Where To Eat Now
Want to know the Indian restaurant all of Houston is talking about? The Dallas dining room with “crackling chicken” that’s to die for? The Austin cafe where the elite meet to eat? Just ask me.
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By now the pierced and tattooed night crawlers of Deep Ellum have grown accustomed to middle-class diners pulling up to the valet parking stand and scurrying into the Green Room. The quirky, scruffy restaurant, with angel sculptures and electric guitars on the walls, is one of my Dallas favorites. Not only does it tweak the city’s stuffy image, but it also pushes the culinary envelope. Chef Marc Cassel’s savory espresso-rubbed carpaccio with spicy cress, shaved pecorino, and horseradish cream was sliced so thin it had to be scooped up with a spoon, while lamb T-bones with chickpeas, sun-dried tomatoes, and a preserved-lemon demi-glace came off like a cassoulet. Located in a shopping-center site that has delivered the coup de grâce to several eating places, Citizen—part sushi bar, part retro-chic dining room—has been struggling a bit of late. Hang in there, Citizen. Any kitchen that can deliver a filet of black cod with the texture of satin in a shimmering, ginger-sparked miso sauce does not deserve to go gently into restaurant oblivion. But my real love in Dallas is Suze, where chef Gilbert Garza straddles several cuisines with aplomb. Not a destination restaurant but a simple neighborhood bistro, Suze is intimate and welcoming, with dusty-rose walls, royal blue tablecloths, and French doors. Give me the sprightly tandoori shrimp (in a red-bell-pepper-and-coconut sauce) and the harissa-flavored couscous (with a frisky touch of chile and cumin) and you won’t hear a word from me for at least ten minutes.
Even though I know my hearing is endangered by the noise bouncing off the old limestone walls in La Traviata’s stylish downtown Austin space, I am longing for chef Marion Gillcrist’s arugula salad with chicken and Gorgonzola dressing, not to mention her silken scallops on cannellini beans, a special that can’t be offered too often for me. My other flirtation du jour is Starlite, which seems to have abandoned its practice of serving portions so small you needed reading glasses to find them. Most of the rooms in the old house have been stripped of their wallpaper and outfitted with tables bearing crisp white linen. Chef Chris Howard’s successes include hearts of romaine in a honey-cashew dressing with Stilton and an entrée of (almost underdone) scallops on a tomato fondue with a salad of microgreens and lemongrass.
Comfort me with meat loaf. Where do you go for good home cooking?
In Houston I’m a huge fan of the Triple AAA cafe (in the farmers’ market), the homiest place in town. I like its fresh-from-the-chicken eggs at breakfast and its smothered hamburger steak and greens at lunch. (The Triple AAA is also a great spot to take the kids.)
In Dallas home away from home is Mama’s Daughters’ Diner, practically an institution with six big, slightly utilitarian but inviting locations. At eleven-fifteen in the morning, folks are already lining up for lunch, knowing that their patience will be rewarded with the likes of tender chicken and dumplings, chicken-fried steak with good cream gravy, baked squash, awesome coconut pie, and stellar cornbread muffins.
In Austin Hoover’s has won my affections with its butcher-paper-covered tables, wooden booths, and such new and old takes on home cooking as chef-owner Hoover Alexander’s cornmeal-crusted fried catfish, portobello muffulettas, jalapeño creamed spinach, and Aus-Tex wings seasoned with chipotle and a touch of molasses.
I know an architect who refuses to eat at San Antonio’s Liberty Bar because he’s convinced that the cozy old two-story house, which leans like the Tower of Pisa, is going to crash to the ground someday with a load of satisfied diners on board. I’ll take my chances. Just give me a sandwich on the Bar’s homemade bread or Virginia Green’s dense, dark chocolate cake. The cool farmhouse vibe here obscures the fact that some of the dishes (fresh pear and Stilton salad, to name one) go beyond familiar homey fare. Even so, a less pretentious restaurant cannot be found in San Antonio.
Like a Norman Rockwell painting or a Russell Lee photograph of Depression-era Texas, the Paris Coffee Shop in Fort Worth has captured and preserved a simpler moment in American history, when “meat” meant beef, chicken was always fried, and the only sauces most people knew were ketchup and cream gravy. Diners reconnect with their roots over chicken-fried steak, meat loaf, and beef short ribs.
Is there such a thing as good barbecue in a big city?
Despite the inevitable crush of customers, Goode Company Barbeque’s two outposts still have a lock on Houston (the mesquite-grilled beef and the jalapeño-cheese bread rule). In Dallas my first choice is Sonny Bryan’s original location, where I wedge myself into an old, smoke-saturated school chair to eat the city’s top beef, pork ribs, and onion rings. Of late, though, I’m drawn to Holy Smokes!, whose pork ribs give Sonny’s a run for the money. Purely for the meat, I cast my Austin vote for newbie John Mueller’s B-B-Q, which is doing quite creditable brisket and all the rest at a basic location with cafeteria tables on the city’s east side (its young owner is a scion of the family that owns famed Louie Mueller’s in Taylor). For atmosphere, I take out-of-towners to the Iron Works’ breezy creekside balcony. At the Railhead in Fort Worth, everybody’s having a good time: Men—beers and sliced-brisket sandwiches in hand—are gathered around a big table watching a ball game; kids in line with their moms are whining for pork ribs; and the servers are all wearing T-shirts that proclaim “Life is too short to live in Dallas.” The best barbecue in Fort Worth is here, period.
Sometimes nothing will do but a plate of enchiladas.
In Houston I cannot stay away from Otilia’s humble little A-frame, with its awesome mole enchiladas, and Gorditas Aguascalientes, with its all-Spanish jukebox and simple but yummy chicken enchiladas, just like you get in Mexico. In Dallas I get my fix at two places: Nuevo Leon, for its pork enchiladas and its manchamanteles (“tablecloth stainer”), the traditional Mexican stew of meat and long-cooked fruit with a red chile sauce, and Luna de Noche, with a cool, modern look that sidesteps the usual Mexican-restaurant decorative themes—colonial or country. The menu embraces both homey (luxuriant cheese enchiladas) and hip (moist grilled salmon in a chilled poblano cream sauce). Whoever devised the color scheme at Evita’s Botanitas, in Austin, is in love with lavender—not to mention yellow, blue, and red. Me, I’m smitten with the little cafe’s five excellent table salsas and its chicken enchiladas swathed in great, not-too-sweet homemade mole sauce. A trip to San Antonio demands a stop at La Calesa, a simple little cottage with a warren of rooms painted in tropical-fruit colors. From its tiny kitchen come such gems as beef enchiladas in meat gravy, fluffy white-masa chicken tamales, and buttery, brothy corn soup.
We’d like to go someplace fun or special that the locals know but might not think to tell us about.
Houston’s hong kong city mall (way out west on Bellaire, where the street signs are in both Chinese and English) is one of the city’s best entertainment values. A friend and I wandered for an hour through this huge, spiffy shopping mall, stopping for dim sum at upscale Ocean Palace and somehow finding room for a rainbow of sweetened beans and other exotic treats over shaved ice at the Teahouse. About a zillion mysterious fresh sea creatures are for sale at the expansive grocery store, which we took to calling the Asian Central Market. Best buy: the $35 rayon robe with a dragon embroidered on the back that was hanging on a rack outside one of the clothing stores.Those crowds in Dallas next to the Restoration Hardware store on Knox are not, in fact, standing in line to buy knockoff Mission furniture. They’re queuing up at the tiny shop a couple of doors down, Wild About Harry’s, to order two things: hot dogs and frozen custard, both great. (I’m partial to the raspberry—custard, that is.)
In Austin Fonda San Miguel puts on the most extensive, most authentic Mexican brunch in the state every Sunday. Chef Miguel Ravago’s spread is gorgeous, as is the hip hacienda setting.
In San Antonio you can stand at the intersection of South Alamo and South St. Mary’s and be a biscuit’s throw away from the greatest concentration of breakfast possibilities in Texas: El Mirador (fantastic sopa azteca—Mexican chicken soup—in a bright, stuccoed cafe), MadHatters Tea House Cafe (“migas scram” with smoked Gouda in a crazy-quilt storefront), the Guenther House (fluffy buttermilk pancakes and great sausage gravy in a historic rock building), Espuma (espresso drinks and pastries in a house with a welcoming porch), Torres Taco Haven (an amazing choice of tacos made with homemade tortillas in a boisterous cafe), and BJ’s Tacos (más tacos in a former corner grocery store with colorful local art on the walls).
I can’t decide if it’s just the name, but I think Pedro’s Trailer Park in Fort Worth has definite franchise potential. Overflow crowds lounge around in the restaurant’s Airstream while awaiting admittance to the dining room (located in a separate building), a floral-wallpapered, wood-paneled, leopard-pillowed, sequin-sombrero’d tribute to kitsch. Given the decor, you’d expect fajitas and tacos (and you’d be correct). What you wouldn’t expect are chef-owner Paul Willis’ lobster Thermidor and tenderloin in cognac sauce. Never mind that the preparation and the service can be uneven. Most folks consider the gamble worth taking because it’s so much fun to go there.
Finally, this story would not be complete without at least one entry from El Paso: the inimitable H&H Carwash and Coffee Shop. A peerless twofer, the H&H is where blue- and white-collar wearers alike scrunch into seats at a tiny counter—frequently elbow to elbow with local movers and shakers—to eat fab red-chile enchiladas while waiting for their sedans and pickups to emerge from the suds. In recognition of its status as a beloved culinary and cultural landmark, last year New York’s prestigious James Beard Foundation named the H&H a winner of its America’s Classics Award. Only two other restaurants in Texas—Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth and the original Sonny Bryan’s in Dallas—can claim that honor.
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