Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth November 27

by Teresa Gubbins

El Paraiso almost gets lost at its busy East Plano intersection at Avenue K and Parker, competing for attention among the dozens of businesses that surround the giant Fiesta and Minyard stores.

El Paraiso's sign says "ice cream, smoothies, fruit cups," and that they do, plus more: tortas, tamales, corn cups, strawberries with cream. Nearly everything is made on site, from the lomo (marinated pork tenderloin) and birria (marinated goat) that goes in the sandwiches to their own yogurt, offered in three flavors -- plain, strawberry, or pina colada -- topped with fresh fruit, granola, coconut, and raisins.

El Paraiso was opened two years ago by Antonia Lucatero, who moved to Texas with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law Veronica from California, where they had a similar place.

The exciting surprise is the ice cream, made on site, in good, unique flavors such as the subtle vanilla ice cream that's studded with dried fruits, cherries, pineapple, and crunchy chopped almonds.

"That's a traditional flavor from the area of Michoacan, where my father-in-law grew up," says Veronica. "Those are all original recipes from his grandfather."

They also have an impressive assortment of flavored paletas.

"For the ice cream sticks, we have rice, pecan, mango-and-chile, tamarind, watermelon, and rompope, which is like eggnog," Veronica says.

And now, for a limited time during the holidays, they're also offering homemade tamales.

Cookie lady

The Greene Kitchen Bakery is a new bakery in Plano that came about via a classic route, acknowledges owner-baker Elissa Greene.

"It's the typical story," she says. "Little old lady cooks at home, everybody loves it, she opens a little store, and the rest is history."

She started with chocolate chip cookies, then expanded into other varieties and other pastries, too, before finally formalizing it by moving into a retail/bakery space at Parker and Independence in mid-November.

"I started out two years ago doing it from home, and then came to that crossroads where I asked myself, 'Do I stop? Or do I go further?'" she says.

She found a space near Country Burger, across from Campisi’s, that had a functional kitchen -- "although it took a lot of elbow grease," she says. She does mouth-watering cupcakes, cookies (check out her Oreo knock-offs), tarts, brownies, and loads of holiday gift baskets. During the holidays last year, she baked 8,000 cookies.

"It all goes back to those chocolate chip cookies," she says. "It took me 10 years to perfect that recipe. It has two kinds of nuts and two kinds of chocolate. Finally I was like, I’ve got it. Once you bite into it, it is amazing."

No relation to White Lion

White Rhino Coffee was opened about a year ago in the quaint old downtown area of Cedar Hill by Chris Parvin, a 34-year-old practicing lawyer who always dreamed of having his own coffee house.

"I wanted to have a cool people-oriented place," he says. "Not yuppie or hippie. Just a place where, no matter who you are, you can come in and relax."

They're in an old house built in the 1940s, which Parvin and company restored themselves. "It was a dump -- it took us six months to do," he says.

Aside from the cozy atmosphere, White Rhino strives to get good beans and raw materials such as sauces by Ghirardelli. For coffee, they took a page out of Cafe Brazil's book and set up a self-serve coffee bar, with three or four varieties of coffee, at $2.44 for bottomless cup. Sandwiches at lunch include a veggie wrap on wheat tortilla, and cookies are baked in-house, plus pies, cakes, and other sweets from vendors such as La Duni.