Artistic rendering of an artist's rendering.

I’m a sucker for birds. So is Mexican artist Luis Sottil. You may have seen his work in other Mi Cocina restaurants: he currently has paintings in six other restaurants. The mural at the new Mi Cocina in Lakewood, in the old Matt’s space, is scheduled to open in July. Sottill uses only natural pigments such as cochinella, mother of pearl, minerals, vegetables dyes, and14kt gold in his paintings. For this painting he was inspired by these birds: “Hooded Oriole, Altamira, Golden Cheeked Warbler, Painted Bunting, Texas Hummingbirds, and the Northern Mockingbird.” Tex-Mex for Twitchers!

UPDATE: Scott from dallasfood.org brings up a good point in the comments section. Several of the birds listed above would be a rare sighting at White Rock Lake. The press release reads:

This is the first time Sottil has studied the local natural environment and incorporated it into his Mi Cocina murals. The artist has chosen to feature birds including the Hooded Oriole, Altamira, Golden Cheeked Warbler, Painted Bunting, Texas Hummingbirds and, of course, the Northern Mockingbird.

Luis Sottil was inspired by his research of the history and “exuberant beauty” of White Rock Lake and the Lakewood area, and it reminded him of the lush biodiversity on his native Tampico, Mexico. In particular, Sottil was drawn to the many colorful birds that are common inhabitants of White Rock Lake which reminded him of home.

Hmm. Methinks Sottil should seek the advice of JR Compton and switch out the golden cheeked warbler for a monk parakeet. If you truly want to represent the “exuberant beauty” of White Rock Lake.

I lived in California for 11 years so perhaps I am experiencing the reverse-home-town-food-nostalgia syndrome that affects older people because when I returned from vacation last week, I drove straight to In-N-Out and devoured a DDAS (double-double animal style) like a rabid coyote. EVERYBODY knows you order the fries crispy at INO. Everybody but Andrew.

Anywhoo, where do you go when you re-enter your life in Dallas?

Whole red snapper cooked in foil

I realized a little too late that the Uptown Theater I purchased tickets to was in Grand Prairie, not in the Uptown neighborhood of Dallas, where I live. Always up for an adventure, I decided to make the most of my mistake — eat someplace on Main Street, Grand Prairie before the show. Surely a Main Street anywhere has something worth eating, right?

I hit up the city’s website for a recommendation after discovering D’s own couldn’t help and chose Agua Azul. The restaurant’s website read “Mexican Seafood.” “I don’t know what ‘Mexican Seafood’ is,” I wrote my dining companion, “but I am willing to find out.”

The restaurant is within sight of the theater’s neon marquee, though on a cold, dark night you might not want to walk the distance between the two. It was a festive welcoming: piñatas dangling from the ceiling, a merry Mexican soundtrack, walls painted like underwater scenes, and heart-shaped balloons leftover from Valentine’s Day filled the space, which includes a long bar and many more tables that first meet the eye. I noticed we were the only non-Hispanics in the joint — a fact that would remain mostly true for our entire visit (a lone Caucasian gentleman did sit down right as we were leaving).

I started with the ceviche tostada, which was merely catfish and chopped tomatoes in lime juice with a side of iceberg lettuce and a couple of slices of avocado. It was tart and light and the tostada stayed crispy under the fish for the duration of the meal.

For my main course I ate a fish called Wanda. No, sorry. I ate a dish called papayot, a whole red snapper baked in tin foil and served with “house rice.” The fish was huge and gorgeous and cooked to perfection with veggies – carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli – inside its packet. I especially appreciated how the carrots under the fish had caramelized a bit on the foil. Sausage bits gave the rice a nice smoky flavor. There were also bits of carrots and baby shrimp in the rice. But overall it was too salty to be edible. I ate every last bit of that fish, however.

If you’re the less adventurous sort, as my dining partner was, there are fajitas, quesadillas, and even a burger. But I’d stick with the fish if I were you. And maybe look at the address before you buy tickets to something with Uptown in the name.

My perfectly boiled egg.

As you can tell from the headline, I am deep in the process of procrastinating. While my real job calls for thousands of words about dining, I am convinced it is far more important that I drop what I am supposed to be doing and answer a question sent to me by PR boy toy Jef Tingley. Yes, he spells his name with one “f,” but I will save that analysis for a later procrastination post.

“Jef with one f” asked me how to boil an egg. Don’t laugh. How many times have you had tiny shards of shell pierce the delicate skin beneath your fingernail? I shared my secret with “Jef with one f” by private message on Facebook which made several people curious enough to email and ask (BEG!) for my secret.

You are going to have to jump hard.

How is it that I hold the key to the secret method of boiling an egg? My first job in a kitchen called for me to make 300 deviled eggs every morning for 2 years. Do the freaking math. I have peeled a ****load of eggs in my day. Okay, don’t say I never gave you anything. I’m opening a vein and spilling it now:

Place ROOM TEMPERAURE eggs in lukewarm tap water. Add (a lot) of iodized salt. Bring the water to a boil slowly and allow it to “soft rumble™” (MINE!) for 3 minutes. Turn off the heat. If you are cooking on electric heat soft rumble for 2 minutes and leave the pan on the element.  NOW, and this is critical: how fast they are ready will depend on how many eggs are in the water. If you have a couple dozen, leave them in the water until it is cool. Otherwise, usually 20 minutes will do. BEFORE you proceed to the next step, fish one of the eggs from the water, dry it off, and spin it. YES, SPIN IT on the counter. If it wobbles around like Stephen Doyle at 2AM, it isn’t done. If it twirls around fast and steady like Leslie Brenner when she lived in LA, it’s ready to peel. Pour out the water, NOT THE EGGS YOU NINNY, and refill the pan with cool water. Peel the eggs while they are submerged in water. Sometimes I toss a little ice in there if I find a difficult egg. If your eggs crack while cooking, like me on deadline, you’re totally screwed. Repeat the above process.

Your nubby little fingers can now type me a thank you note.

Now, back to my regularly scheduled work load.

Jennifer Newbold will work under Kent Rathbun.

I love press releases. I live for them. I get maybe 60 a day. Sometimes more. Sometimes they piss me off. Other times they crack me up. In the spirit of fun, I bring you the opening line of : RATHBUN’S BLUE PLATE KITCHEN INTRODUCES CHEF JENNIFER NEWBOLD

“Today Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen introduced Chef Jennifer Newbold, who will work directly under Executive Chef and Partner, Kent Rathbun.”

Yow. Zah. That could make it hard to reach the salamander! But seriously, Rathbun has added a new female chef which always makes me happy. Newbold has been in Rathbun’s fold (clearing throat) for some time. She’s cheffed at Jasper’s. Before that she cooked at Blue Point Coastal Cuisine in San Diego. She’s originally from Washington where “she often hunted, fished, and cooked with her dad, as well as cultivated fruit and vegetable gardens at home. Working directly with the land and its bounty developed her interest in food and has carried over into her career, as Newbold regularly engages with local farmers to ensure that Blue Plate Kitchen’s menu features dishes as fresh and local as possible.”

Kinky. Okay, all in fun. If we can’t kid each other who can we kid?

Good wines gone bad.

Forgive me Master Sommeliers and wine collectors around the world, I have sinned. I am here to confess my deepest darkest wine secret: I improperly stored four bottles of fabulous wine. For nearly 35 years.

Look at the photos and weep with (for?) me. I recently uncovered these bottles in a box buried beneath a pile of old Christmas decorations in my garage. Yes, my garage, where it sat for close to 35 summers, winters, springs, and falls. I am a human species of Phylloxera.

I could have pulled another Billionaire’s Vinegar and called Sotheby’s and claimed the wine was given to me by Richard Nixon and I’ve kept it hidden in a bricked-up Paris cellar. Instead I’m posting pictures of my crime. Perhaps there are others who have committed the same dirty deed.

Full confession below.

Yes, $19.79 before my employee discount.

Self portrait.

I used to collect wine, especially French wine. Specifically those of Bordeaux. I worked at a wine bar in Dallas called La Cave and spent my off time learning about French wine. My former boss, François Chandou, still runs La Cave Warehouse.  He is my witness. I bought hundreds of bottles of French Bordeaux. I wore a laminated vintage chart around my neck and scoured wine shops and wine lists looking for the best.

Eventually, I drank it all. Well, except for these four bottles. Is there anything I can do? Do I even attempt to drink them? (Does anyone want to buy them?)

I would like to take this moment to apologize to Bacchus, Dionysos, the early colonists of Southern Gaul, the concept of terroir, Baron Philippe de Rothschild (and subsequent Barons), James Tidwell, and Drew Hendricks. My deepest regrets to the chateaus: Latour, Mouton-Rothchild, Margaux (oh, sweet Margaux), Haut-Brion, Petrus, Pomerol, St. Emilion, and d’Yquem. Sorrows to you dear Cabernet Savignon, Merlot, and Cab Franc grapes. You gave your lives only to sit in a bottle in a box underneath a pile of old Christmas decorations in my garage. I am unworthy of your grace.

There is about a half inch of sediment in the neck of this bottle.

Sorry lion-guarded fortresses of France.

This wine was my first true love. We sold it for $4 a glass at La Cave. At one point I owned two cases.

Heinous. Painful. Wrong.

I feel horrible. Mai Phom was Dallas’ primary Vietnamese cuisine evangelist. She opened the city’s first popular Vietnamese restaurant in 1980. The original restaurant in East Dallas still bears her name but she moved to the tiny spot in Snider Plaza where she could be found every day. My former colleague Mary Brown Malouf once wrote:

“Those were the days when ethnic food meant Mexican food, unless it meant Szechuan. Now Vietnamese is practically mainstream and even has at least one almost upscale representative. Mainly, it has become habitual; many of us go out for Vietnamese as often as we go out for Mexican. So it seems strange to me that Mai, who was a pioneer, is now relatively unknown. Her little restaurant in Snider Plaza is practically a secret.”

I tried to reach someone with the restaurant to get a clear picture of what has transpired, but they have already closed and there is no voicemail. If anybody out there has the story, I’d love to know it.

UPPITY DATE: Jiang’s Cuisine has moved.

New Herrera's on Maple. (photo by Kevin Marple)

In 1971, I spent most of my Sunday mornings in a line around the original Herrera’s on Maple Avenue. My friends and I would sit under a dripping window AC unit for hours, waiting for our turn at one of the nine tables inside the tiny, lard-based Tex-Mex restaurant. Once seated, you popped open the six-pack of Coors you brought with you and watched founder Amelia Herrera hand-pat flour tortillas by the front door. The food was such a religious experience for me that, 17 years later, I got married at Herrera’s, which by then had moved into a bigger building across the street and expanded into more locations all over Dallas. Recently, they moved into a newer building down Maple.

Jump for more.

Obviously there was a miscommunication.On SideDish, we do everything we can to avoid a conflict of interest. We pay for the food we review, we let you know if a report is from a free event or media dinner, and if there is a conflict with a restaurateur, we report that as well. And we have a closet full of wigs to prove it.

UPDATE: Danielle Glick: “I had no reason to hide anything and every reason to try to prevent something negative from happening, so I was taking careful notes on what you said I needed to do. In Nancy’s follow-up article about me she wrote, “I asked her to write a disclaimer if she ever mentioned any of her clients in a post.”, but I do not have that statement in my notes or my memory. If I did, I would have gladly written such a disclaimer.”

Dave Rummel of Sonny Bryan's and Adam Richman.

Wednesday night, Travel Channel show Man V. Food Nation aired the episode they shot in  Dallas. Our ace reality TV food reporter, Harrison Smith, dutifully watched the show and turned his report on time. I, however, failed to post it in a timely manner. My apology to Harrison. Below he recaps the show and  incorporate lots of pho-ny puns in the process. And yes, that’s pronounced “fuh,” not “foe.”

Adam Richman lives the life I dream of: traveling the country, eating lots of food, acting silly, and getting paid. Richman hosts Man V. Food Nation, which, if the show doesn’t sound familiar, is to Man V. Food as tomato bisque is to the tomato. It’s the next step, naturally.

After traveling the country, eating lots of food, acting silly, and getting paid to do Man V. Food for three seasons, Richman now does the same thing—but invites seemingly normal eaters (like Pete McGillis of our own Dallas, Texas) to do it with him. Adam coached Pete to take down the Super Pho Challenge at Sprout’s Springroll & Pho. Pete had to consume five pounds of the Vietnamese noodle soup in 30 minutes.

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What the pho, you ask? Why is this guy Adam Richman coming to Texas and eating Vietnamese soup? Maybe he reads too much SideDish.

Before heading over to Sprout’s in Arlington, though, Adam took the time to make a pilgrimage to Kuby’s and Sonny Bryan’s. Will Christopher, Kuby’s executive chef, demonstrated how he cooks the house made sausages. He begins by boiling the sausages for 10 minutes to contain their flavor. Then the chef puts them on the grill for a few minutes to add color for presentation. Dave Rummel, Sonny Bryan’s “Baron of Beef,” got to show off the barbecue joint’s hickory wood smoker, the secret to Sonny’s 9-hour, slow-cooked brisket sandwich. And even JD’s Chippery got a few seconds of screen time (though I still don’t know how it is that they make their semi-sweets).

Finishing off at Sprout’s, Adam coached financial analyst Pete McGillis, a self-described Food Avenger, in taking down five pounds of pho. Chef and co-owner Alex Nguyen’s phu-king huge bowl is filled with over two pounds of noodles, eye of round and brisket in a brisket and oxtail broth seasoned with cilantro and green and white onions. Pete was drinking the broth like cereal milk seven minutes into the challenge, and 8 minutes 12 seconds after he began, the financial analyst was able to call himself the Pho King.

There were some nice shots of downtown from across the Trinity, good looks of Reunion Tower, the longhorn sculpture in Pioneer Plaza, and a Red Line DART train, but where are the shots of some of Dallas’ other fabled eateries. Maple Avenue enchiladas? Wingfield’s burgers? Fuel City tacos? Wingfield’s doesn’t have a seven-pound burger challenge. But Kenny’s Burger Joint does.

So I’ll cut you a deal, Mr. Richman. You come back to Dallas, and I’ll eat Kenny’s El Jefe Grande Burger with you. Together. Two stomachs, one burger, victory assured.

If you spot the word YUM in a post after today, you will win a prize. Carry on.

The glasses aren't the only thing that's sweating. Ball and Chain (left) and Belleview (right) cocktails at The Cedars Social.

In her June review of The Cedars Social, Nancy described house mixologist Michael Martensen as someone who, “has spent the last eight years redefining cocktails as a culinary art, and his thoughtful, exhaustive drink menu at The Cedars Social celebrates almost 100 years of drinking… ‘It’s a cocktail den. It’s all about imbibing. We don’t have olives or Red Bull, and we don’t make dirty martinis. We need people to get out of their comfort zone.’”

Given that breaking out of my comfort zone is my favorite hobby, I called some pals to meet me for a cocktails-only visit last Friday afternoon/evening. There, at the corner of Lamar and Belleview, we lucked into some threadbare velour chairs in the bar area, ordered some cheese, and settled in for the long haul.

jump to read how things went so very very wrong…

Of the Pre-Prohibition, Prohibition, Re-Peal, The Usual Suspects, and Tribute Cocktails on the menu, we settled on the following: The Ball & Chain, Belleview, Moscow Mule, Ruby’s Kiss, and Ball & Chain sans spice. True to the promise, these Pre-Prohibition era drinks were fresh, spirited, and unusual, most notably the effervescent Moscow Mule, which borrowed its personality from a heady (and pleasant) dose of what appeared to be ginger ale.

But, what started as a loose, unscientific tasting became an exercise in misery. As the minutes wore on, the temperature climbed. We deduced that the setting sun coming in through the window was the problem, so when a table opened up in a shady corner we hopped over. No respite. As the minutes wore on, what was once pleasant became painful. It became clear that the room was just hot. We asked a passing server if the AC was down. No, she said, this is pretty normal.

That was at 6:45. By 7:30 my sleeveless summer frock and my friend’s polo shirt were soaked with sweat. One of our trio pulled a folding fan from her purse (brilliant), snapped it open, and began fanning herself and us in turns. When her wrist tired, we took turns fanning each other. The game of pass-the-fan stopped being novel around 8:o0, at which point we looked like we’d just come back from a run, and threw in the towel.

True to Martensen’s promise, I was well out of my comfort zone, just not in the way I had expected.

So, here are my questions:

A. Is the absence of air conditioning part of the prohibition-era milleu?

B. Is their unit just not beefy enough to cool the space?

C. Are they keeping the setting high to keep overhead low?

D. Can anyone else testify to this experience?

I loved the retro lounge feel of the room, enjoyed the drinks, and wanted to take our spunky waitress (and her fingernail stickers) home with me. But I have to admit, it will be a cold day in Dallas before I head down there again. Yes, I’ll ride that Moscow Mule again, but not until the fall.

Pyles does the TwitterBug in Buffalo Gap earlier this spring.

I spent the whole weekend in front of my computer. That doesn’t mean I was working the whole time—I should have been—but a lot of the time I performed many other important tasks such as checking updates on TMZ, Facebook, and “the fightin’ SideDish followers” on Twitter.

Anywhoo, two names kept popping up in my Twitter @box: @chefpyles (as in Stephan) and @beyondthekit (chef David Gilbert. Remember him!). They were in Santa Fe together and eating all over town. Now, I wasn’t born yesterday,  I was born 21,389 days ago, so I have a little experience in predicting what the mischievous behavior of these two chefs means. I’m feeling bold enough to predict Pyles has a new restaurant in the works and he’s grooming David Gilbert to be his chef. Perhaps the Southwestern will rise again! But that’s just me. I could be wrong. It’s happened.

UPPITY DATE: “False-ish,” Hage said. She has been asked to “explore a menu refresh.” The gig is only for a week.

Anywhoo, this morning I came across an interesting post on Sarah Henry’s Bay Area Bites blog. She offers advice for struggling (succulent) food bloggers. Henry maintains “talent and ideas count, so does experience, connections, timing, and, frankly, a bit of luck.”

To that I would add: have an opinion, get a good therapist, and find someone to sell you wine wholesale. Questions?