Pat’s Pick
Pat's Pick
Photograph by Ray Hetzel
Pat's Pick
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PHOTO BY RAY HETZEL |
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KEEPING UP APPEARANCES Like a jet-setter back from a vacation on the Côte d'Azur, the Riviera has reopened after an intensive two-week remodeling job looking not just rested but ten years younger. The exterior of the old-guard Dallas restaurant has been painted butter yellow, new fabrics brighten banquettes and chairs, and the wall-to-wall carpeting has been ripped up to reveal oak flooring unseen since the place opened in 1984. And with more space between the tables, you can murmur naughty things to your date without shocking anyone else. To celebrate the updated look, executive chef Michael Marshall has devised two new menus: light fare such as champagne-steamed blue prawns in the bar and imaginative treatments of classic chops, racks, filets, and seafood in the dining room. The results do not disappoint. Superlative Australian lamb comes with a spunky mango-mint chutney, and duck breast is accompanied by a lush port wine-fig sauce and dandelion greens. A Roquefort soufflé defines "cloudlike." When everything must be just right, with no slip-ups, the Riviera is still the place to go.
PATRICIA SHARPE
Golden Watermelon Soup With Champagne Gelée and Balsamic Ice Cream
Chef Michael Marshall creates a light dessert that is not as sweet as you would think.
On The Road
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GAZING AND GRAZING No one drives all the way up to the McDonald Observatory, on top of Mount Locke in far West Texas, just to eat. But astronomy buffs have a treat in store if they happen to wander into the StarDate Café. Not only is its menu of quesadillas, focaccia sandwiches, soups, salads, and muffins light-years beyond the mundane fare of ordinary snack bars, but its high-tech design is appropriately stellar, with stainless-steel tabletops and stained-concrete floors and walls. Five months old, the cafe is housed in the observatory's new pueblo-style visitors center, and it takes its name from the well-known radio spots and magazine produced by the facility, which is part of the University of Texas at Austin. After you eat (perhaps a New Orleans-style muffuletta sandwich or some green apple-studded chicken salad on a bed of spinach), stroll around and enjoy the breathtaking view. And if you visit on an evening when a star party is scheduled, you can peek through a telescope. If you're lucky, you might see the rings of Saturn—few restaurants anywhere can beat that for a nightcap.
PATRICIA SHARPE
Best Fests
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RED ALL OVER Medina is minuscule—one main street, a couple hundred residents, a dozen or so stores—but during the International Apple Festival on Saturday, August 3, the town will be happily overrun by apple bobbers, bagpipers, balloon blowers, puppeteers, clowns, arts and crafts sellers, and 18,000 visitors. In midsummer, apples from other parts of the country have passed their peak, but the varieties that thrive on the Edwards Plateau are just reaching their sweet, tree-ripened best. Many of the 150,000 bushels expected this year will be turned into apple juice, apple pies, apple enchiladas, and practically anything else that can be made from an apple. About the only apple product that will be missing from the festival is hard cider—the event prides itself on being family oriented. In fact, Medina itself is so wholesome that when we called Texas Monthly columnist Kinky Friedman—who lives nearby and has poked fun at it in a few of his novels—to ask for a quote, he didn't have a bad word to say. "It's a charming little town," he growled, "like the one you never grew up in."
PATRICIA SHARPE
Love Creek Apple Enchiladas
from Love Creek Orchards.
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