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2005 – Page 2 of 8

Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Comfort Zone

Senior editor Patricia Sharpe, who wrote this month’s feature on home cooking, talks about local opinions and okra.

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Around the State|
November 1, 2005

Around the State

November—People, Places, Events, Attractions11-2005Checked anything off your life list lately? No, we don’t mean organizing your garage, putting your kids through college, or writing your will. We’re talking birding: Ever made note of a warbler, a hawk, or an egret? Texas is home to more than six hundred species of

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Roar of the Crowd|
November 1, 2005

Seeing Red

I cross the Red River regularly for business, and it galls me every time. You see “OU” everywhere, and you can’t say anything, because Bob Stoops owns Mack Brown [“The Eyes of Texas Are Upon Him,” September 2005]. Mack Brown may be a nice guy, but I want trained

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Recipe|
November 1, 2005

Pie Crust

2 cups minus 3 tablespoons chilled Crisco shortening (do not substitute another brand) 5 cups flour plus several tablespoons 1⁄2 teaspoon salt dissolved in 1⁄2 cup chilled waterCut the Crisco into the flour and work it with a pastry blender or the tips of your fingers until it is

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Pat's Pick|
November 1, 2005

Upper Crust

As any pie freak will tell you, it’s all about the crust. And crust purists here in Texas agree that for sheer flakiness and tenderness, you can’t beat the pies at Royer’s cafe, in the Central Texas community of Round Top. If you want to verify this yourself, you can

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Restaurant Directory

All restaurants accept major credit cards unless otherwise noted. AMARILLOMontana Mike’s, 4332 SW Forty-fifth Avenue, 806-353-3339. Open Sun—Thur 11—9, Fri & Sat 11—10.AUSTINArkie’s Grill, 4827 E. Cesar Chavez, 512-385-2986. Open Mon—Fri 5:30 a.m.—3 p.m.Dot’s Place, 13805 Orchid Lane, one block south of Howard Lane, 512-587-4222. Open Mon—Fri 11—2.Freddie’s Place, 1703

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Books That Cook|
November 1, 2005

Books That Cook

When you buy a cookbook that is part of a series entitled, “Great Restaurants of the World,” you know you’re in for some lavish lessons in the culinary arts. Part homage to the famous North Dallas restaurant and part cookbook, III Forks: An Insider’s Look at the Famed Restaurant and

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Pie + Cobbler

AustinThe apples in the filling are crisp, the spicing pitch-perfect, the crust reasonably flaky at unpretentious but agreeable Tony’s Southern Comfort, and the restaurant’s smooth, firm sweet-potato pie is equally worthy of a slice. And don’t overlook the peach cobbler, plenty sweet, with cinnamony crusts on top and bottom and

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Sports|
November 1, 2005

Yao Got Game

China’s most famous athletic export arrived in the U.S. as a seven-foot-four-inch seventeen-year-old who excelled at every move except America’s most glorified one. Given his upbringing, getting him to stuff the ball in the hoop in rim-rattling fashion was no slam dunk.

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Texas Monthly Talks|
November 1, 2005

Robert Rivard

“People speak nostalgically about family newspapers. For every decent one, there were literally hundreds of embarrassingly bad ones.”

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Hail to the Chief

For going on five years, my admiration has grown for the weekly paper in the tiny Panhandle town of Miami (above). The New York Times it ain’t, but it tells me everything I could ever want to know about local births and deaths, windblown mail, bad potholes, and good yards.

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Contributors|
November 1, 2005

November 2005 Contributors

Charles S. AndersonYou may not know Charles S. Anderson’s name, but you certainly know his work. He’s created striking images and logos for Turner Classic Movies, Target, French Paper, and Best Buy. And though the designer, who is based in Minneapolis, rarely creates artwork for magazines, he jumped at

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Music Review|
November 1, 2005

Snow

The Meat Puppets flowered in the Arizona desert with a style so unique that it seemed as if no one in the band had ever heard music of any kind. In fact, behind their weird psycho-country-rock was a group with enormous appeal that quickly became an eighties cult favorite. Led

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Music Review|
November 1, 2005

Pure Genius: The Complete Atlantic Recordings

The call came in 1954: Dallas saxophonist DAVID “FATHEAD” NEWMAN was being asked to join a band. On the phone, a young RAY CHARLES, who had befriended Newman on the road years earlier. Newman took the gig. It was work. It also became a career. PURE GENIUS: THE COMPLETE ATLANTIC

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Music Review|
November 1, 2005

Dos Amigos

If only by virtue of being crossover artists, FREDDY FENDER and FLACO JIMENEZ have each secured a rarified place in Hispanic music. Fender’s earthy Rio Grande Valley hits, like “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” got him there, while Jimenez’s San Antonio–style conjunto attracted Anglo ears as varied as Glen Campbell’s

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Book Review|
November 1, 2005

Six Bits a Day

ELMER KELTON has been recognized by the Western Writers of America as the best western author of them all, and he shows no signs of slowing down with SIX BITS A DAY (Forge). Set in the 1880’s, his latest novel visits the cowboying origins of Hewey Calloway, Kelton’s popular character

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Book Review|
November 1, 2005

Under the Wire

When the United States dallied unforgivably long before entering World War II, young Texan WILLIAM ASH forfeited his American citizenship to join the Royal Canadian Air Force and fight Hitler. UNDER THE WIRE (Thomas Dunne Books), co-authored with Brendan Foley, captures Ash’s short but impressive career as a Spitfire fighter

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Book Review|
November 1, 2005

Dermaphoria

Dallas native CRAIG CLEVENGER burrows deep into the sordid and paranoid realm of illicit recreational drugs with his second novel, DERMAPHORIA(MacAdam/Cage), a fictional crash course in the where and how of designer-drug manufactories. Eric Ashworth’s gruesome tale begins with his regaining consciousness cuffed and chained, covered with bandages, and knowing

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Patricia Kilday Hart|
November 1, 2005

Who is Joe Barton?

The most powerful Texas congressman you’ve never heard of. And a partisan hack. And a bipartisan pragmatist.

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Pork Chops

AmarilloDecorated with faux-log-cabin walls and outdoorsman ephemera—“Closed till the fish stop biting” reads a chalkboard near the bar— Montana Mike’s is intended to look like a mountain fishing lodge in the heart of the flatlands. Skip the fish and order the thin-cut grilled chops, which come two to a plate

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Meat Loaf

AustinA near-Platonic meat loaf emerges from the to-go window of Dot’s Place; the beefy slices crumble as you cut into them, melding with the tomatoey topping to form a sort of glorious, Southern-style Bolognese sauce. On Thursdays, meat loaf mavens go to Tony’s Southern Comfort for well-textured slices of this

By Patricia Sharpe and June Naylor

Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Okra + Greens

AustinGreens always have an undercurrent of bitterness—that’s what makes them interesting. The yummy fresh collards at Dot’s Place (presently in temporary quarters and serving to-go only) balance the bitterness with salt. The humble spot’s stewed okra with juicy tomatoes gives that much-maligned vegetable a good name; the seasoning is Southern

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Chicken-Fried Steak

AustinThe color is toasty-brown; the light fried batter is crisp and not too thick; the meat inside is tender—what more do you need to know about the admirable CFS at Tony’s Southern Comfort, a family-operated place in East Austin. A spunky and exceptionally crunchy envelope of fried batter surrounds a

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

House Specialties

Austin Whoa! You don’t get just some stringy bits when you order chicken and dumplings at Dot’s Place; you get whole pieces of baked chicken. The dumplings, somehow fluffy and substantial at once, may be the world’s best use of white flour. The heavenly nutmeg-and-clove-laced mashed sweet potatoes are not

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Cornbread + Biscuits

AustinThe moist cornbread muffins at Dot’s Place walk the line between sweet and unsweet, so as not to offend patriots on either side of the great cornbread divide. Just remember the restaurant is serving to-go only these days. At Threadgill’s, the unsweet cornbread muffins have a bit of texture and

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Food & Drink|
November 1, 2005

Fried Chicken

AustinTender, with outrageously crisp, well- battered skin, Monday’s bone-in chicken alone is worth a trip to the amenable digs of Tony’s Southern Comfort, where a card table up front displays mouthwatering pies, your reward for the easy task of cleaning your plate. DallasDallas’s well-nigh-mythical Highland Park Cafeteria lives on in

By Patricia Sharpe and June Naylor

Feature|
November 1, 2005

Mashed Potatoes

AustinCan mere mashed potatoes be bodacious? If so, the ones at Tony’s Southern Comfort qualify. Whipped to a fare-thee-well, they are anointed with a thinnish, mild cream gravy. The menu calls them “au gratin potatoes,” but the great cheesy, creamy, well-peppered spuds at Arkie’s Grill are more mashed than sliced;

By Patricia Sharpe and Stacy Hollister

Gary Cartwright|
November 1, 2005

State of Dysfunction

Three Austin boys + the hatred and intolerance of their Boys State experience = a lesson in today’s democracy.

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September 30, 2005

Shrimply the Best

Shelf Life | We read cookbooks so you don’t have to.It’s one thing to have a dream, quite another to keep it alive. To celebrate three decades in business, the founders of Austin’s best-known interior Mexican restaurant have compiled their first cookbook. Fonda San Miguel: Thirty Years of Food and

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Sports|
September 30, 2005

The Last Von Erich

Associate editor John Spong on retelling a tragic family epic—the rise and fall of Dallas’s pro wrestling dynasty.

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Web Exclusive|
September 30, 2005

Pedal Pushers

Contributing photographer Wyatt McSpadden, who shot this month’s feature “Tour de Texas,” describes how a plum assignment became a poignant father-son journey.

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Web Exclusive|
September 30, 2005

Mid-century Memphis

Former Texas Monthly senior editor Robert Draper on assembling an Eisenhower-era time capsule, including the memories of a teenage calamity and the recollections of the Panhandle town that still bears its scars.

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Books That Cook|
September 30, 2005

Books That Cook

Ask any bunch of Texans about the state’s signature cuisine, and you’ll most likely get one answer: Tex-Mex. We claim it as our own even though we realize that “Tex-Mex” ranges from gourmet dishes to greasy fast food. So it’s about time Jim Peyton and his new cookbook, The Very

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September 30, 2005

Camarones al Mojo de Ajo

1 cup vegetable oil 3⁄4 cup minced garlic 3⁄4 cup butter 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 1⁄3 cup olive oil 36 large raw shrimp (size 21–25 per pound), peeled and deveined, tails on chopped fresh parsley for garnishIn a heavy 10-inch skillet, heat vegetable oil over medium heat until shimmering

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Recipe|
September 30, 2005

Tomato Broth with Portobellos and Spinach over Gnocchi

1 large white onion, thinly sliced 2 cloves garlic, minced olive oil for sautéing 2 sprigs thyme 4 large tomatoes, chopped kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste 1 pint tomato juice 1⁄4 stick butter (2 tablespoons) 3 portobello mushrooms, cleaned and stems removed canola oil for sautéing prepared

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Music Review|
September 30, 2005

Canvas

If there were a downside to ROBERT GLASPER’s inking a deal with Blue Note Records, it would be that he is the second Houston jazz pianist to be signed to the label, forced to follow the widely acclaimed Jason Moran. Glasper is a few years younger than Moran, and both

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Music Review|
September 30, 2005

The Real Deal

With BILLY JOE SHAVER, it’s a package deal. Along with the amiable stylings and songwriting genius that have attracted everyone from Tom T. Hall to Elvis Presley, you get the foibles: odd musical choices, a sincere but heavy-handed Christian didacticism, and substandard songs that play like a parody of, well,

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Music Review|
September 30, 2005

Cripple Crow

By now it’s a familiar story: A street musician makes a series of low-fi cassette recordings, which somehow find their way to a label owner and on to a sea of adulation. Cliché or no, this happened to Houston-born DEVENDRA BANHART, who, three years down the road from his debut,

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Book Review|
September 30, 2005

The Color of Law

The shadow of To Kill a Mockingbird looms intentionally large over THE COLOR OF LAW (Doubleday). Atticus Finch is quoted at the outset, and protagonist A. Scott Fenney’s mother admonishes him to “be like Atticus. Be a lawyer. Do good.” Quite a display of brass for first-time novelist MARK GIMENEZ.

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Book Review|
September 30, 2005

Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen

Three years ago, thirty-year-old JULIE POWELL was a would-be actress working a lousy temp job and living in a lousy Queens apartment. In need of a Great Undertaking, the Austin native decided one night to cook her way through every recipe in Julia Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French

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