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About as much fun you can have at a restaurant. Manny's is always packed on a Friday night, and with good reason -- the food is good, and the atmosphere, whether on the patio or even waiting for a table, is fantastic. My vote for "place to take an out-of-towner for a Tex-Mex experience."

I've seen the ads for Cindi's on this site for a while, so I checked it out -- I'm glad I did! The best deli-style breakfest I've found in Dallas. Service is friendly and prompt. Lots of choices on a wide-ranging menu.

I'm thrilled that Tolbert's has reopened its doors in Grapevine, ending the anomoly of not having a true chili place in the largest metropolitan area in the entire state of Texas. Tolbert's has a very nice, retro-Western-chic buildout that fits in nicely with its Main Street Grapevine locale. But the highlight is chili, and for those of us who crave it, it certainly fits the bill. The frito pie is quite good as well. My one critique is that I wish the chili were a bit spicier, or if options to order it spicier were more apparent on the menu.

My favorite of the sports bars the line McKinney in Uptown, with the most laid-back atmosphere and least-objectionable fellow patrons. The wait staff has always been friendly and accommodating. The food's decent, at least by sports bars standards. The MAT might consider investing in a couple of newer higher in HDTVs, but otherwise the place is great.

This gem of a restaurant has been open for several years now, and it has remained one of my favorite restaurants in all of DFW. In all of my visits over the years, I have been impressed with Sofio's ability to pull off an upscale-yet-casual atmosphere -- it is, after all, a neighborhood Italian restaurant that doesn't feel downscale at all -- very friendly service and, above all else, extremely good food. I just wish that they could do away with at least a couple of the five(!) TVs in the place, as they distract from the atmosphere even if they're left on mute.

I recently dined there and was disappointed. It was my first visit in a while, and it seems as though the place has really slipped over the last few years.

Two things I was particularly disappointed about:

(1) The naan seemed very undercooked -- the worst I have ever had; and

(2) the deceptive upsell by the waiter. After my companion and I had ordered our entrees, the waiter asked if we'd like a "side" (his word) of vegetables, perhaps spinach, with our entrees. We agreed. When I think "side," I know that at even the most expensive of steak houses, a "side" of creamed spinach would be in the $6 to $7 range. Much to my surprise, the bill showed that we were not in fact brought a "side" of spinach but were in fact billed for an entire third entree at $9.95. I don't know if this is standard operating procedure here, but I'd be careful if a waiter goes for the upsell on your visit here.

I have to admit that I was initially hesitant to try this place based solely on its name. A place called "The Keg" in the middle of Las Colinas made me think it would be like Cool River, but even cheesier. In actuality, I discovered that this restaurant offers excellent steaks and a great happy hour scene for a fraction of what a place like Bob's or Capital Grille would cost. I'm not saying that the quality is as good as those places, but it's pretty close, and when you factor in the huge price differential - about $30 to $40 per person here with drinks - it's definitely worth the visit.

I've eaten here for dinner on a couple of occasions, and the sushi is quite good. I wouldn't recommend it for happy hour though. The bar had looked tempting during our dinner visits, but a bar visit at happy hour led to a pretty dead scene, inattentive service, and, most disappointingly, Uptown prices in a suburban strip mall locale. If you're looking for a much better bar scene at about 60% of the price, head next door to The Keg.

Very disappointing.

Based on the write-up I'd seen here a few times on Texas Gigs while looking up local shows, as well as the award I think it won from the Observer for best something-or-other, I was really expecting something, if not special, at least better than ordinary. But mediocre would be the best way to describe our brunch here, and that's being slightly generous.

I ordered the pancakes, which came with a side of bacon. The bacon was very undercooked, limp and unsatisfying. The pancakes themselves were unremarkable, neither good nor bad, but what got me was that the syrup came in those little packages like you'd get at a McDonald's. That's what I would expect at a McDonald's, and maybe even a Whataburger as well, but not at a neighborhood joint that you would assume does some home-cooking.

My companion's egg sandwich was described simply as "awful" and also came with the same limp bacon.

The atmosphere was also disappointing. Based on what I see here, Highlands Cafe seems like the kind of place that supports local artists, and to its credit a display of CDs for purchase by local artists is at the front of the store. Given that, being subjected to really really bad "lite" 80s music over the speakers -- think Michael Bolton -- during our meal was surprising and diappointing. If the owners of Highlands Cafe are reading this, PLEASE turn off the Bolton and open up one of those CDs by local artists and play it instead. Your diners will thank you.

Also on the good side/bad side territory, Highlands Cafe does display work of local artists on its wall, which is good. But the local artist on display at our end of the restaurant during our visit was baffling. Closest to are table were unremarkable drawings of Rod Stewart and Michael Jordan selling for $750 and $1200 respectively. We were quite puzzled at the choice of art and the artist's delusion that someone would be interested in these works at these prices.

I'm hopeful that diners' experiences here during lunch and dinner are better than our experiences during a Sunday brunch. I remain puzzled by the accolades it has received. All I can think of is that people are so rightfully pleased that any sort of neighborhood restauarnt has opened up like this that theya re afraid to say anything negative about it at all.

Wow. If you really want to hear a big bald white guy sing a montel jordan song and then go to a really really bad SRV cover, this band is for you!

Hey oldschoolt, can you tell me what other movies you like so that I know to avoid those as well?

I've got to go with a buzzy taste myself. But if there's that much caffiene regardless, I guess the taste trumps.

My lord, I'm generally much more a rock guy than a hip-hop guy, but the PPT song is hands down miles beyond the Feds song. I wish all those Buzzoven kids coming over and voting for the Feds would actually listen to PPT's song first.

Thank God for the celebrity judges!

I'd like to make a personal plea to HEB:

Please, please, please expand into the Dallas market with your regular grocery stores in addition to Central Market. Please rescue us in the Dallas area from the mediocre shopping we endure at the hands of Albertsons, Kroger and Tom Thumb. Anything can be better than that trifecta of mediocrity, but HEB's stores in Central Texas far surpass anything that we can currently find up here.

From the perspective of someone wanting to actually watch sports, there's no particularly good reason to visit this place.

Fox Sports Grill in Plano at The Shops at Legacy, the seventh location of what will inevitably be many more locations nationwide, has one huge fatal flaw -- the lack of at least one large or projection screen TV on which the main event at any particular time can be watched. Practically any other sports bar worth its salt, whether the national chains like Champps or ESPN Zone or local favs like the MAT, has at least one giant screen, if not more, to watch the primary action.

Not Fox Sports Grill. Instead, patrons must watch the action instead on one of its many flat-screens spread throughout the establishment. This might have been an acceptable alternative to installing one or more big screens, but because of another huge problem with Fox Sports Grill's layout it is not. That problem is that Fox Sports Grill is too spacious for its own good. Its size might make it -- well, it seems inevitable that it will make it -- a place to see and been seen that will rival Champp's in Addison in all its glorious cheesiness, but it creates an atmosphere in which all of the TVs are far away from patrons in practically any location in the central bar area.

From our lounge-like seats within the bar area, for example, our choices were (a) to watch the TVs all the way across the bar, which didn't work too well, (b) tilt our heads nearly 90 degrees up to watch a couple of TVs above us, or (c) sit on our knees, turn around and look through the patrons dining behind us to watch a couple of other TVs. Walking around the bar in search for our seats lead me to realize that most locations offered similarly perplexing and unsatisfactory viewing options. Fox Sports Grill really needs a refund from whatever architectural firm it used to design and build out this space.

Since Fox Sports Grill had just opened up a couple of days earlier, I must excuse the friendly through ineffective service to opening-weekend kinks. I'm not quite as willing to forgive the power outage that knocked everying out inside Fox (though not inside neighboring establishments, as far as we could tell) with two minutes left in an exciting Texas A&M-LSU tournament game, prompting our exit after waiting a couple of minutes. (Good thing we had already paid!)

Since it was mid-day, I didn't eat a full meal. I did scan the menu in search of a snack, though, but the menus seemed rather pedestrian. I settled for some chocolate cake which, though pretty good, was perplexingly served in a cappuchino cup which only wanted to roll around sideways on my plate.

All in all, watch your games elsewhere if possible.

(Date visited: March 18, 2006)

Surprisingly decent food with friendly service. Visiting on a Tuesday night, not too many customers were eating save those who appeared to be in from out of town and eating a "real Texas steak" on the company expense acoount, but this allowed for chatting with the talented solo performer (Brian Rueth) performing that night.

As just about everyone knows, one of the best places in Dallas, if not the best, for beer. Also a great place to take visitors from out of town to show them that Dallas has more to offer than chain restaurants.