Some of the most expensive restaurants in Dallas have a back door, and it’s the bar between 4 and 6:30.
The same kitchens that charge $36 for a plate of yellowtail and keep a $7,500 bottle of Burgundy on the list will sell you a smaller version of their best food for the price of a sandwich. The smart move is to show up early, sit at the bar, and save the full dinner for a birthday.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Weekends in the Design District have always been quiet along Riveredge Drive. That changes a little this Saturday. Puerto Cocina, the Baja-leaning seafood restaurant from Gerardo Barrera and Mauricio Gallegos, has started serving brunch, and it has added a weekday happy hour built around one-bite seafood plates and a cocktail to go with each.
If those names ring a bell, it’s because Barrera and Gallegos are the pair behind Xamán Café and Ayahuasca Cantina in Oak Cliff. Puerto opened last December on the ground floor of a new office building at 155 Riveredge Dr., with a menu developed alongside chef Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman and her Oh Hi! Hospitality partners. The cooking takes its cues from Valle de Guadalupe, the wine country just inland from Ensenada, which means a raw bar, crudos and tiraditos, house-made masa and a real fondness for shellfish. Texas Monthly added it to its dining guide earlier this year.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Happy hour burgers have a bad reputation, and most of them earn it. A restaurant slaps a discount on a sad, dry patty for two hours a day and calls it a deal. You end up paying half price for something you wouldn’t order at full price either.
That’s not what’s happening at the five places below. There’s a difference between a bar burger going cheap and a real restaurant discounting the same burger it serves all night, made the same way, by the same kitchen, just priced lower for a stretch of the afternoon. These are the second kind. And sometimes only a great burger will hit the spot.
Continue readingFiled under Crave, Steven Doyle
Pomegranates come into season here right about the time the evenings finally drop below ninety, and the two things belong together. This is a drink for that stretch, when it’s still warm enough to sit outside but the light’s going earlier every week.
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Most bars at Mockingbird Station are built for convenience — you go because it’s there and the evening is already in motion. The People’s Last Stand is a different proposition. The craft cocktail bar at 5319 East Mockingbird Lane, Suite 210 opened in 2010 with a single guiding principle — provide Dallas with a place for cocktail enthusiasts who care about what’s actually in the glass — and fifteen years later that principle is still running the operation.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
In 2011, a bartender named Joaquín Simó was working a shift at Death & Co, the celebrated cocktail bar on East Sixth Street in New York City, when LCD Soundsystem came on the speakers. The song was “Drunk Girls.” He was messing around with equal parts — a bartender’s shorthand for a drink built on four ingredients in identical measure — and had Aperol, yellow Chartreuse, mezcal, and fresh lime juice on his station. He put them together. It worked better than it had any right to. He named it after another LCD Soundsystem song, “Naked and Famous,” and put it on the menu.
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A good whiskey shelf does not need to be deep. It needs to be honest. One bottle for a Tuesday night when all you want is a finger of something warm over ice, one for a dinner party where somebody is going to ask for an old fashioned, one for the friend who knows what she is talking about, one for a birthday, and one for the night you actually want to sit down with a book and pay attention. Five bottles, five reasons, five prices that scale with the occasion. Here is what I would stock right now, all American, all on liquor store shelves in Dallas this week.
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Gin, with its storied past and complex botanical profile, stands as one of the most versatile spirits in the world. Born in the Netherlands during the 16th century, gin was originally conceived as a medicinal elixir. Known as “genever,” it was distilled with juniper berries, which were believed to have healing properties. The drink’s popularity soared when British soldiers brought it back home, where it evolved into the gin we know today. Over centuries, gin has maintained its allure, with its crisp, aromatic character lending itself to countless cocktails, from the classic martini to the effervescent gin fizz.
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