Articles about Food
D Magazine Goes to Beastly Lengths to Conceal Identity of Dining Editor Nancy Nichols
As Liz mentioned, we’re hosting a party tonight to celebrate the big reveal of our 100 Best Restaurants in Dallas in the June issue.
Dining editor Nancy Nichols went on D: The Broadcast this morning to promote the event and the list. This posed a problem, since we try to keep Nancy’s face out of the public eye so that she can dine anonymously in the city’s restaurants while preparing her reviews.
And that’s why she went on TV dressed as a pig.
Frito-Lay Gives Woman $1 Million For Cheesy Garlic Bread Flavor Potato Chips
I mentioned this contest on the blog last summer, and some the commenters seemed to mistake our post for the official entry form. One lucky contestant was to receive $1 million from Plano-based Frito-Lay in exchange for a great new flavor idea for Lay’s potato chips.
Well, the winning flavor is Cheesy Garlic Bread. It beat out the other two finalists, Chicken & Waffles and Sriracha. The company received more than 3.8 million entries, and an online vote determined the winner.
A Wisconsin librarian named Karen Weber-Mendham gets the cash. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal interviewed her:
Weber-Mendham entered the contest to pick a new potato chip flavor last year at the urging of her 13-year-old son, Davey. She submitted her idea because who, after all, doesn’t like cheese, garlic and bread?
In her contest entry she wrote that her children always clamor for an appetizer when the family goes out to dinner and because she’s a mom, she always says no. That is, unless the family is dining at an Italian restaurant and Weber-Mendham smells the garlic wafting from the kitchen. So she relents and orders garlic bread. With cheese, of course.
“That’s what you do when you’re from Wisconsin, you put cheese on everything,” she said.
All Clichés Are Bigger in Texas Award Nominee: Gardening Edition
From the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s gardening blog:
They grow everything big in Texas
I’m talking tomato cages here. These are 24 inches’ diameter and 6 feet tall with 2-foot extensions! I need ‘em this big to accommodate the grafted tomatoes I bought last week …Nothing’s worse than tomato season in full force, and your plants are toppling over for lack of support. It looks messy and is horrible to deal with. So we’ll see how this experiment goes. The jumbo cages come from a company called Texas Tomato Cages in Del Rio in south Texas. Free shipping.
Another in a rootin’, tootin’, calf-ropin’ series about writers who use Texas and Dallas clichés.
Boston Red Sox Broadcasters Wowed by Fan Eating Entire Beltre Buster During Rangers Game Friday
This man ate the $26 Beltre Buster on Friday at Rangers Ballpark. All of it, meaning one pound of meat and 8 ounces of bacon. The Boston Red Sox broadcast on NESN followed his progress closely over the course of the game, calling him a winner once the feat was completed.
If you feel bad for the guy, having been singled out by the cameras, well, George Costanza knows it could have been worse.
Travelocity Launches a Travel Web Series, Starts With a Search For Dallas’ Best Taco
The Southlake-based company announced today a new series of travel videos hosted by their “senior editor,” Courtney Scott. Their intention is to release one a week. There are two posted so far, one in New York and the other about a search for the best taco in Dallas.
SPOILER ALERT: She decides the winner is the brisket taco at Mia’s.
Have We Seen the Last of the Snuffer’s Ghost?
I didn’t even know that the Snuffer’s on Greenville Avenue, which was torn down earlier this month and will be rebuilt, was supposedly haunted. Which raises the question (at least according to the Lakewood/East Dallas Advocate), was the ghost destroyed in the demolition?
They asked Alan King of the Dallas Area Paranormal Society to weigh in:
[King] says it depends on what the spirit(s) is haunting. If it’s haunting the building, then probably not. If it’s haunting the ground, then we might see our ghostly friend again. If it’s haunting a piece of furniture or object, then it’ll depend on whether or not said object makes it into the new building.
If it is haunting the ground, we might begin to hear about curious things happening at the construction site, King says. So keep your eyes peeled!
Ghosts of Dallas: Lucas B&B, Oak Lawn, 1980
“Lucas B&B Restaurant; office building construction in background,” 1980.
Share your own Ghosts of Dallas.
The Best Eats at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Are Cereal and Barbecue, CNN Says
CNN picked the best food options at the nation’s 20 busiest airports (Dallas-Fort Worth International ranks No. 4 by passenger traffic). And they’re claiming that breakfast cereal and Cousin’s Bar-B-Q are as good as it get for us:
If you’ve got a morning flight, Cereality at gate C6 is like Chipotle, but with cereal instead of burritos.
The more obvious Texas choice is barbecue. Family-owned Cousin’s Bar-B-Q (at Terminals B and C) also offers locations outside the airport and has 30 years of experience cooking ribs and sausages.
I’m not a frequent flier, and I’m someone who doesn’t mind eating cereal for all three meals in a day, but can’t you do better at DFW?
Here’s the list of restaurants at the airport. I’ve got to think they should’ve gone with one of the Tex-Mex offerings over barbecue. I mean, only if their article were anything more than a insidiously designed pageview magnet.
Pizza Hut is Out to Kill You With Pockets of Cheese
A model of the interior of the human heart after a single exposure to Pizza Hut’s new Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza.
Chris Nichols of Yahoo! Finance steps inside the secret Plano test kitchen of Pizza Hut to see the company’s newest creation, the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza, which will go on sale Wednesday.
The name is a fair one, though perhaps only by seeing it in person can one truly appreciate it. This particular item relies on the hand-tossed crust, but it comes with an immediately noticeable difference — rather than the slices ending in that familiar arc of baked dough, each piece of the Crazy Cheesy Crust has appended to it two edible pockets filled with melted cheese.
“You notice how the dough actually nestles around,” [executive chef Wiley Bates III] says. “The hand-tossed [crust] lends itself to absorbing some of those wonderful flavors, while again maintaining the integrity of the cheese.”
His description of the pizza’s characteristics and how it came to exist can perhaps be summed up by one short statement he adds: “Consumers always want more cheese.”
Best of Big D: Food and Drink Vote Ends Sunday
There are only three days left to cast your ballots for the best eating and drinking in Dallas. It’s been a record year for voting, so we know many of you already have. But remember that you’re allowed to come back once a day and do it all over again.
That means there are still three chances left. Don’t let down your favorites by not exercising your right to make your voice heard.
The winners will be honored in the August issue of D Magazine.
Leading Off (3/29/13)
The Future of Dallas: Like Mumbai or Portland? Speaking to an audience of prominent developers yesterday at the Dallas County Club, that’s how the former CEO of the Trammell Crow Co., J. McDonald Williams, characterized the alternative paths facing the city in how it confronts the growing gap in economic equality and opportunity between the northern and southern sectors of Dallas.
“We spend money on the Arts District,” he said. “We spend money on … the Calatrava bridges. We spend money on a two-city-block downtown park.
“Those are all good things, but the truth is, we live in a world of limited resources. We are going to have to have a public conversation about how resources get prioritized.”
The city’s elite ignore the changes taking place at their peril, he said.
“You can’t isolate yourself out here in Highland Park for very long,” Williams said
Sounds like there’s at least one rich guy that Jim Schutze wouldn’t call a clown
Dallas Mavericks Still Can’t Shave. As mentioned yesterday, there was a barber standing by at the American Airlines Center last night, in the hopes that a Mavs victory would bring the team’s win-loss record to an even 36-36, enabling Dirk and Co. to remove the glorious beards they’d sworn to grow until they got back to .500. But instead the Indiana Pacers blew them out, 103-78. Now they’ve got to beat the Chicago Bulls (who just ended the Miami Heat’s 27-game win streak) and then the Lakers (the team they’re chasing for the eighth playoff spot in the Western Conference) at the Staples Center. Should they even bother packing their razors for the road trip?
Texas Rangers Concessionaires Are Trying to Kill You. That is the only rational conclusion to be drawn from the Ballpark at Arlington’s unveiling of the new “Beltre Buster” burger (named for third baseman Adrian Beltre) that’ll be on offer in the upcoming season. It’s a pound of beef with 8 ounces of bacon. “Although nutrition information wasn’t provided by the team, one dietitian estimated that one Beltre Buster burger contained roughly 2,800 calories, 185 grams of fat and 6,000 milligrams of sodium. That’s more calories than a healthy adult male should eat in an entire day, plus more than double the fat and nearly triple the recommended sodium intake.”
Here’s a Sneak Peek at the Menu For Cafe 43, the Restaurant at the Bush Presidential Center
There will be cake. Photo: Infrogmation, via Flickr
Yesterday, news came that the restaurant at the George W. Bush Presidential Center would be named Cafe 43, in honor of Bush’s presidential lineage. The restaurant will open May 1, and will be open to the public, not just ticket-holding center-goers.
“That’s what Mrs. Bush wants,” George W. Bush Foundation president Mark Langdale told the Morning News. “She’s looking forward to being there with her friends and family and going there after church. It’s going to be a great place for people in … the greater community to come to campus, come to SMU, and experience being here.”
The cafe will serve lunch daily, and will be available for some special dinner events. Langdale added that it will likely become available to rent for community activities. One thing the Morning News piece left out was the menu. I don’t know if that’s because they chose to leave it out, or just don’t have the same connections at food-operator Culinaire that we here at D Magazine do. After the jump, a sneak peek at some of the menu items:
Best of Big D Readers’ Choice 2013: Vote Now For the Best Eating and Drinking in Dallas
I mentioned this on Friday, and now it has begun.
Our Best of Big Readers’ Choice: Food and Drink survey is already collecting votes. Cast your ballot daily through March 31 if you want to see your favorites recognized in the August issue of D Magazine.
Seriously, get on it. Now.
Vote For the Best Food and Drink in Dallas Beginning Monday, March 18
Round two of this year’s Best of Big D Readers’ Choice voting gets started on Monday. This time we’re asking for your favorite spots for dining and imbibing in North Texas.
As before, you’ll be able to vote once per day on your desktop, laptop, or mobile internet-connected device. Unfortunately, we no longer support ballots sent via carrier pigeon.
Votes can be cast over a two-week period, ending March 31. Yes, on Easter Sunday we’ll expect you to break away from your family’s annual picnic and egg hunt to spend a few minutes deciding who makes the best French fries in town.
We’ve added new categories this year (Food trucks! Fried chicken!), so there’s plenty more to make you hungry as your peruse our nominees.
Jump for a full list of the survey questions (after you set a daily reminder on your calendar to vote, of course.)
Hostess Cakes Sold; The Twinkie Lives!
Party time.
Not that it was every truly in danger of going permanently extinct, but the Twinkie is back. The New York Post broke the news last night about the Irving-based cakery:
[Billionaire private equity mogul Leon] Black’s Apollo Global Management was the only entity to make a bid for the snacks business of bankrupt Hostess Brands – grabbing ownership of the stable of well known brands for $410 million, The Post has learned.
The private equity firm — known for making money off distressed assets — teamed with veteran food exec Dean Metropoulos on the bid for the business, which also includes Ho-Hos, Donettes and Dolly Madison in addition to Twinkies. The deadline for bids was Monday at 5 p.m.
Hostess creditor Silver Point Capital and Hurst Capital in recent days had submitted letters indicating an intention to bid – but in the end neither stepped up to the plate with a firm proposal.
As we all know, Metropoulos also owns Pabst Blue Ribbon. I would never, ever make the assertion that these two treats are a match made in trashy heaven. Reuters caught up with Metropoulos’ son Daren, who said the snack cakes could be back on shelves by the summer.
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