During the Deep Ellum Food Truck Festival a band set up along the side, in front of a recording studio. It was Ducado Vega (facebook) and Zenya – winners of the Dallas Observer Music Award for “Best Funk/R&B Act.” They were nice and loud and a lot of fun. Especially when they moved back in time for some classic James Brown funk and some unusual covers (Rolling in the Deep).
Great local music.
Support your local bands. Ducado Vega will be in the Colony this weekend.
The other afternoon we were trying to figure out what to do for dinner. Candy asked if there were any places in Dallas that sold crepes. We go to Cafe Brazil all the time, and they have the thin pancakes on the menu, but she meant someplace new. Luckily, there is that internet thingy and a quick search turned up a place in Addison called Flippin’ Out. It was on Beltline Road (isn’t everything?) and a bit of a drive… but it looked different and interesting so we headed out.
It is a tiny place tucked in the parking lot of a strip center… a little to the West of the hopping heart of the Addison Strip. It advertises Crepes and Coffee, so it couldn’t be bad. There is no seating inside, only a tiny room crammed with menu boards and equipment for cooking an brewing.
Out back there is a neat covered patio and someday I’d like to go back there and sit outside, but this day was too damn hot so we ordered our crepes – I had a Gulf coast (Sauteed shrimp, lump crab, roasted Pasilla peppers & Pontchartrain cream sauce)… Candy had a Cuban (Slow roasted pork, pickles & onion topped with Dijon mustard & Swiss cheese) and she also ordered a dessert… I think it was the Honey Badger (Handpicked strawberries, bananas & blueberries topped with honey, yogurt & granola).
We took the food home and it was good. I was impressed with the idea even more, though. Crepes are easy to make, very thin and don’t have a lot of calories, and very versatile. So on a whim, we ordered a Cucina Pro cordless crepe maker off of that internet thing again.
A couple days and there was a box on the doorstep. On Saturday I made up a blender full of crepe batter and stood there cranking out a couple dozen thin little pancakes. We ate a couple and put the rest in the fridge in a bag.
I’m surprised, but it looks like this is going to work out. A bit of fruit, or some leftovers… really anything… and you can roll it up in one of those things and there’s a meal. It’s like a big, thin tortilla… only Frenchier.
Flippin’ Out – it’s not very big, but it’s hard to miss.
The main menu.
Drinks menu… the coffee looks good, but “Treats from the Teat!” – I don’t know if that’s as catchy or as appetizing as they think it is.
Not a lot of room to spare inside.
(Click to Enlarge)
I have been trying hard to watch what I eat recently… and doing a fairly good job of it. But we live in a world of temptation and I saw publicity for a second Food Truck Festival down in Deep Ellum last Friday. The last one was a big success and Deep Ellum is such a great place for people watching at things like that. I could not resist. So I decided to take the DART train down after work and then simply watch what I ate.
Oh, in checking this out, I came across a bit of interesting information. If memory serves, they said a little over a year ago there were two gourmet food trucks in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Now there are somewhere around sixty four.
Luckily for me, this festival had a number of healthy options. As is my wont, I chose a truck that I had never tried before. The Good Karma Kitchen truck was in attendance. I don’t think I had even seen this one before – they seem to spend most of their time in Fort Worth. They make gluten-free vegetarian food.
I chose the first item on their menu, the Spicy Asian Tacos – “Slow Roasted Korean BBQ’d tofu w/shaved carrots, jalepeno lime cream & ginger pickles.”
Do you think that sounds good? If you do, you are right.
Across the parking lot from Deep Sushi down Deep Ellum way there is a wall painted with four portraits. I have no idea who painted these or why…. I haven’t done any research on the paintings. For some reason I don’t want to.
The parking lot for Deep Sushi, down in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas.
The four are all Dallas musicians… but a very eclectic lot. First off, Erykah Badu – by far the most famous. You know who she is.
Erykah Badu
The next is a little more obscure. Ronnie Dawson was pure, absolute, Dallas Rockabilly. He was born here in 1939 and died of throat cancer in 2003. He was much more popular in England than here.
Ronnie Dawson
After these two classics, there are two current up-and-coming local artists. I have seen both of them in the last year and have written about them. First of all, the duo called the O’s. I saw them at the Patio Sessions at the Winspear Opera House… and was very impressed.
The O’s
And last, but not least, Madison King. I’ve seen her twice recently. Again, she was at one of the Patio Sessions and I saw here just a week ago down at the Museum of Art.
Madison King
So here they are. If nothing else, a pretty good set of examples of the wide variety of music spawned on the overheated streets of Dallas. I’ll bet there are folks like that where you are from too… even if there aren’t paintings of them on a wall somewhere.
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Along the street that ran through the center of the Cedars West Arts festival, out in front of the new fencing around OKON Metals, sat the chopped off cockpit of some unknown aircraft. I guess it was out there to show the variety of materials that a metal recycler can deal with – or maybe it was out there simply because it was way cool.
I couldn’t help but hang around the severed snout. One guy looked at it and said to his buddy, “Look at all the bullet holes.” Now I knew better – those puncture wounds weren’t from ballistic ammunition, they were pierce marks from forklift forks (how do you think they move that massive chunk of aircraft aluminum around?) – but I didn’t want to disappoint the guy’s martial imagination, so I stayed silent.
Off to the side, an artist stood with a pad on an easel. His name was Joshua Boulet and I chatted with him for a bit. He had a portfolio of his line-drawings on a stand. I looked over his work done at Occupy Wall Street. “Did you go to New York for these?” I asked.
“Yeah, I set up right there just like I did today and drew these live,” he said with a hint of excitement in his voice.
Here is his work in progress. You can see the fire engine from yesterday’s entry in the foreground.
Here’s the finished sketch (click to enlarge)
There was a high step up into the cockpit, but I took a breath, grabbed some loose aluminum and pulled myself in. There are few things as cool as the complex destruction in old, junked aerospace detritus.
What could be more fun for a bunch of kids than going for a ride on a vintage fire truck. From the Cedars West Arts Festival.
Bill Chance 