Friday, November 30, 2007

UPDATED: Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth November 30

By Teresa Gubbins

Updated 09:14 p.m., December 1, 2007

Honey Molasses Organic Cafe, which opened in October not too far from Love Field, has a cool back-story: Owner Kim Parker was a police officer ready to retire from her post at the U.S. Treasury in Washington D.C. She'd already begun casting her eye towards the beaches of Florida when her best friend, also an officer with the U.S. Treasury but assigned to Fort Worth, urged her to come to Texas instead.

"I did want to do something that would still involve people, because I like dealing with people," Parker says. She had two other things going for her: She was into organic food; and her daughter, Brie, is a culinary student at Johnson & Wales who'd worked for the Kempton Hotel Monaco in Washington, D.C.

"My daughter created my menu," Parker says. "Everything is made from scratch."

Many of the dishes are named after important musicians, such as the Fats Dominoes jambalaya risotto, the Duke Ellington salmon (served on spinach in lemon champagne sauce), or the Cab Calloway curry chicken with onions, celery, curry spices, and Havarti cheese served with brown rice or mixed greens. The vegan sweet potato pie has already become a signature item.

For now, the restaurant is open weekdays at lunch, but those hours will be extended in January. On Wednesdays from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m., the restaurant hosts a Chicago-style step-dancing class that's turned into a fun party. There's brunch one Saturday a month, including this Saturday, December 1, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with freshly baked organic muffins, granola, and wifi access, too.

Capitol idea

The Shops at Henderson, on Henderson Avenue at the corner of Capitol, is starting to blossom, with Capitol Pub open about three weeks now, and Fish City Grill set to open on Monday December 3. It'll be the 19th branch of Fish City Grill and the 7th in the Dallas area, serving affordable seafood dishes with shrimp, crawfish, snapper, and so on.

Capitol Pub is half bar-half restaurant, just like its cousin up the street, Old Monk, with similar food options (calamari, cheese plates, fish & chips); a similarly stellar beer selection; and a matching crowd of bon vivants spilling out the door. The rest of the Shops tenants, including Neopolitan pizzeria Pulcinella, will open at the end of December.

It means "skewer" in Turkish

Restaurateur Levent Kirazoglu first brought unique, informal Turkish food to Selim's Doner House. Now he expands with a more formal slice at Shish, his fine-dining Turkish-Mediterranean restaurant on Addison Road, near Texas de Brazil and Sambuca.

"The way I describe my food is 'Mediterranean cuisine with a Turkish flair'," he says. "We have a lot of items from Anatolia, a huge list of items I import, like Mediterranian sea breem and an air-dried cured beef from Turkey that's similar to pastrami."

Entrees run from $13.95 to $34.95, including a bountiful mixed-grill platter with "a little bit of everything" from the grill -- skewers, doner, kebabs.

"We have Turkish wines, Turkish beer, Turkish anisette -- you cannot find those retail anywhere," he says.

Supplementing the Turkish bottles is a complete wine list with labels from Chile, Argentina, France, and Italy, stored in a climate-controlled wine cellar. A banquet room holding 50 has been popular for parties and, since it's Addison, there's smoking at the bar. Last but not least: Belly dancers on Fridays at 8 p.m.

Coal Vines on the map

SliceNY, the magnificent Web site devoted to the very best food on the planet, recently created a Coal-Oven Pizzeria Map that lists every coal-oven pizzeria in the U.S. and yay, Dallas has one (well, two) that made the list: Coal Vines on Cedar Springs Road as well as its sibling in Southlake (which truthfully has a hybrid oven but it burns coal, too). The list has only 39 places, 25 of those in New York. Now's the time to visit Coal Vines; sitting near the 900-degree oven feels pretty darn good on a cool December night.

UPDATE: The Dallas branch replaced its coal oven with a hybrid one that gets its heat from three sources, says a spokesman.

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