Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Lunchtime at Stephan Pyles

So, I was really good yesterday. Salad for lunch and chicken, broccoli and brown rice for dinner. But today my mediation at the EEOC downtown finished at just after 1pm and I was so hungry. I was excited when my client accepted my lunch invitation.

Since we were downtown, I decided on Stephan Pyles. SP is one of my favorite restaurants in Dallas. I've been there several times before but this was the first time I went to lunch there. At Fearing's on Friday, IM was raving about how reasonable and tasty the lunch menu was at SP (granted she's a little bias because her hubby is the Executive Chef at SP - and I think Matt McCallister is THE chef to watch in this town- but IM also knows her stuff) so I had to check it out.

IM was absolutely right. The lunch menu is completely reasonable. They have a good variety of big salads, flat breads, and entrees for under $15. Their burger -- $10! I ordered the grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and grilled corn and my client ordered the seafood special -- cod with a tomato risotto and I think a fennel salad. We both made happy plates. My chicken was cooked well and the mashed potatoes were delicious. Not fancy, just a good hearty meal (and I was starving so hearty is what I wanted).

Added bonus for SP -- BEST ICED TEA IN TOWN! It was so refreshing and tasty. I could drink it all day.

I somehow managed to abstain for the Heaven and Hell cake for dessert. But I'm definitely going back -- this time, for the burger.

Cheers!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Rachel is great. She made a chocolate cake

So yesterday I had a birthday dinner at a friend's house. I volunteered to bring dessert and, for some reason, I decided to make a chocolate cake . . . from scratch. I have no idea why I decided to do it. For those of you who know me, I am not a baker. I love to cook but too many things can go wrong with baking. You get one measurement off, you have a mess, and you won't know you've made a mistake until after it gets out of the oven. I'm just not exact enough.

But anyway, yesterday I decided to make a from scratch chocolate cake. It helped that I had a recipe from Cook's Illustrated, which is the BEST cooking magazine out there. If you follow a Cook's Illustrated recipe, you will never get it wrong. They test and test and test with different methods and ingredients until the recipe is exactly right. When I need a foolproof recipe, that's where I go.

So back to the chocolate cake. It really wasn't that hard. I don't own a stand mixer so I couldn't mix it just like the recipe suggested but I think it came out really good. The final product was really rich but light enough where you could have more than a couple of bites. Everyone agreed it was tasty. I'll probably do it again. And best part, guess what I'm having for breakfast? :)

Saturday, August 21, 2010

And on the 5th day, I digested

So just got back from a nice looooong walk with Murray. Feel like quite a slug after 4 days of eating. It was delicious eating, but lots of calories in a short period of time. My trainer is going to hurt me today. I deserve it. But I'd do it all again (well, maybe not Horne & Dekker).

Friday night was Fearing's night. I've been to Fearing's several times and have always enjoyed it. Not only is it great food, but the space is beautiful and the service is always great. But this is Restaurant Week so I always lower my expectations.

We started out with wine. Fearing's house wine, the Huntington Cabernet, is perfectly good and none of us were really in the mood to spend a bunch of money on wine this night. It was $40 so we ordered that. Unfortunately, they had run out and instead of bringing us a comparable bottle to our table as a suggestion, we had some random guy in a suit (I'm not sure who he was. He never introduced himself.) bring the wine list over and start suggesting hundred dollar bottles of wine. Fail. I (not me, my friend I)took the menu and we selected the Trefethen Cabernet. It was almost double the price of our original selection but it was a good solid wine and went well with our selections. We gave that order to some other guy in a suit. Again, not sure who he was since he didn't introduce himself but he later showed up with our wine so I guess was the right person to order from.

Fearing's did something different than most RW restaurants. They gave you options. We had the RW menu and then we had the opportunity to enhance our selection with various items from their regular menu (for an additional cost of course). It was a nice touch and a way for the restaurant to increase their check average. I'm sure most people don't do the enhancement, but, as you know, I'm not most people.

Actually, I was the only one that didn't enhance their main entry. I stuck with the spare ribs because, well, I love spare ribs. But I did get an enhancement for my appetizer. The selection for the first course was either Dean's famous Tortilla Soup (which I think is a bit overrated) or a southwest caesar salad. The options had my favorite appetizer in Dallas - Crispy Barbecued Bluepoint Oysters on Jonah Crab, Applewood Smoked Bacon and Spinach ‘Rockefearing’. Basically Oysters Rockafeller southwest style. They use a little Sonny Bryan's BBQ sauce for that extra zing. The oysters were huge! I was full after the first course. But did that stop me from eating the rest? What do I say WiDi'ers? Hells to the no.

Everyone else had the southwest caesar salad. L, K and I all said they liked it but they weren't wowed by it. (oh, almost forgot to mention. When you go to Fearings, dig through the bread bowl and find the jalapeno corn muffins. So good).

As I said before, I had the spare ribs. A bit of a disappointment. Spare ribs should be melt in your mouth, fall off the bone. They weren't quite that. A little chewy but they tasted good. L had the bison which she said she like a lot. A nice touch: L likes her meat cooked really well (sigh, I love her anyway) but she'd never had bison so she wasn't sure how to order it to meet (hee) her taste. The waiter recommended ordering it "medium plus". That way if it was too rare for her, they could easily throw it back on the grill. It came out just the way she likes it (cooked about 3 times more than I like it). K and I ordered the scallops with shredded short ribs. They loved theirs and seemed to like their short ribs more than I did. Happy plates for all!

For dessert, a chocolate brownie with caramel and raspberries topped with ice cream. I is a brownie expert right now (look for her new line of brownies coming soon!) and she said it was one of the best brownies she has tasted (besides hers of course) in a long time. There was also a peach parfait which I found so ordinary. The peaches were canned and it had a Del Monte taste to it that I didn't particularly care for. It's peach season! Give me some fresh peaches!

A note about service. This was the first time I've been to Fearing's where Chef Dean did not make his rounds to each and every table. I guess he's entitled to a night off, but it's that type of thing which gives Fearing's the edge as compared to some of the other restaurants in town. So I missed that. But that's forgivable. Our service was so disjointed. I still have no idea who our server actually was since we had multiple people attending to us. No one introduced themselves. Everyone who showed up was helpful but who the heck are you? I know it's RW and you're busy but, "hello my name is _________ and I will be your server today. I will be assisted by __________." take about 2 seconds.

Well, that's it for RW. I don't know when I will blog next. Must rejuvenate the pocketbook and reduce the waistline first. Well, off to the gym for some much deserved punishment. Cheers!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Mmmmmm, Hattie's

So a few years back I had this incredible opportunity to attend and present at our women employment law conference on the west coast. These conferences were a ton of work but there was spa time and most importantly I got to meet a bunch of wonderful west cost gals who were not only amazing attorneys but great people as well. Today one of my Cali gals was in Dallas for the day and I was so happy when she accepted my dinner invitation.

Cali attorney had spent the last 3 days in Denison but she was telling me about all the wonderful food she found there - catfish, bbq, you name it, she ate it. Knowing she was not a picky eater, I knew I could go just about anywhere. She was staying at the Joule so I could have just taken her to Charlie Palmer but I really didn't want to do the chain. So instead, I took her to one of my favorite restaurants in town Hatties.

We started out with the bonus course -- bison corn dogs. I'm still not convinced it was bison because it sure did look like a hot dog to me, but it was so good. The dog had a spicy, cheesy flavor. Delish.

My next course was a spinach and strawberry salad with Gorgonzola and almonds. It was slightly overdressed and the cheese was virtually non-existent but it was still tasty.

The third course was beef tenderloin with a potato galette and green beans with bacon. Did I mention the bacon?

And for dessert -- Key. Lime. Pie. One of my favorite dessert of all time. Not quite as good as Houston's Key Lime Pie but pretty darned close.

It was a wonderful dinner and we had an absolutely wonderful time. Lots of laughter and fun. Hattie's did not disappoint.

As evidenced from this blog, I have been doing some serious eating for the last couple of days. But did that stop me from cleaning my plate(s)? Hells to the no. I'm giving my trainer on Saturday permission to hurt me, badly. I deserve it, particularly after Fearings tomorrow. But it has all been so worth it.

Cheers!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Restaurant Week!

Well, it's one of my favorite times of year -- Restaurant Week! The time where I eat a lot of food at a lot of great restaurants for charity.

First stop - Loft 610, Tre Wilcox's place in Plano. I had a huge foodie crush on Tre Wilcox when he was on Top Chef which became even greater when I met him in person when he was the Executive Chef at Abacus. Total charisma. Plus, I knew that he was largely responsible for Abacus' great menus during RW when he was there, so I was totally psyched to try his place.

I've decided that Loft 610 equals a dark Abacus in far, far, far north Plano. I think they called it Loft 610 because that's how many miles it is from Dallas. It's like ikea far. We started out with a very nice glass of Moet so that made the drive to Oklahoma a whole lot easier to take. I was thinking I was going to let the waiter surprise me, but I decided instead to ask the waiter what his favorites were. He listed them and both M and I rejected them. We felt bad because we were pretty much ignoring his advice but we had Moet and didn't really care at that point.

The food was quite nice. We started with our CM fourth course -- a tomato and mozzarella salad with a balsamic reduction. It needed a little salt and pepper but was otherwise nice and fresh. My first course was the lobster bisque. It was just okay but it was my fault. I love lobster bisque -- if it is cream based. I'm really not a roux fan so I always ask if a bisque is cream or roux based. The Moet must have affected my brain, because I forgot to ask and ended up with a roux based bisque. M had the scallops and shrimp which she said were excellent.

For the main course, I had the beef tenderloin. It was perfectly cooked. And the spicy grits that came with it were delicious. I wish the wine pairing was a bit bolder though. It needed a malbec or a zinfandel rather than a pinot. M had the sea bass which she also enjoyed.

For dessert, we both ordered the blueberry and peach crisp with vanilla ice cream. I love peach cobbler and this did not disappoint. What did disappoint was the wine pairing. But again, that was our fault. We had totally spoiled ourselves with the Moet. The Etoile that came with the dessert was undrinkable by comparison. We were having such a great time, we kept reaching for the wine and forgetting how horrible it was . . . until we took a sip. You think we would learn, but we kept forgetting. Again, I blame the Moet.

Bottom line with Loft 610. If you live in the area, it is definitely worth the trip. But if you live in my hood, you can go to Abacus and get the same thing without the drive.

HORNE & DEKKER

Sigh. I was soooo excited about trying this place. It's close to home and next to my favorite wine bar, Veritas. The food was so disappointing. I ordered the vegetable pizza. It was just okay. Thin crust but nothing exciting with the vegetables. Some feta might have helped it a bit. C ordered the cedar plank salmon. It looked nice but for $20 it wasn't much food. We also ordered the side "peas and carrots." It was supposed to serve 4. 4 what, I'm not sure, because it was quite tiny. It was also not just peas and carrots. There were so many shallots and garlic that it overwhelmed the dish. We sent it back and got, well, peas and carrotts. So ordinary. C commented that it was just like "Birds Eye."

So sad. I really wanted this place to wow but it only disappointed. the search for the perfect restaurant in the hood continues . . .

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Tillman's Roadhouse

Went to Tillman's Roadhouse this week. First, it's such a pretty restaurant. Kind of rustic chic. With wood paneled walls and crystal chandeliers. Roman Holiday started playing in the bar on the back wall while we were there. Nice touch. Must remember to rent that movie one of these days.

We get brought our "amuse bouche" if you will, which isn't really an "amuse bouche" but I like saying "amuse bouche" so that's what I"m going to call it. Amuse bouche. (see how I got it in again) Two giant silver ladles appear. In one you have truffled popcorn and the other was shelled peanuts. Loved the truffled popcorn. Wish I could bring it with me to the movies. Peanuts were good and salty (sweet nuts kinda gross me out, fyi).

We ordered a bottle of some wine I can't remember the name of. I wish I did. It was good. But it really doesn't matter because it's apparently only sold at Tillman's and I'd probably recognize the name on the wine list if I saw it so I can order it again (my loyal 2 readers, on the other hand, are out of luck. Sorry, I'm a bad blogger.)

I ordered the pork chop. First, it was HUGE. One look at me and anyone can tell I'm a clean your plate kinda gal. I was only able to get through half. It was cooked well but I found the pork chop to be a little bland and the creamy sauce it had for it didn't really add anything for me. What did do something for me was the tempura (I think they were Shiner battered) green beans. Yum-my. Could eat those all day. J ordered the salmon which looked all healthy and stuff. He said the mushrooms on top were a new addition but he found the salmon to be unevenly cooked and a little too rare in places. So entrees were not a raving success. Next time, I'm going with the venison frito pie.

J insisted we get dessert. We got a half order (thank goodness they do half orders) of the smores. They give you a little block pot o' sterno which they light on fire and let you roast your marshmallows yourself! The waiter tried to explain to us how to make a smore but I shewed him away, "hello, girl scout, I got this". Behind us a table of about 8 women had already started their smores and actually broke out in "kumbaya" (they must have been girl scouts too). Not making this up! Not often I get serenaded.

The marshmallows were homemade and in 3 different flavors -- orange (my fave), maple and coffee (really strong. would taste awesome with scotch). Now I love roasting marshmallows and when it comes to roasting marshmallows, I pretty much follow the Beavis and Butthead motto of "fire, fire fire." I want the whole thing engulfed in flames until it's a charcoal briquette on the outside and sweet gooey goodness on the inside. It took awhile for the fire to get going so I didn't get my maximum flame fixation until mallow #3 but it was still fun. J and I fought over superior flame position but I think he let me win because he was afraid of me setting something on fire). They also gave you little bits of chocolate and very delicious homemade graham crackers that really put the boxed kind to shame.

After the first smore, I soon realized that it wasn't going to take me very long to become very full. But did that mean I stopped eating? Hells to the no! There were still marshmallows to incinerate! Oh, how those damned delicious marshmallows (probably aided by that truffled popcorn) expanded in my stomach. I was full for a good 20 hours later. But it was worth the bloat.

Cheers!