Food: Stephan Pyles
A recipe for success.
Executive editor Patricia Sharpe grew up in Austin and holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin. After working as a teacher (in English and Spanish) and at the Texas Historical Commission (writing historical markers), she joined the staff of Texas Monthly in 1974. Initially, she edited the magazine’s cultural and restaurant listings and wrote a consumer feature called Touts. She eventually focused exclusively on food. Her humorous story “War Fare,” an account of living for 48 hours on military MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), was included in the anthology Best Food Writing 2002. Many of her stories appear in the 2008 UT Press collection Texas Monthly on Food. Her story about being a restaurant critic, titled “Confessions of a ‘Skinny Bitch,’ ” won a James Beard Foundation award for magazine food writing in 2006.
Sharpe has contributed to Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Saveur, and the New York Times. She writes a regular restaurant column, Pat’s Pick, for Texas Monthly.
A recipe for success.
Feet accompli.
At Texas’ top industrial design firm, the old style-versus-substance debate is a nonstarter: Why choose when you can have both?
Portobello mushrooms and paella alongside the schnitzel and sauerkraut: In the Hill Country town of Fredericksburg, there’s clearly something cooking.
At the entrance to Las Pozas, the logical, the predictable, and the commonplace evaporate, giving way to one of the most enchanting places on earth.
The ceramic designs created by these four Texas studios will look great in your kitchen or bathroom—and except for their shape, there’s nothing square about them.
How to stuff a wild tortilla.
What happens when the modern world gets its hands on the lowly burrito? A food fad is born.
On the money.
Culinary assimilation.
Why do reviewers from Condé Nast Traveler to the Zagat and Mobil guides swoon over Dallas’ Mansion on Turtle Creek? I wanted to find out, so I checked in.
New restaurants in Dallas and Houston are serving up authentic interior-style Mexican dishes that turn the tables on Tex-Mex.
Chicken? For the birds. Fish? In the tank. From Buffalo Gap to Galveston, the faddish food these days is steak. Here are ten prime places to enjoy it.
It started as a hippie sandwich shop in Austin. Now, more than two decades later, Schlotzsky’s is finally kicking the competition in the buns.
Saucy Katherine Anne Porter’s recipe for mole.
Texas at war with the United States Air Force.
Gulf pro.
“I feel like I’ve been put through a blender!” says Grady Spears, the executive chef and co-owner of Reata restaurant, whose maniacally successful second location opened in May atop Fort Worth’s Bank One Tower. “On Saturdays we’re serving nearly six hundred customers. It’s just nuts.” Spears may be grousing, but
Penne for your thoughts: You’ll never say basta to the pasta with vegetables and mixed greens at the Presidio in San Antonio.
Upper-crust bakers in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin are turning out heavenly handmade loaves that make store-bought seem stale by comparison.
Introducing El Rey, the Venezuelan chocolate that is wowing chefs everywhere, thanks to the efforts of a Texan with a taste for treats.
What do Monty Python, the Lion King, Ace Ventura, and Howie Mandel have in common? They’re all part of 7th Level’s strategy to marry show biz with the computer-game biz.
An Addison snail breeder gets fresh with the world.
How to cook up a culinary craze: Mix talented chefs, native ingredients, classical techniques, and good publicity. Name result “Southwestern.” Let spread across globe.
From chili to chiles, there’s a heaping helping of Texas food on the Internet, including cookoff schedules, mail-order info, recipes, and restaurant reviews. Dig in.
In theory and in practice, bread pudding is what you do with leftover bread—it’s poor folks’ food. But not this bread pudding. The dauntingly rich and absolutely delicious dessert is the specialty of pastry chef Melissa Bailey, who with her husband, executive chef Benjamin Bailey, heads up the kitchen at Houston’s arty
A hunger for feeding children.
In the market for high-quality handmade Hispanic crafts? You’ll find them—and more—at Santa Fe’s famous fair.
Vegetables of every shape, color, and texture are mixed and matched in chef Monica Pope’s innovative and healthy dish. A light but filling option from the menu at Boulevard Bistrot in Houston (4319 Montrose), the multilayered assemblage consists of a pancake of grated and sliced vegetables on the bottom and
Meet the hip young chefs at two Texas restaurants that everyone’s buzzing about.
Forget the figgy pudding. The centerpiece of your party table for the holidays should be this voluptuous cheesecake from Houston’s Sierra Grill.Chef Charles Watkins has taken an everyday dessert and turned it into something special, its texture as lush as velvet, the density firm without being heavy. But what raises
Venison is the name of the game in this stylish take on a Texas classic from Hunter’s Moon in Fredericksburg. Partners and chefs Cynthia Castleberry and Alan Hirsch embellish the lean meat with a lush demiglace-based sauce incorporating cranberries, pistachios, ginger, and sherry. The final kick comes from the judicious
Recipe from Teala’s, Houston
Teala’s, 3210 W. Dallas, Houston
This creation mixes and matches ingredients from the countries of the Mediterranean: grilled portobello mushrooms from Italy, olive oil from France or Spain, hummus-tahini spread from the Middle East.“This sandwich was my wife’s idea,” says David Holben, the executive chef at Dallas’ Mediterraneo. “She’s a vegetarian and she asked me
H.E.B.’s research said Austinites would rush to a huge gourmet grocery. It was right.
“Mixing so many flavors, you wouldn’t think the dish would turn out,” says Ethel Fisher, the executive chef and co-owner of Houston’s Post Oak Grill. But it does, and more is more in this unlikely pairing of lamb and not-so-subtle tomatillo sauce.Fisher spent twenty years traveling throughout Europe and South
The ingredients are earthy but the effect is divine in chef Mark Morrow’s rustic anitra arrosto, or roast duck. Morrow’s recipes from Mi Piaci in Dallas (14854 Montfort) do a turn on traditional Italian fare: fresh fowl brushed with honey and balsamic vinegar and slow-cooked creamy polenta, made from simple cornmeal.The
Now is the time to check out newly stylish hotels and restaurants in West Texas. Tourists aren’t far behind.
Want to eat a great meal in Dallas without dressing up or dropping a bundle? Cross the river into Oak Cliff.
Think casual entertaining, and you think “grill.” This dish, from the New Southwestern bistro Third Coast Rotisserie and Grill in Houston, propels tradition up a notch.The shrimp and scallop skewers, a creation of executive chef Gary Tottis, take one of Texas’ great natural resources—seafood—and give it a distinctive Mexican accent—the
The latest culinary crazy, Cowboy Cuisine has put a new spin on traditional Texas cooking.
For millennia, Mexican people have used corn husks as cooking vessels. Alan Mallett, the executive chef at Houston’s Cafe Noche, has adapted the technique for the restaurant’s signature Little Boats because, he says, the ingredients “steam in their own juices and retain all their flavor and texture.” Three variations on
Dallas chef Stephan Pyles redefined Texas cuisine in the eighties, giving a sophisticated treatment to down-home staples and adding the distinctive kick of chiles and Mexican spices. The founder of the dear departed Routh Street Cafe and its more casual offspring, Baby Routh (2708 Routh Street), Pyles shares his pioneering
NASA scientists ignored amateur Forrest Mims—until he proved them wrong.
Long before environmentalism was in vogue, attorney Ned Fritz was fighting to keep Texas pristine.
New York sludge is being spread across West Texas. Opponents insist it’s evil filth; others say the smell means jobs.
In Texas, October is the kindest month, bringing idle breezes and the promise of nippy mornings followed by glorious blue afternoons. In weather like this, you want to have friends over for Sunday brunch, but you don’t want to kill yourself cooking. That’s when you need recipes that get you
This chicken-and-sausage gumbo is redolent of filé, and the jalapeño cornbread is thick with creamed corn and cheddar cheese.
Some restaurants are so intertwined with the identity of a city that the place is unthinkable without them. London minus the Sherlock Holmes pub? Inconceivable. Paris sans La Tour d’Argent? C’est impossible. Houston without the Rivoli? No way. For seventeen years, the Rivoli (at 5636 Richmond), with its latticed garden