If you are going to spend a Saturday afternoon in Dallas in July, you want shade, something cold in your hand, food that encourages you to stay, and a room that doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard. Paradiso in Bishop Arts checks every one of those boxes and then keeps going.
Continue readingFiled under Crave, Steven Doyle
The name makes more sense once you meet them. Chef Hugo Galván runs the kitchen. Hugo Osorio runs the bar. Together they run Hugo’s Seafood Bar at 334 W. Davis Street in Bishop Arts, inside a room with an original stamped tin ceiling, exposed brick, and an octopus painted on the wall. The place seats fewer than 30 people. On a Friday night it feels like twice that, which is not a complaint — it’s the sign of a room that has figured out exactly what it wants to be.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The raw bar menu at a serious restaurant can look like a geography exam — names of bays and inlets and small coastal towns printed in two columns with no explanation of what any of them taste like. Most people point at something and hope for the best. There is a better way. Oysters are one of the few foods that taste specifically of where they come from, and once you understand the regional logic, the menu stops being intimidating and starts being a set of options you can actually navigate. Here is how to read it.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
For most of its history, Texas has been an oyster-eating state that couldn’t grow its own. The Gulf of Mexico runs along 367 miles of Texas coastline, and for decades the wild oyster beds out there fed the rest of the country — enormous, creamy, deeply flavored bivalves that bore no resemblance to the delicate East Coast varieties sitting on ice at the better raw bars in Dallas. But farming them? That was illegal. Texas was, until 2019, the last coastal state in the country that hadn’t legalized cultivated oyster mariculture. Every state on the Atlantic, every state on the Pacific, even Louisiana and Mississippi and Florida — all permitted. Texas: no.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Dallas has been waiting for Clark’s Oyster Bar longer than it should have had to. The Austin institution opened in 2012, became one of the most copied seafood concepts in Texas, expanded to Aspen, Houston, and Montecito — and somehow Dallas kept getting skipped. That changes this fall.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
On Greenville Avenue in Dallas, Shuck‑n Jive has become a must-visit for anyone craving bold, Gulf Coast–inspired seafood and crawfish. With two locations — the original on Greenville Avenue in Lower Greenville and Lakewood, and a second on Belt Line Road in Addison — it’s a neighborhood favorite from the moment you step in. The energy is lively but approachable, with generous portions, fresh seafood, and flavors that make it clear this kitchen knows its craft.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Casamento’s on Magazine Street is one of those rare New Orleans institutions that feels frozen in its own era, stubborn in the best possible way. Opened in 1919 by Joe Casamento, it has weathered a century of storms, booms, busts, parades, and changing tastes, yet the place looks almost exactly like it did when it began. You walk in and immediately step into a narrow, bright space covered head-to-toe in gleaming white-and-green tiles. Walls, floors, counters — everything is tiled. It’s part practical, part personality, and unmistakably Casamento’s.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Few things embody the essence of New Orleans’ culinary sophistication like the char-grilled oyster. This dish, an elevated iteration of the humble oyster, is not merely food but an experience—one that blends the briny sweetness of fresh Gulf oysters with the deep, smoky allure of an open flame. The ideal char-grilled oyster is an exquisite union of textures: tender and plump within, slightly crispy and golden on the outside, infused with a rich medley of butter, garlic, herbs, and spices. It is an indulgence that lingers on the palate, a perfect marriage of earth, sea, and fire.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
