Helen Thompson

Vietnamese Restaurants

AustinSaigon Kitchen, 9200 N. Lamar, 512-837-9910. This modest-looking restaurant’s bracing hot-and-sour soup was filled with shrimp, pineapple, celery, tomato, okra, noodles, and anise. Vermicelli with rice-paper pancakes that were more like omelettes came with grilled pork, fish sauce, and a platter frilly lettuce, cilantro, cucumbers, and mint. Tender frogs’ legs

By Helen Thompson

Vietnamese Grocery Stores

Most of the specialty items needed to prepare Vietnamese recipes can be found at the following Asian and Vietnamese groceries.AustinLien, Huong Oriental Market, 8610 N. Lamar, 512-835-9618. My Thanh Oriental Market, 7435 N. Lamar, 454-4804. Say Hi, 5249 Burnet Road, 453-1411.DallasAsian Grocery, 9191 Forest Lane, 214-235-3038. Laos Store, 4536 Bryan,

By Helen Thompson

Sour Notes

Bullets over Broadway at the Granbury Opera House.

By Helen Thompson

Getting His Kicks

He scored big for UT and four NFL teams; now Raul Allegre is back in the game with his weekly Spanish-language football show.

By Helen Thompson

Texas Twenty: Princess

The celebrity realtor as realtor celebrity.

By Helen Thompson

Family Plot

For Dallas writer Carlton Stowers, Sins of the Son is more than just another true crime story. The son is his own.

By Helen Thompson

Walk, Don’t Run

After years of arguing that vigorous activity is a key to good health, Kenneth Cooper is exercising his right to change his mind.

By Helen Thompson

A Fan’s Notes

For sixty years, Austinite Raymond Daum befriended Hollywood’s biggest stars. Now he’s selling off his memories.

By Helen Thompson

Freedom Fighter

By Helen Thompson

Best-Case Scenario

To win a high-profile these days, you need to hire a jury consultant. Galveston's Robert Hirschhorn is one of the best.

By Helen Thompson

Messing With Texas

TV glitzmeister Aaron Spelling tries to wakeup Michener’s epic snooze.

By Helen Thompson

Rebel Rousers

In Tyler, a high school student’s Confederate flag T-shirt is raising old fears.

By Helen Thompson

Grande Larceny

Who has stolen almost $1 million worth of chemicals from South Texas farms?

By Helen Thompson

Picture This

A creative Dallas man nails down fees hanging rich people’s artwork.

By Helen Thompson

Tested by Fire

A South Texas town rebuilds its church with faith, hope, and lots of charity.

By Helen Thompson

Stink Big

The sour odor of calf chips from an Erath County feedlot has one family crying foul.

By Helen Thompson

Broiling Over

Propane producers and the Railroad commission want us to retire the charcoal grill.

By Helen Thompson

Movie Mac

Houston’s Mattress Mac is making a comfortable living as a film producer.

By Helen Thompson

Snakes Alive!

Collectors flock to Del Rio to capture a care, fantastically patterned reptile.

By Helen Thompson

Free Weights

A San Antonian is going out of business by giving away the store—literally.

By Helen Thompson

Fire Storm

Fanned by winds, flames ravage West Texas’ mountains.

By Helen Thompson

Water Foul

As the Guadalupe overflows with tourists, locals battle over managing crowds.

By Helen Thompson

Trial by Video

A Dallas Lawyer juries with cinematic reenactments of accidents.

By Helen Thompson

Land Grab

In a historic move, the state claims co-ownership of some Brazos Valley farms.

By Helen Thompson

Blood Relations

A modern surgeon employs a long-discredited cure-all: medicinal leeches.

By Helen Thompson

Hog Wild

Houston’s young execs take to the streets on a fleet of shiny Harleys.

By Helen Thompson

Art Attack

By Helen Thompson

Novel Twist

A big new Dallas bookstore with amenities is a hit with the reading public.

By Helen Thompson

Race Wrangling

Will public housing in East Texas be integrated? Not if the Klan has its way.

By Helen Thompson

Focus: Withdrawn

In the heady days of banking, Texans ran the state’s biggest, most profitable institutions. Not anymore.

By Helen Thompson

Bunker Mentality

A small town hunkers down for a court fight with Bunker Hunt’s bankruptcy trustee.

By Helen Thompson

Tandyland

The biggest, most boisterous Radio Shack in the universe lands in Arlington.

By Helen Thompson

Seed Fee

Cottonseed was delicious and nutritious, but it was only for cows—until now.

By Helen Thompson

Bombs Away

The Pantex H-bomb plant prepares to mothball the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

By Helen Thompson

Radio Foreplay

In the beginning, say Stevens and Pruett, a listener dubbed them “radio gods.”

By Helen Thompson

Grim Reaping

As bills mount, AIDS patients sell their life insurance policies—in Waco.

By Helen Thompson

Cowboy Texas Randall

Old-timers around Canon recall that in 1959, when Harry Wheeler erected the seven-ton concrete-and-stucco cowboy outside his trading post and curio shop, he had to bring in a truck and crane from a local drilling company to set the big galoot on his feet. Towering over U.S. 60, Tex Randall

By Helen Thompson

Java Jive

“WE CATER TO REAL COFFEE drinkers,” says seventy-year old Joseph Fertitta, the president of Beaumont’s Texas Coffee Company and son of the founder. Texas’ only family-owned Coffee-manufacturing company has been perking along with its Seaport brand since 1921, competing in the national market by virtue of its product’s prodigious strength.

By Helen Thompson

Rhino Relapse

Deaths among rare rhinos leave scientists scratching their heads.

By Helen Thompson

A Yen to Golf

Can the desire to win transform Japan’s gung ho golfers into pros?

By Helen Thompson

Novel Approach

A gift from James Michener enriches Texas’ student writers.

By Helen Thompson

Johnny’s Round Top

Johnny’s Round Top cafe had a colorful history that spanned more than fifty years before the restaurant went out of business in 1989. Built by a franchiser who was partial to rotating roofs that looked like circus tents, the Round Top in Big Spring was one of a modest chain

By Helen Thompson

B-ing There

“People will watch anything,” says B-film director Bret McCormick.

By Helen Thompson

Unresolved Trust

Condo Manager Sharon Butler questions what officials consider affordable.

By Helen Thompson

So Cool

A summer guide to the coolest place in Texas: the Davis Mountains.

By Helen Thompson

Between the Lines

A graphoanalyst sees personality writ large in the smallest of details.

By Helen Thompson

Going, Going, Gone

Sam Greer admired his wife’s work—so much that he decided to share it.

By Helen Thompson

Alien Contact

Our fearless reporter survives a close encounter with UFO investigators.

By Helen Thompson

Dream Weaver

A Dallas stylist’s patrons enjoy hair-raising experiences.

By Helen Thompson