Friday, August 15, 2008

Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth August 15

By Teresa Gubbins

Times are good for winos right now. The wine-bar wine-tasting winery wine-wine-wine situation is off the hook, with make-your-own places, tasting rooms, wine shops, wine shops with bars, wine shops that are adjacent to restaurants, wine everywhere.

Interior of 55 Degrees Wine Bar & Bistro, 55 degrees being the ideal temperature for red wine.

Including Plano -- at the corner of Parker and Preston, where 55 Degrees Wine Bar & Bistro resides. This mom-and-pop does a lot of things right, starting with the price: You can get a glass of wine here for as low as $5. Affordability was important to husband-and-wife owners Laura and Kevin Lucia, who left corporate America to open this place on June 19.

"It'd been a dream of ours, we'd been talking about it for 10 years, and finally decided to do it last summer," Laura says. "Kevin grew up outside of Napa Valley, his father was in the spirits business, so he'd been around it. And we both have had a passion for wine, taking trips to Napa a couple times a year."

They sought out expertise from Jay Winkler, who'd been in the restaurant business for 25 years, working at places such as Voltaire and Bistro Louise, and devised a menu as well as a wine strategy. Their house wine is 14 Hands from Washington state, and most of their wines come from small-production wineries. The menu consists of small bites and small plates.

Cheese, crackers, grapes: These are the building blocks of a cheese plate.

"We wanted people to be able to enjoy food that pairs nicely with wine, but not full blown dinners where you feel stuffed," Laura says. "We have cheese flights where customers can order one to three to five cheeses, from different parts of Europe, from a Brie to a Manchego. And we have the same kind of flight offering of Mediterranean air-cured meats. We serve those on a long tray with fruit and olives, and bring a basket of baguettes and water crackers. One of our signature dishes is Jose’s jerk shrimp that we serve on a big long board with half a loaf of bread. We have wonderful crab cakes and salads including one with Bartlett pears and blue cheese."

The atmosphere is pleasant, with comfortable couches, art on the walls, and live music every so often. You don't usually see this kind of thing in Plano.

Love is a strong word

Interior of Love Thy Wine in Flower Mound.

Speaking of wine in suburban places, a new wine-beer-gourmet-foods-gift shop called Love Thy Wine just opened in Flower Mound. They carry wines from all over the world; host winemaker events and tastings at least once a month; offer complimentary wine tastings daily; have a wine club where you can buy bottles at a discount; sell cheese, pates, sausage, caviar, smoked salmon, duck breast, ham, honey, olive oil, vinegar, crackers, pasta, pasta sauce, chutney, jams, dressings, and marinades, including quince paste from Spain.

Another week, another pizza place

Pollenzo’s Pizza House out there in Keller initially seemed like it might be another authentic-Italian-type VPN pizza place. After all, as its Web site explained, it's named after a town in northern Italy, "the location of a new institution of higher learning devoted to food and is close to the international headquarters of the Slow Food movement, which promotes well-prepared cultural cuisine".

But the place doesn't observe slow-food methods, nor does it have the wood-burning oven found at trendy pizza places these days. Which is fine, no judgment there.

The folks that run the place were difficult to get ahold of, but an employee said they make their own dough to which they add herbs, and then also spread herbs on top, so it sounds pretty herby. The web site also has a section dedicated to "core values" including the fact that they're "a family-owned company based on Christian values", which isn't usually an ingredient for pizza but for some people might possibly make it taste better? I just like arugula.

Scraping the plate

• Embattled burger place Gordo's has finally re-opened, after relocating from its former address on Lovers to a new space in Preston Center. An email sent out to "Faithful Supporters" announced a soft opening Thursday, August 14. Now the faithful can get their burgers, their hand-cut fries, their true-blue Caesar salads.
• Noka Chocolate, the irrationally expensive chocolatier, is opening a branch at NorthPark Center in October. Exciting news for the chocolate fans over at Dallasfood.org!
• And Eddie V’s, a restaurant company based in Arizona, will open a branch of its Eddie V's seafood concept in Fort Worth in December. Eddie V's debuted in Austin, which now has two branches; there's also one in Scottsdale. The company, launched by the founders of Z Tejas, also owns two other concepts: Roaring Forks and Wildfish Seafood Grille.

Click Here to check out Teresa Gubbins' weekly roundup of restaurant openings and closings. It's called "Best Bites" and it's only on Pegasus News

Related stories

• Eddie V’s Prime Seafood opens Monday January 26 at Fort Worth’s Museum Place development (Jan. 26, 2009)

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• Food and Drink > Dining / Restaurants > Best Bites

Comments

Billusa99 Anonymous

14 Hands is nice stuff -- good for 55 Degrees! Though it's too bad they are way up north in Iowa.

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

frankstongal Anonymous

when will people quit pairing cheese with fruit?

1 year, 2 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )