Eduardo Osorio is taking over the food at all of it.
The Village Dallas named him culinary director this morning, which puts him over Meridian, Over Under, Village Beach Club, Anise and Buzz & Bustle, plus whatever the property opens next. He stays on as executive chef at Meridian, which is the job he already had and the one that made the case for this one.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The Canadians have landed on Maple Avenue, and the menu is more interesting than the announcement was.
JOEY Maple occupies 2508 Maple Ave., next door to the Old Warsaw, and the opening date depends on which page of the company’s own site you read. The location page says September 6. The hiring listings say the restaurant opens to the public on September 10. Either way the doors are open now or open Thursday, so call before you drive over.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The elevator does the work of an overture. You step in at ground level in a parking structure off Reunion Boulevard, the doors close, and by the time they open again the city is 561 feet below and coming at you through glass on every side. On a Sunday morning that light is low and eastern and it fills the whole round room at once. Somebody hands you a mimosa before you have taken off your sunglasses.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Some wines earn their price through packaging and a good marketing budget. Cune Crianza earns it the harder way: a hundred and forty-five years of not screwing up a formula that already worked.
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Twenty-three years is a long time to keep a restaurant open, and longer still to keep it feeling like the same place it was on day one. Besa’s has managed both. Garland’s own tourism site sums up owner Al Shala in one line: he waits on guests like he’s running a five-star restaurant instead of a casual Italian spot. Anyone who’s eaten there more than once knows exactly what that means.
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Torry Cray and Adrian Verdin (we’ve followed Verdin through his hospitality career and he’s a keeper) have been on quite a run. Three restaurants in one year, all under the Café Olivia name, and this one might be the most interesting of the bunch. Café Olivita opens in early October at Park Center in Plano, and it’s not just a smaller version of the original. It’s Café Olivia rethinking what it means to serve an office building.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Ask ten people what they ordered at Bar Sardine last week and at least four of them will say a burger, in a French bistro built around escargot and steak Diane. Nobody planned it that way. That’s just what happened once people started eating there.
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Every serious Dallas eater has a running list like this one, dishes they’d order again without hesitation, the ones that make a whole reservation worth booking. Some of these plates come with decades of history attached. Others are newer, but they’ve already earned the loyalty regulars don’t hand out easily. What they share is simple: walk into any of these seven restaurants, order the dish below, and you’ll understand exactly why it made the cut. No second-guessing the menu required.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
