Eat Well Wherever You Are
One thing is for sure—a Texan knows what’s for dinner and where to get it. But if you’re new to the state, check out these iconic restaurants.
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.
One thing is for sure—a Texan knows what’s for dinner and where to get it. But if you’re new to the state, check out these iconic restaurants.
By Texas Monthly and Patricia Sharpe
Texans LOVE their tacos. Versatile, portable, and quick to wolf down, tacos are made with either corn or flour tortillas. In their different styles, you can trace more than half a century of Texas’s Mexican-food history.
By Texas Monthly and Patricia Sharpe
What happens when veterans of two of Austin’s finest Mexican and Thai restaurants try their hand at Mediterranean cuisine? Very delicious things.
One of the most anticipated openings in what promises to be a jam-packed restaurant season in Austin is less than a week away. Here’s how things are shaping up in the converted washateria now known as Launderette.
Braised oxtail comes to the strip mall.
Yes, a key ingredient at Austin’s Gardner usually comes in the form of a bale. But you wouldn’t want to squander these astonishing dishes on a horse.
Last year’s ten best and brightest new restaurants.
By Texas Monthly and Patricia Sharpe
Le Cep’s contemporary French cuisine drags Fort Worth’s culinary scene into the twenty-first century. Don’t have a cow, monsieur.
Rural Texas has more to offer than chicken-fried steak and quaint motels. Our guide to ten far-flung places where you can enjoy first-class dining and sleep in style.
Nose-to-tail, locally sourced, and heavy on the protein: Austin chef Jesse Griffiths’s Dai Due moves from the supper club circuit to a permanent home.
Austin chef Paul Qui, Dallas steakhouse Knife, and San Antonio meat palace Cured all land top honors.
Despite its name, Pax Americana is not exactly a tranquil space. But after one taste of chef Adam Dorris’s menu, who could stay calm?
Get your biscuits down to Austin and revel in a new take on classic Southern meals at Olamaie.
Amy Ferguson, who has lived in Hawaii for decades now but was instrumental in the development of the Southwestern cuisine culinary movement, talks about reading "Larousse Gastronomique" as a kid, encountering celebrity at a young age, and that time Julia Child kindly told her "you don't know anything."
Gloriously novel flavors permeate the menu at Stephan Pyles’s latest venture, San Salvaje.
Thirty years ago, Texans who equated fine dining with chicken cordon bleu and trout meunière suddenly found themselves eating barbecued Gulf shrimp and goat cheese quesadillas. An oral history of the Southwestern cuisine revolution.
At Houston's Table on Post Oak the second in command finally gets his chance to shine.
A team of notable Dallas chefs will host a locally sourced dinner at the Dallas Farmers Market on Thursday, June 12, at 6:30 p.m., kicking off a fundraising effort for the bipartisan Legislative group known as the Texas House Farm-to-Table Caucus. A menu prepared by Graham Dodds (with Hibiscus), Sharon
A team of notable Dallas chefs will host a locally sourced dinner at the Dallas Farmers Market on Thursday, June 12, at 6:30 p.m., kicking off a fundraising effort for the bipartisan Legislative group known as the Texas House Farm-to-Table Caucus. A menu prepared by Graham Dodds (with Hibiscus), Sharon
Dallas chef John Tesar takes the steakhouse to new heights.
California chefs Bradley and Bryan Ogden give the Lone Star State a whirl.
And shares his recipe for Barbecued Bacon-Wrapped Quail with Jalapeño Ranch Dressing.
If your Saturday evening is open and you live in Austin, you can still get tickets for a four-course dinner that will be prepared by four Austin chefs to help raise funds for a film chronicling the life and work of Diana Kennedy, the 91-year-old James Beard Award–winning cookbook author
The setting and wine list may be sophisticated, but down-to-earth French fare gives Austin’s La V everyday appeal.
A Q&A with the guys at Houston’s Coltivare and Revival Market.
The team behind Houston’s Revival Market channels a rustic Italian spirit at their new Heights bistro.
A sneak peek inside.
The James Beard Foundation named the restaurant in the tiny town Buffalo Gap one of "America's Classics," a designation awarded to places that have "timeless appeal."
And La Barbecue, another Austin establishment, also made food critic Alan Richman's list of the best new restaurants of the year.
Hugo Ortega’s new restaurant puts a sophisticated spin on interior-Mexican seafood.
From fine dining to local beer, the Texas food scene is exploding with more energy, innovation, and sophistication than ever before. Come along as we hunt down the best new restaurants.
By Texas Monthly and Patricia Sharpe
Bryce Gilmore’s much-loved Austin food truck returns as a brick-and-mortar.
With an intriguing menu and a chic space, Dallas’s CBD Provisions transcends the merely trendy.
Learn to make a Tex-Mex turkey, standing rib roast, and, the quintessential holiday dish, pumpkin pie.
How eating cornbread and beans taught me who I was—and who we are as Texans.
Mockingbird’s John Sheely returns to his roots.
By Patricia Sharpe and Texas Monthly
Arro, a French restaurant in downtown Austin, opened in July with executive chef/partner Drew Curren and pastry chef Mary Catherine Curren, his wife, at the helm. Texas Monthly food editor Patricia Sharpe recently spoke with Drew Curren about why he chose to try this cuisine in
To Meatopia, pasta classes, a Middle Eastern feast, a guided wine tasting, and more.
Austin chefs Drew and Mary Catherine Curren offer a simple—and simply irresistible—take on French cooking.
“This isn’t a fad. This isn’t a cronut.” So says one of the people interviewed for this New York Times story on the kolache, the traditional Czech pastry filled with fruit, sausage, or cheese. Headlined “The Kolache: Czech-Tex Road Food,” the Dining section feature looks at the growing statewide
Two Dallas restaurants have made Esquire’s list of the twenty best new restaurants of the year, chosen by its longtime critic John Mariani. The pair are Spoon Bar & Kitchen, by chef John Tesar, and Stampede 66, by chef Stephan Pyles. No other Texas restaurants made the cut, although Mariani
At Houston’s MF Sushi, Chris Kinjo strives for perfection—as a raconteur and chef.
This Thursday, September 12, I’ll be interviewing one of the Food Channel’s biggest stars, New York Times–bestselling cookbook author Ina Garten, a.k.a. the Barefoot Contessa. This will mark the opening performance of the 2013–2014 season of the Texas Performing Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Tickets are still
Get a sneak preview of the dinner.
At my favorite new Dallas restaurant, two transplanted L.A. chefs are winning over locals with an ambitious, globe-trotting menu.
Last week Austin fishmonger Roberto San Miguel called out of the blue to say that he and Shane Stark, the current executive chef at Kenichi and previously with Paggi House, are opening a fish market and seafood restaurant in East Austin, at 2401 Cesar Chavez, at
Paul Qui’s new Austin restaurant firmly establishes him as one of the state’s best chefs. And its most whimsical.
Quick, name the type of wine you can buy for $10 a glass these days.If you said “plonk,” you’re right.But $10 will actually buy some very decent wine at Central Market’s Wine Week.For the next six days, the market’s five locations in major Texas cities are promoting its wines, and
When I heard that my old friend Bud Royer is going to deliver free pie and cash cards to the folks devastated by the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, I kept thinking of that famous quote from the Woodstock music festival. Remember? Wavy Gravy stands onstage and yells: “Good morning! What
In the life-is-not-fair department, the untimely death of Austin’s hot sauce queen, Jill Lewis, is one of the most poignant recent examples.Jill—who died on June 4 at the age of 53 after a shockingly brief two-month battle with esophageal cancer—was a friend of mine and one of the city’s best-liked