Category Archives: Food

No French Fries

Posted on by Bill Chance

Judice Inn, Lafayette, Louisiana

Lee wanted to go eat at the Judice Inn before the Rugby game in Lafayette. A friend of his at Tulane is a member of the family that owns and runs the restaurant. It’s an unassuming place with a long history. The building was handbuilt on a road out of town by two brothers right after WWII. Now, the city has grown to surround the restaurant, and it seems popular with locals and UL Lafayette students. USA today listed it as one of the 51 great burger joints in the country.

The interesting thing is the menu. Hamburgers… with secret cajun sauce, a few other sandwiches… and nothing else. No fries. No sides. This is Louisiana, so they serve beer. Lee had a milkshake, which was spun up fresh (no humming extrusion of milkshake machine).

Everything was simple and good, like it should be.

Acadian Hamburger – Judice Inn

Burgers at the Judice Inn

Cafe Veracruz

Posted on by Bill Chance

Dallas is well known for being inundated by that delicious abomination – the Tex Mex Restaurant. So, if you want to open a Mexican sit down eating place not dedicated to Velveeta Cheese Sauce or plates of tiny tacos you have to distinguish your cuisine in some way.

Candy and I have been eating our way through the restaurants in the Bishop Arts District (there are more than you would suspect). So we decided to cross one off of the list and stopped by the Veracruz Cafe.

They seperate their style of cooking from the regular pedestrian Tex-Mex by advertising themselves as: Mesoamerican, Mayan, Huasteco & Aztec Cuisine. I’m not sure about all that, but I can say that it is delicious.

The restaurant sits on a corner on an edge of the Bishop Arts district. A group was coming out the door carrying to-go boxes, Candy asked, “Is it any good?” They all said it was great and offered their leftovers – tempting, but we decided to go in and pay for our meal anyway.

Inside is attractive – dark with a unique purple color scheme. It’s cool and relaxing. The service was excellent – I was a bit dehydrated and they were able to keep my water glass going, which was no small feat. I had the special, Pescado Tajin, a Tilapia filet covered with shrimp and scallops, with a tomato sauce and vegetables. Tajin is a Mayan archeological site near Veracruz. Unique and very good.

Cafe Veracruz has a tough job competing with a number of very well known restaurants in the area. It more than holds it own, though, and seems to me to be a popular place with the locals that live in the area. I deserves a close look from visitors too.

Above the entrance to Cafe Veracruz

The Daily Special Board - I had the Pescado Tajin

The pleasant and colorful dining room.

100 Favorite Dishes: Lomo Norteño At Veracruz Cafe

Veracruz Cafe for Fine Mexican Dining

Smoke

Posted on by Bill Chance

One restaurant that everyone in Dallas has to eat at is Smoke in the Belmont Hotel. It has been the vanguard of the revitalization of Oak Cliff – about to come to fruition with the impending opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge (unfortunately I will be out of town for the grand opening festivities). The Bar at the Belmont is one of my favorite places and the restaurant next door is not far behind.

Smoke is an upscale Bar-B-Que sort of place – a very non-traditional Texas Bar-B-Que – no serving line where greasy slabs of meat are slopped onto your foam plate and you choose the green beans on the side (not that there is anything wrong with that). You do get the seductive smell from the smokehouse out back and the piles of wood are carefully displayed to make sure you know where the goodness is coming from.

Smoke works hard to serve selections of local, handmade, and artisanal ingredients. It is a popular and crowded restaurant. Usually I don’t like to wait very long for a table (I don’t do well with the packed, chatty crowd), but they enter your phone into an iPad and you can sneak next door to the Bar Belmont to enjoy the skyline while you wait. They’ll send you a text when your spot is ready.

The brunch menu was up when we ordered. It was all good. I had the eggs florentine – with smoked salmon and collard greens (instead of spinach). I know this sounds odd – but it was the greens that made the dish. The slightly wild and bitter flavor of the collard greens added a bit of texture.

I appreciate the effort and thought that the chefs at Smoke put into their menu and the risk they took a few years ago to move into an area that seemed to be forever moribund. Luckily, it looks like their foresight, courage, and hard work is paying off and will continue into the future.

The view of the Belmont from the porch at Smoke - Dallas skyline in the background.

The porch and entrance at Smoke

Eggs Florentine at Smoke

Dallas Art Deco Architecture

365 Things to do in Dallas – 266. Catch the View and a Drink at Bar Belmont

DAY 5 & 6 of Shepard Fairey (OBEY) in Dallas

Smoke for Brunch 2012

Brunch at Smoke

Smoke: The Best Brunch in Dallas

People’s Choice Breakfast: Smoke

Smoke (Oak Cliff, Dallas, Tx)

Smoke restaurant in Oak Cliff

Smoke: a down to earth kind of place

Super Bowl Sliders

Posted on by Bill Chance

The Super Bowl has become one of the biggest holidays of the year in the states. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t an official government edict, that it has no religious status – not even some ancient pagan ancestor, or that it is usually a pretty crappy football game that only people in the two cities involved really cares about. It is a reason to go to someone’s house, gather ’round the big screen, and eat yourself into oblivion.

This year we were invited over and told to bring sliders of our own design. At first, I was not too excited. I am not a football fan (college basketball is my sport of choice – I went to Kansas and my son goes to Duke) and I didn’t relish a wasted day of boring sports and overindulgence. I started to think about things and try to make the best of it. There was some serious cooking skills at this place (professional caterers, graduates of chef school, people from Louisiana) and I decided to go for it and make an effort at putting together some original sliders.

If you don’t know, sliders are small hamburgers, originally from the White Castle chain. They have gone beyond those simple (but good) tiny versions of the All American Burger. Recently, I have been to a couple of food trucks – Easy Slider and The Butcher’s Son for example – that raised the bar on the creativity of sliderdom.

So I sat down with a sheet of notebook paper and worked out three different versions of sliders – two fairly pedestrian ones and one that was a bit more exotic.

First, BLT sliders. Simple – bacon, lettuce, and tomato on a roll with a little mayo. Easy and foolproof.

Then, for a second slider, I went for a Blu Cheese slider. Sliced sausage with blu cheese coleslaw and blu cheese crumbles on top.

Finally, with a little trepidation I designed a Korean slider. Pork Bar-b-que with caramelized kimchi. Soy sauce and Sriacha on the bun for a spicy kick. I still had a bunch of kimchi left over from my trip to Super H Mart. I ground some up in a food processor and sauteed it with some brown sugar (caramelized kimchi).

So I made a trip to the store and then set up an assembly line on the kitchen counter. The nice thing about sliders is that you can make a boatload of ’em without too many raw materials. There isn’t much in each little thing.

So we headed over and I lugged my trays of sliders into the house. The BLT and Blu Cheese were fine cold, but I heated the Korean sliders up in the oven. The first two disappeared immediately. I didn’t even get to try any myself, they were gone as soon as I set them out. The Korean sliders weren’t such a big hit. They were too spicy for most folks’ taste – but the more adventuresome eaters seemed to like them. I thought they were good – but I’m used to kimchi and spicy stuff.

I guess I had a good time, though we stayed too long and I ate way too much. I remember looking at a plate where I had stuck a few jalepeno peppers wrapped in bacon and thought, “I should not eat these. I’m already full and if I do it will make me sick.” I did and they did.

There was some point in the game where I think the announcer said, “And on that play Brady had no choice except to eat the football.” I know how he felt. I felt like I had eaten a football.

It even killed the next day. I walked around in a haze, dehydrated and worn out from the effort of digesting all that food.

So I swear I will never do that again. I’ll have to read this again to remind myself before next year’s Superbowl.

BLT Slider

Blu Cheese slider

Korean slider - bar-b-que, kimchi, and sriacha

Slider assembly line

One nice thing about sliders - they are easy to transport

 Thunder Burger

More Food Trucks

Hawaiian Ham and Cheese Sliders

Barbecue Sliders with Coleslaw

Sweet potato mushroom sliders—a huge thumb’s up

Homemade Meatball Sliders

Bangkok Burger Feature: Sliders (Mini Burgers)

duck shredded & sandwiched

Five Under 5: Meatball Sliders

Whiskey BBQ Sliders with Jalepenos

Turkey Burger Sliders

Sliders

Turkey Bacon Sliders

White Castle

Island Sliders

New Product: Gardein’s Ultimate Sliders

Oven Baked Burger Sliders

Bison Sliders w/ Crinkle Fries

Hot Pepper BBQ Pork Sliders

Pulled Pork Sliders w/ Homemade French Fries

The Best Sliders

Spicy Whiskey BBQ Sliders (by PW)

 

Jimmy’s Food Store

Posted on by Bill Chance

A while back, Candy had this wine at an Italian restaurant in Fort Worth. It was Lacryma de Christi del Vesuvio – which translates as “Tear of Christ.” It’s a type of wine produced on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. We had been looking for the stuff all over the Metroplex and nobody had it. They all said the same thing though, “have you looked at Jimmy’s? If anybody has it, they will.” I looked up Jimmy’s Food Store and found it was on the corner of Fitzhugh and Bryan in East Dallas. Today we had some time and drove down there.

I’m familiar with that area. For years I went through there twice a day on my way to work downtown – either driving or on a bus. It was always a poor area, pretty lively, but not the place you wanted to wander around after dark. Lately, though, a lot of the run down old apartments and crude homes have been torn down and the area is primed for redevelopment and gentrification.

Meat Case - Italian Sausage and more

Do you like Nutella? - here's an eleven pound jar for seventy dollars.

Jimmy’s Food Store is a fantastic place. It’s the motherlode of specialty Italian food and wine. I heard the owner talking – he’s been in the same location for forty-two years. The neighborhood has been through some serious changes over that time, but his store has stayed the same. It was crowded with people buying Italian groceries – about a quarter of them speaking Italian.

The store isn’t very big, but holds a lot of goodness, crammed in as tight as can be. The biggest area is dedicated to wine, a huge selection of Italian wines, arranged by region and type. You can learn a lot about wine simply walking the aisles and reading the little articles they have taped to each variety.

Sure enough, they had a couple Lachryma Christi whites (the one red they carry was sold out). There was a Mastroberardino and a Vini Nobilis. We bought one of each and a couple other bottles of wine. We picked up some pasta (Pastosa – imported from Brooklyn!) some cheese and a couple of sauces to go with the pasta.

A couple of Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio

This is the kind of place you don’t want to go when you are hungry. You will buy too much stuff. In addition to the wine and groceries, back next to the meat counter, is a little place where you can order sandwiches. We bought a Cuban and a Muffaletta, some drinks, and took them out to a little table out by the street. The day had started out crisp, but the Texas sun was warming everything up quickly.

Mufalletta - big enough for about three meals

Cuban Sandwich

Seating out on the street.

It was really nice sitting out there on the street eating sandwiches and enjoying the day. There was even live music – a partly blind man, Vincent Van Buren,  playing harmonica and singing the blues (and a lot of old Beatles tunes).

It doesn’t get any better than that.

Vinnie Van Buren 1

Vinnie Van Buren 2

Vinnie Van Buren 3

Vinnie Van Buren 4

Video – Partially Blind Man Plays Harmonica at Local Food Store

Antonio Ramblés – Dallas’s Italian grocery

A lot of restaurants use Jimmy’s Sausage – Like Fireside Pies

What’s Worth Drinking – Lacrima Christi del Vesuvio

The Bomb Fried Pies

Posted on by Bill Chance

I was talking to Raffealel from Gennarino’s Food Truck Saturday about how often they set up in Dallas. He said, “We come here to Sigel’s about one a month and always set up with The Bomb Fried Pies.”

“Oh,” I said, “That sounds good – I’ll have to get some dessert once I’ve finished my calzone.”

“Do that,” Raffealel said, “She’s a great person.”

Of course, I had already noticed the pink trailer with the blue bomb hanging overhead and already had plans to grab a couple of fried pies. I had heard of The Bomb Fried Pies before but this was my first time to get a chance for a visit.

Two new food trucks at one shot – that’s a good day for me.

So I went back and chatted with Brenda Barnhart, the owner. She said she was going to set up at the Wildflower Festival in Richardson – my family loves that. She is from Mesquite, where I used to live. As a matter of fact, I’ve since found out that she is the next-door neighbor of my sister-in-law.

Her trailer is a pretty pink little thing – a rebuilt 1965 Shasta – and is covered with interesting little details. The bomb is a Navy Practice Bomb and everything is pulled by a restored 1960 classic red Ford Sunliner.

Like everyone that has a food truck business in Dallas, she bemoans the difficulty of finding good places to set up. Hopefully, with time the city and the suburbs will become more used to the idea and realize that a good selection of portable gourmet food trucks is a modern essential to an active street life.

I told her about Anthony Bourdain’s idea that food trucks are really an alternative to fast food rather than competition to quality brick and mortar restaurants.

“Yeah and McDonalds sells their fried pies for a buck and I charge three,” she said.

“But that’s a whole different kettle of fish,” I said.

And it was. I bought a cherry and an apricot pie, and they were much better than McDonalds – I assure you. The crust was thin and crispy, fresh, and the filling was sweet and fruity. The Bomb also had a Fried Guacamole and a Fried Ham and Cheese, but I wasn’t hungry enough for that.

The only downside is I tried to eat my apricot pie while driving to the Mockingbird DART station and got stuff all over everything. Those pies are really too good to waste eating while doing something else. You need to sit still and enjoy the experience.

To find where The Bomb Fried Pies is setting up next:

Go to the Facebook Page

Food truck review: The Bomb Fried Pies & Fried Guacamole

Interview: Brenda Barnhart of The Bomb Fried Pies

The Bomb Fried Pies & Guacamole Trailer Hits the Festival Circuit. Next Stop, Oak Cliff.

Fried Pies and Food Trucks: Bless Us Baby Jesus

If you look quick in this video, you can see The Bomb trailer.

Gennarino’s

Posted on by Bill Chance

I surfed through Twitter and Facebook, looking for stuff to do today, and found a Food Truck I had never tried before, Gennarino’s set up on the Siegel’s Parking lot down on Upper Greenville, just north of Lover’s.

Gennarino’s is a Friggitoria, which is Italian for a place that sells fried foods. In this case, it’s a truck that mostly sells things made out of fried pizza dough. Their menu specializes in Neapolitan street food.

It is a large and unique menu. There is a poster with photographs of:

Zeppoline Salate – Neapolitan fried dough bites

Panzarotti – Potato croquettes

Zeppolone – A panzarotto inside of a giant zeppola

Arancino Rosso – Traditional tomato risotto ball made with yummy Bolognese sauce

Arancino Giallo – Saffron risotto ball

Polentine – Fried polenta triangles

Timballo Rosso – Handheld spaghetti and meatballs

Timballo Bianco – Handheld fettuccine Alfredo

Pizza Fritta – Fried dough topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese

There was no way I was going to be able to make up my mind. There were a few folks standing around a tall table eating and I asked, “What’s good today?”

One woman (I think it was Raffealel’s wife – one of the owners) pointed out the specials, so I ordered a Calzone, something I was familiar with. I was able to chat with Raffealel for a bit about the food truck business and how they started (three brothers and Raffealel’s wife) and where he liked to set up. This truck runs out of Irving, which is why I hadn’t seen them before. He said he was doing mostly lunch business outside of office buildings in Los Colinas. He was very friendly and I really enjoyed talking to him, so when you visit his truck, be sure and say hello.

They had a couple of tall stand-up tables set up outside the truck which was nice – it’s always frustrating when you get your food and don’t have a place to eat it. My calzone was great. The fried dough was very crisp and light and not too greasy at all. It was a delicious treat, not like eating a football, which a lot of calzone’s feel like.

I wish Gennarino’s ran in Dallas more often. I’d like a chance to work my way through their extensive selection – that fried spaghetti and meatballs looks good, so does the pizza, and I’d like to bite into that Zeppolone (I always like something inside something else).

How to track them down:

Gennarino’s Facebook

Gennarino’s Twitter

Good food makes for happy customers.

Raffealel and his brother. They were great.

I have no idea what this means, but it looks cool.

My Calzone... excellent.

Raffealel out helping a customer with the menu.

Gennarino’s

Breaking Down the Menu: Dallas’ First Friggitoria

Sneak preview of Gennarino’s food truck

Interview: The Raineri family of Gennarino’s food truck

Food truck review: Gennarino’s

I can’t wait to try Gennarino’s Food Truck

Fried Pizza from a Truck

Gennarino’s is Ready to Roll like a Friggitoria

Best Enchiladas Ever

Posted on by Bill Chance

Saturday and I still haven’t totally recovered from the nastiest cold that I have had in decades. There is a lot of stuff to do at home, plumbing problems mostly, but Candy and I headed across the river to a couple of Estate Sales in Kessler Park. Both were in beautiful, old brick homes that are so rare in Dallas. Kessler Park has to be the prettiest part of the city with its historic one-of-a-kind homes, steep hills and thick stands of ancient trees. We bought a bunch of crap we never knew we couldn’t live without at the second sale, which was literally across the street from the house I lived in when I first moved to Dallas, thirty years ago.

After our time spent digging through dead people’s stuff we drove down to the Bishop Arts District – my newest favorite spot in Dallas. There are a bunch of places we want to eat at down there, but the other day I had stumbled across a blog entry written about the best Enchiladas in the city and had read about a semi-fast-food place down in Bishop Arts called bee – which stood for Best Enchiladas Ever. It looked like a plan.

It looks like bee is the brainchild of Monica, of Monica’s Aca y Alla – one of the most loved eating spots around. Monica quality enchiladas with fast food speed and prices sounds really good. Now, Oak Cliff is lousy with Tacquerias and other home-style Mexican food – and I’d like to try them all – so I guess a gentrified gringo invader may be politically incorrect… but I don’t care, I just want something good to eat.

Sorry for the poor photographs - I forgot my camera and had to use my phone.

Bee is a bright and clean little place near the corner of Davis and Zang. You get a little card and fill it out before ordering from the counter, like a sandwich place. The guy at the counter recommended the two enchilada special.

Build your own – starting with tortillas.

Choices:

  • corn,
  • blue corn,
  • wheat,
  • flour,
  • or cabbage leaf wrap.

Then filling:

  • chicken tinga,
  • pork carnitas
  • beef picadillo,
  • beef brisket,
  • tilapia veracruz,
  • spinach and mushroom,
  • quinoa and tofu,
  • vegan special,
  • cheddar cheese.

Finally, you add a sauce:

  • sour cream,
  • con carne,
  • queso blanco,
  • poblano crema,
  • chipotle crema,
  • oaxaca mole,
  • ranchera,
  • tomatillo,
  • avacado verde (cold).

Folks deciding what to get and filling out their cards.

My order, two enchiladas, rice and black beans

So you mix and match. Pick your sides and then when the food is ready they have a selection of toppings and cheeses. The back side of the little menu card is full of other options… burritos, tacos, salads… but you could spend a year working through the options of the different enchilada combinations.

As promised, the food was fast, reasonable, and very good. I had forgotten my combinations by the time the order came up, but I don’t think you can go wrong with anything I did especially like the poblano crema and the vegan black beans. They have a cooler full of beer and soft drinks and a margarita machine, so I suppose you could pretty well just live there if you wanted.

We finished our lunch and walked on down to Bishop where I picked up a coffee at Espumoso, hung out, and wrote this while I sipped on a coffee. Better than crawling around on the bathroom floor fixing the pipes – though I’ll still have to do that sometime.

Link-o-rama:

Food Truck in Richardson

Posted on by Bill Chance

I live in Richardson, Texas – a first-ring suburb of the enormous Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. For the last year or so, I have been enjoying tracking down the various Gourmet Food Trucks that wander the highways and byways. I have been finding them at various locations – mostly in the Dallas Arts District – but have yet to have one show up in my own hometown.

The one struggle for the Food Trucks all over the country is finding locations to park. The owners of brick and mortar restaurants traditionally have a lot of political clout and are always working to enact harassing regulations designed to eliminate the portable competition. I have plenty of sympathy for restaurant owners – that has to be one of the hardest ways to make a living – but I think they are mistaken. The food trucks are mostly a quality replacement for fast food plus they get people used to eating out more. I don’t think the food trucks are a serious threat to quality restaurants.

So I was excited when I left work and checked my social media and found out that the Nammi Food Truck (one of my favorites – First Visit – Second Visit) was going to be setting up for dinner in Richardson. They were going to be at the RunOn! store at Campbell and Coit – not very close to my house – but I wanted to support a truck coming out to my town. The Nammi Truck serves Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwiches, rice bowls, and fusion tacos. I drove home, checked with Candy and decided what to get, and then drove out to RunOn!.

That store brings back a lot of memories. When Lee was younger we used to drive him out there for running lessons. I used to kid him about “lessons” – I’d say, “Left, Right, Left, Right… how hard can it be?” It worked though – the direction and practice Lee received helped him become a good and enthusiastic long-distance runner.

While he would run I would hang out at the Starbucks or wander around the shopping center. There is a lot of interesting stuff around that intersection.

Tonight there was a recreational run going on with a nice little crowd of runners outside the store, stretching, talking, hanging out, and getting ready to head out together. Saucony was there with a truck loaning out test shoes (WTF?) and promoting their products. They had an Xbox Kinect hooked up on the back of their truck and the runners would take turn playing track and field games – running in place, jumping, and throwing a virtual javelin. It looked like a lot of fun… I’m an old fart and had never seen the Xbox Kinect working before.

There was a continuous short line at the Nammi Food Truck. I waited my turn and ordered a BBQ Pork Banh Mi sandwich (these are big sandwiches and Candy and I would share it) plus a lemongrass chicken taco and a beef taco. It didn’t take long and I took the stuff home for dinner.

As always, it was good.

Nammi tacos. They taste better than they look in this picture.

Related WordPress blogs:

People’s Choice Food Truck Winner: Nammi

The Food Truck Dish: Nammi

Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’–Keep those food trucks Rollin’

Eating Out :: DFW Food Trucks, Nammi

into the weekend

The How To Guide for the Texas Swanky Bride -Dallas Food Trucks – The New Wedding Trend

Super H Mart

Posted on by Bill Chance

I love the Saigon Market near my house, but I have been hearing the virtues of an even larger Asian Market called Super H Mart. It’s in north Carrollton, which is on the other side of the Metroplex from my humble home, but my car gets good mileage and I had some time today, so off I went.

It looks like a Kmart

Super H Mart is a chain, which started on the East Coast. It’s a huge place, with a massive grocery store surrounded by little stores and a long corridor of a food court. The biggest draw is the produce department with an endless assortment of fruits and vegetables… from normal looking peppers to the strangest looking spiky fruits from the far corners of the globe.

The place was packed with shoppers, noisy and active. It’s not very well organized, so you get to walk around a lot looking for stuff. It’s really clean though, and it’s an odd contrast, with the exotic selection presented like a typical American Megamart.

A great selection of Ramune

Of course, like any good Asian market, the seafood section is a treat. The back wall is full of tanks with every sea creature you can imagine. What isn’t swimming around is lined up on rows of aisles of ice. I wandered around looking at the stuff, watching some woman probing a case of blue crabs, watching them jump around, trying to decide if they were active enough.

Are your Abalone fresh?

Fan mail from some flounder?

Saigon Market in my neighborhood specializes in Vietnamese Fare, of course. Super H Mart specializes in Korean Food. I have never seen so much Kimchi in my life. Glass jars, plastic tubs, and big bags of a bewildering array of different kinds of fermented goodness – whole head cabbage, napa cabbage, radish, and many more that I didn’t really understand.

Jars of Kimchi, half and full gallons.

I like to buy my kimchi by the bag.

So I picked up a basket and filled it with a six pack of Ramune, some Udon, a big bag of Tobagi Kimchee, a bag of nectarines, and some Jufran hot banana sauce. Just another day at the grocery store.

There is a large section of teas and herbal remedies. Including this one, "Super Colon Sweeper." You have to admire a product with a drawing of the human lower digestive system on the label.