I was really stoked to go to the Dallas Chop House this last weekend. Chef Kenny Mills. replete in 10 Gallon hat, was eager to show us his Himalayan salt lined beef aging cellar. That, sadly, was the highlight of the evening.
Chicken vegetable soup was very bland and uninteresting. My main course of ribeye, replete with four chili dry-rub was so salty to be almost inedible. The onion rings & steak fries were also buggered because of the insane amount of salt on them. The Maque Choux corn melange was good, as were the pop-overs. But over-all the ridiculous amount of salt made many dishes inedible.
The owner (?) came over and worked the crowd, cruising thru asking if everything was OK. My fellow diners, being genteel folk, said it was all good, but I had to let him know that many dishes were ridiculously salty. He didn’t like this and moved on fast- he looked half-baked.
The deserts were ok. The carrot cake got the table in a lather, mostly, I feel, because they have not had a steamed pudding before. The creme brulée was fine but nothing to write home about.
I am much more discriminating than most in that I eat out more than most. There are at least five steak houses in Dallas that are much better than this. Perry’s is my current favourite – although Patrys, Lawrys & Ocean Prime have to be right up there. For $175 for two including small amounts of wine it was a very expensive night out for very average quality and service.
Management’s behavior made me highly unlikely to visit again. Dallas has too many good steak houses to mess with places that do not revere the customer. Here, for what it’s worth, is the beef aging cabinet.
Nancy Nichols of D-Magazine (left) held another Supper Club last night at Stephan Pyles’ Samar on Ross Ave. Enjoying incredibly diverse food whilst being entertained by winsome belly dancers is not something you normally do on a Sunday evening in Dallas but by George what a cracking time we had!
This was our second Supper Club and although the last outing at Nona was very pleasant, last night’s extravaganza was one of the most fun evenings we’ve had in ages. It was rainy & misty outside which only enhanced the experience of entering Samar. We went to the restaurant’s opening but it was a zoo with over 1,000 guests. Last night with every table full it was just right. There is so much energy in this space, from the myriad staff rushing around and being very attentive, to the beautiful chandeliers picked up (apparantly) in the old Souk’s of the Middle East. Stephan and his designers have created an amazing space that at times, with it’s curtains everywhere, reminded me of the old Starck Club – but much more elegant, and free of models & drugs!
You can see the full menu here so I won’t drive you mad with desire as I describe each of the twelve dishes, but here were my favourites.
1. Hummus, Moutabal, Labne, Three Spreads with Naan
2. Mejillones en Escabeche, Mussels Escabeche with Pears, Sherry and Cream
3. Kofte Laàteen, Fried Spiced Pumpkin Kofte with Peekytoe Crab Salad and Paddlefish Caviar
4. Candied Ginger Stuffed Semolina Croquetas with Natilla
I can eat good Naan with yummy spreads all night long. Samar’s Naan is so good – has to be made on the premises. It was piping hot and had a softness and freshness that is missing in most Indian restaurants in Dallas. The Moutabal (aka Baba Ghanoush) was the best I ever tried, I don’t really like aubergines, but this variant with its smoky notes was light and delicious. The Hummus was also a really good example of a simple dish prepared perfectly with just the right heft and taste.
The mussels were possibly my favourite dish. The shellfish themselves were quite small, but plump & sweet. The sauce was unbelievable with an incredible depth and richness. Slurped up with the Naan you could have wrapped me up in a Persian rug and taken me home after that.
The small Kofte were little croquette like mouthfuls with such a unique taste. Paddlefish caviar! Who would have thunk it?
Most of the desserts were good, I don’t really like chocolate but the Turkish coffee melange was fabulous with a wonderful crunchy/gritty mouthfeel from the beans. The Stuffed semolina Croquetas were outstanding though. I just Googled Natilla and it is a Spanish custard, which jives with the rich creamy sauce served with the dish.
I hate to have a complaint about an amazing evening but I wish D-Mag would have some greeters at these dinners who explain what is going to happen and how we will be seated etc. As it turned out we found a fantastic bunch of folks who had commandeered a small room and kindly invited us to join them, but some people could be seen drifting wondering what was going on. We were lucky though and sat with a table of foodies who were all great fun and as enthused about trying new dishes as we were. This was what we anticipated with Supper Club and last night we were not let down.
I knew that Stephan had belly dancers in the restaurant but I didn’t realise how much they would rock and totally change the evening’s atmosphere. When the three dancers came out the music was cranked – this isn’t your old squeaky Middle Eastern oboe drone, this was thumping, heavy disco beated house belly dance music. It was loud & brilliant! The girls weren’t as zaftig as you would expect but they were enchanting, very sensual dancers. One of them got on the floor near our table and did some gyrations with her stomach and flipped and rolled quarters around to make a pyramid!
Phew! What a night. I can’t recommend Samar enough for a fantastic change of taste and pace. Stephan et al have made a very magical place.
I have been trying to find information about my Great Uncle Bill and on a whim I jumped on my motorbike and made a day-trip to Waco.. William Mitchell Wood left Aberdeen as a teen and after landing in New York and working in a restaurant he ended up in Waco sometime in the early 1920′s. He married Jody (Judy) Jewel Allen in Dallas in 1925. He owned the Tam O’Shanter Hotel Courts a motel very close to what is now I-35 at the infamous Waco Circle – one of Texas’ few roundabouts!
Tam O'Shanter Motel, Waco
The spare ribs sold at Bill Wood’s Famous Foods were fabulous enough to be included in a Ford Motor Almanac with recipes from restaurants all over America. I’ll make them one of these days.
Elite Circle Grill
The Elite Circle Grill was a contemporary restaurant of Bill’s situated exactly opposite his on The Circle. There was an old aerial photograph of the Elite on the wall and you can see the Tam O’Shanter quite clearly. This is how the Elite looks today – I stopped there for lunch.
Elite Circle Grill Chili
This chili was very good. I had read about the grill and because it has been around from the 20′s I assumed it might have some old diner type waitresses. Sadly not – it was renovated a couple of years ago and is now a typical ‘American’ type grill with a very young staff. Not a beehive in sight.
As I was leaving I saw an elderly couple walking to their car so I asked them if they remembered the Tam O’Shanter across the road. It turned out that the woman had spent the night before her wedding there with her sister and other pals. They both enjoyed eating at his restaurant but did not remember him.
A few minutes south of The Circle is Waco Memorial Park where Bill & Judy are buried. A very friendly employee at the park looked in the records and personally took me to the grave site. Thank God he did – over 30,000 people are buried there “and more each day” I was cheerily told!
I was just three years old when Uncle Bill died, but I remember my Nana getting a check every month from Waco which only stopped when she died. Apparently he visited Aberdeen once and promenaded down the road in a linen suit and a cowboy hat and boots. He was well known in Waco for being one of the founding members of the Baylor Bears booster club. They used to put on a rodeo to raise money and he would be all dolled up as a cowboy hootin’ and hollerin’ with his Aberdeen accent!
We did not have the Intertubes in 1984 when I emigrated to America otherwise I maybe would have tried to find Bill & Judy I certainly was aware of them. His obituary has no mention of children. However somebody has been placing flowers on the grave. I suppose I have some distant relatives down there and would love to meet them. Maybe somebody will Google their names and find this.
Uncle Bill also owned at least two, maybe three, Triple XXX Root Beer franchises. I was told one was at 15th and Maple so I headed over there and found the building above that I imagined at some time could have been a drive-up. It is now a charismatic church. On the wall is printed “Where everybody is somebody.”
For a teenager from the Highlands of Scotland Great Uncle Bill surely realised the American Dream and made a somebody of himself. I would have loved to meet him.
Behold the enticing wrapper of the much loved Indian dish Chicken Korma.
Behold the reality…
One of the most disgusting TV dinner type meals I have ever eaten. Imagine making a gelatinous pudding of pineapple, chicken, garlic, coconut, MSG and adding nubby lumpy bits. Imagine having your cat eat that. And then imagine your cat up-chucking it on the sofa. And then imagine (stop reading here if you are squeamish) lapping up that righteous pussy puke! That’s what it was like eating Patak’s Original Chicken Korma Tastes of India – in case anyone Googles this. And I only had one spoonful. How the hell do they get away with selling this garbage?
I just tried SMOKE at The Belmont Hotel again. This time I had breakfast and oh dear, it was pretty lame. I must say our waitress Rachael was fantastic – smart, funny, attentive – ten out of ten. But the food…. Even though the place was only 1/4 full (if that) it still took a long time to get the food and it was sadly not as hot as I like.
Here’s what I ordered – Hungry bear smoked Ham steak & Farm egg Fritter with sweet corn griddle cakes and Dublin Dr. Pepper red eye gravy. Sounds pretty good eh but the reality – meh. Take a poached egg, dip in batter and breadcrumbs and deep fry to make it crunchy. Novel idea, kind of bland in the eating – needs something to make it pop. Interesting crunchy/eggy/yolky experience but ultimately unsettling. The ham may have been smoked but it was salty and tough. Sweet corn griddle cakes – take cornbread batter, mix in sweet corn and cook on a griddle. Like Thai corn cakes but without any spicy condiments to make it edible. The corn pieces were chewy, were they fresh or canned or even smoked? Taste wise – bland, vague cornbready taste.
Dublin Dr. Pepper red eye gravy. Woo hoo! Dr. Pepper from Dublin, TX – the last bottling plant that uses cane sugar, as far as I recall. Big deal I suppose – just a bit more pretense in reality. Tasted quite interesting what microscopic amount there was.
Special Agent Chuck had the smoke (sic) brisket cornbread Hash with poached egg, green chili (sic) rajas and pearl onions. Chopped up potatoes with chopped up cornbread? Maybe, couldn’t quite figure it out. It was presented as a mound with potatoes at the bottom, then brisket then (I think) the green chile rajas (smoked or roasted chile strips) which were covered in some white-ish yellow glaze stuff – cheese? Couldn’t work out where the egg was. Unappealing visually and again kind of tasteless!
WTF! I REALLY want to like this place but again I find myself very unhappy with the presentation, quality and overall taste of the food. $17 including tip and a soda. Not a cheap breakfast. Would prefer the $4.99 special at EL Jordan on Bishop any day.
I’m going to try lunch and that’s it. They’re not going to make it unless they make some radical changes. Forget about reinventing the wheel, BBQ is an old established dish that we all know and love. Make good traditional BBQ and they flock to you. Get that sorted out and then get clever. I’m just sayin’. Oh and they got rid of the check in a mug deal.
Smoke occupies the space formerly held by The Cliff Café next to The Belmont Hotel. The Cliff had its ups and downs. When it first opened it was pretty good but then went downhill with terrible service and lack lustre food. Then for while it was good again and seemed to have found its direction, but it was too late. North Oak Cliff has too many good restaurants for also-rans to survive.
So when I heard the crew from Bolsa (one of our favourites) were re-doing the Cliff space I was really excited and when I heard it was going to be BBQ I was most excited. Sadly we were out of town on opening night – would have loved to see Kinky Friedman – but made a reservation for last night (Saturday).
The improvement on the space is admirable. They have dealt to a great degree with the terrible noisy ambiance that Cliff had. A new fireplace and raw shiplap (original probably) along with pleasant, abstract art makes for a warm yet hip space. They removed the old, strangely positioned bar and replaced it with a much larger one that separates the original dining area from a new area at the back. My only complaint about the bar is that if your table is near it you do tend to have people looming over you, but no biggy. So far so good.
Sadly our waitress was sub-par. When questioned on a couple of things she stood there with a ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ kind of look. “Do you have sparkling wine by the glass?”….. “What is Lardon?”….. My fountain Diet Coke was flat. This seemed to nonplus her and after some waffling I just agreed for more flat soda. I guess she was trying her hardest, maybe was new, but overall it didn’t bode well for our evening dinner.
The menu was a little confusing and if you weren’t au fait with their nomenclature it was somewhat oblique. It was divided into sections “Out of the Bar”, “In The Garden”, “On the Stove” etc. Cutesy I suppose, a bit baffling to me. Can I order bar items for a table? Are they appetizers? I’m all for being unique but stuff like this drives me mad. Menus have evolved over the years into an almost universal format, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it and confuse your guests?
As for the Scantron form idea for ordering BBQ! Oy vey! That old chestnut Keep It Simple Stupid comes to mind. So not only is there a menu that is a bit confusing but now we have to learn how to fill out some olde-fashioned machine readable form to order the BBQ. If they had done this for every menu item that might have been cool – or even if we all had our own forms that might have been fine, but just one lead to more confusion. “What do we do if we both want the same thing?” “Er, just write 2 there.” Whatever.
Guessing that the Pimento Cheese Croquettes might be an appetizer I ordered some. Imagine four or five crunchy, slightly flattened 1.5″ spheres of pimento cheese rolled in bread crumbs or corn meal. Then imagine them being deep fried and then further imagine them being served with a piece of wilted/grilled romaine and a little pot of BBQ sauce – then you have imagined what this dish was like. Initially you think This is kind of cool, crunchy on the outside and melty, cheesy on the inside. And then you go “Holy crap! I have a bolus of fried pimento cheese (in itself a fromage of dubious origin) in my mouth!” and then the fleeting attraction fades. $6.
I suppose two of us were guilty of ordering items that right from the get-go were wrong to order. If you are in a BBQ joint you should order BBQ, but I reckoned I would try something different. Here’s what we ordered: Andouille sausage sandwich, BBQ turkey sandwich, double order of fries, double order of blue cheese coleslaw, hanger steak and halibut!
The sandwiches were served in white butcher paper, in chrome twiggy baskets in hoagie type rolls with a couple of slices of pickle. I opened mine up and it looked like there was some slaw or onion on it, couldn’t work out what. My andouille sausauge had been cut in half length-ways. H showed me the insides of his turkey BBQ sandwich. Oh dear… a very small serving indeed of chopped up turkey. Very sad looking. We both agreed the buns were all wrong. Far too doughy, at one stage I realised all I was eating was a meaty lump of dough. I think bread for BBQ should be an edible napkin. Plain white bread is the best IMHO – it stops BBQ sauce from falling out and holds everything together, doesn’t get in the way of the taste.
The sides… The first order of fries were cold. I know! I am a maniac for food being served piping hot, but that is how I want it – like it was just made! So back the fries went and duly returned hot and not too bad. If it was a double serving I would hate to see what a single would look like – very measly. The fries had a savoury salt sprinkled on them that at times had a sweet taste – not for me. I was really looking forward to the coleslaw but what a let down. I felt the cabbage was chopped way too large and where was the blue-cheese? I didn’t see or taste any – in fact I didn’t really taste much of anything. Very, very disappointing.
L’s hanger steak was pretty good, but again I felt it wasn’t hot enough. E had the halibut and liked it a lot. (They somehow missed her order so there was some scrambling to get hers served) The BBQ sauces were presented in a condiment basket that held four small old style coke sized bottles with beer caps. As the waitress explained what each one was she would pop off the cap. A novel idea but disconcerting for the two hypochondriacs at the table. Do they just refill and recap or do they empty and throw away, where does this stand vis a vis the Health Inspector? Sadly there were no labels on the bottles so you had no idea what the different flavours were and your taste buds weren’t going to tell either. Just a jumbled spicy, maybe sweet, maybe hot melange of sauces. Labeling would have helped because then you would be expecting a certain taste and I’m sure your brain would sort it all out.
We didn’t order dessert choosing to go somewhere else. Our check came in a floral mug with four small chocolate chip cookies inside. Again with the novel cutesyness! I guess I’m becoming an old fart, just give me a black plastic folder/wallet thing with a pouch where I can stick my credit card so it sticks out. To let her know we were ready to pay we had to balance the credit cards on the top of the mug.
Overall impressions not good. I know this is their first week of being open and they should be cut some slack, but some of these dishes were downright boring, tasteless and bland. I say ditch the Scantron idea or expand it to the whole menu and make it a jokey large thing which would be fun and something people would talk about. I really want them to succeed because I know how much they have put into it and it would be a change and a handy restaurant. I’ll give them a few more tries – I’ll do breakfast and I’ll do lunch. If those don’t pan out that’s fine, I’ll be surprised though, Bolsa took a little while to get it’s act together.
I can’t wait! This Friday we leave for California for vacation. We are staying first with a friend North of Sonoma, then we stay in Mendocino on the coast and then back to Sonoma to stay in some swanky bungalows! I booked dinner for us on the Nappa Valley Wine Train – mostly because you can have dinner in a domed observation car which is something I have wanted to since I was a wee bairn. Is it Friday yet?
