
The anniversary happens to fall on the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month, which gives anyone looking for an excuse a pretty good one.
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