Not-so-skinny Bitches

Articles about Not-so-skinny bitches

Open Letter to Mark Cuban: Shark Tank for Dallas Restaurateurs? I’d Watch it!

Bring it! Let's get this city turned around! (image swiped from ABC)

Dear Mark,

I am addicted to Shark Tank. And because I am too lazy to jump through the hoops to get on the show and present my idea, I’m using the power of my pudgy fingers to reach you. Let’s pick and roll:

I walk on the set of Shark Tank. “Daymond John, you are so out,” I say. “Barbara, if I wanted to sell my cellulite-reducing sous-vide hot dog you’d be my best friend, but I’m keeping it to myself. You’re out.”

I watch the other sharks glance around, really scared at this point, and go for the kill. “Kevin, don’t even open that ugly mouth. You’re out. Robert, you can buy me dinner after the show but, for now, you are dead to me.”

Cameras swing: Close-up of Cuban. Music swells.

Mark. We live in the same city. We love the same teams. More importantly, we eat in the same restaurants. Last night, our city’s finest chef, Bruno Davaillon of the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, lost Best Chef in the Southwest at the James Beard Awards in New York City to a young chef in Austin who appeared on Top Chef. It has been 18 years since a Dallas chef won this title. We need a local version of Shark Tank geared towards Dallas restaurateurs. That way, you and I can work together to tighten up our game and turn it around. We have the talent, we need the exposure. And that exposure shouldn’t have to come from the Food Network or Bravo.

I propose we put together a panel of experts and ask restaurateurs to pitch their ideas BEFORE they decide to sink their life savings into an upscale seafood and sushi restaurant in a bad location. Let’s kick the steak house wannabes to Fort Worth. Mark, I’m asking you to invest whatever it takes to help us bring the talent of the Dallas restaurant community to the international scene. In exchange, I offer you fifty percent of my idea. Oh, and you can keep the Mavs.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Nancy

P.S. If this helps illustrate my talent: I promoted women’s basketball in Dallas before the Mavericks were a thought in your brain. Just ask Nancy Lieberman.

posted by Nancy Nichols | May 8th, 2012 10:14am | filed under Bring it!, Celebrity Chefs, GO MAVS!, Go Rangers!, Good Deeds, Hippie revolutions, How to Open a Restaurant 101, I'm about to get fired, Making Up Is Hard To Do, My Happy Pills Are Working, Not-so-skinny bitches, Nutjobs, Procrastination is part of the creative process, Rants, Shamless self promotion, Somebody Help, That is Just Wrong, restaurant business news, youthful spontaneous restaurants | 12 Comments »

Restaurant Rant: Why I Continue to (Really) Hate Paula Deen

Chicken pot pie at Lady & Sons in 2008. One serving could feed a family of four.

In August 2008, I traveled to Savannah, Georgia where I dined at Paula Deen’s restaurant Lady & Sons. We ran a post titled “Paula Deen Wants to Kill You.” I wrote:

I can still smell the rancid butter that hit us in the face when we walked in the door. I’ve got to find the pictures I took of the food I ate–everything was dripping in butter. I remember the chicken pot pie was big enough for four and almost everything was fried. OK, she admits she’s “not your cardiologist,” but she really is contributing to the delinquency of dieters. The night we went, at least 75 per cent of the diners were beyond overweight–they were obese. It was sad–like people watching at the slots in Vegas–everyone was gambling with their lives.

Last week Paula Deen confirmed the rumor: she has Type 2 diabetes. I wonder how many of her dedicated fans also suffer from Type 2? This really chaps my sass because two members of my family didn’t have a choice: they both were diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when they were young. They have to continually monitor their diet and control their blood sugar. However, Ms. Deen, and other people who put on blinders and continue to fill their body with fat and sugar, had an option. Like not eating a burger made with Krispy Kreme donuts. It’s now rumored that Deen may become the spokesperson for Novartis, a company with a drug designed to treat diabetes. If she personally profits from developing Type 2 diabetes (Hey yáll, I’m your endocrinologist!), I’m going to go berserk. I can already see the talk show circuit lighting up. It makes me sick.

posted by Nancy Nichols | January 16th, 2012 10:30am | filed under Bring it!, Cooking, Cult Cuisine, Food On TV, Not-so-skinny bitches, Overprivileged chimps, Politics of Food, Really?, State Fair of Texas, That is Just Wrong, Wasted Calorie, questionable behavior, questionable judgment, that's just wrong. | 81 Comments »

Somebody Help This Poor Girl: Paris, as in Texas

One of the most loyal Dishers in Dallas is heading to Paris, Texas tomorrow. She wants to know every place she can eat along the way or in town. Won’t you help her find some valuable calories?

posted by Nancy Nichols | January 16th, 2012 9:21am | filed under I Went to College for This?, Not-so-skinny bitches, Travel | 2 Comments »

The Perfect Procrastination: How To Boil an Egg

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. (more…)

posted by Nancy Nichols | January 10th, 2012 2:21pm | filed under Chick Chefs Rule!, Cooking, Cooking Classes, Cult Cuisine, Good Deeds, I Went to College for This?, I'm about to get fired, Mistakes I made, Not-so-skinny bitches, Nutjobs, PR People, Recipes, Special Report, Steven Doyle, Trending, game | 11 Comments »

Top Twelve Bites I Put in My Mouth in 2011

Mi Dia: The best bite I put in my mouth in 2011.

There’s a common sentiment among restaurant critics: We have to eat a lot of poor quality and mediocre food before we taste something memorable. But, oh baby, when that over-the-top bite hits your mouth, you know you’ve found it. Something about the drink, dish, or dessert pushes it above the hundreds of thousands of other bites you’ve taken over the year.

The following items rocked my senses in 2011. In no particular order, and off the top of my head, they are:

Italian “English” muffins at Eatzi’s. (Extra points for the McCutcheon’s preserves.)
The Scarf Dancer cocktail at Marquee Grill and Bar.
Fried avocados at The Commissary.
Ox eyes stacked enchiladas at Mi Dia From Scratch. (Blue corn tortillas, beef, cheese, and onion enchiladas, topped with New Mexico red & green chile sauces, crema & fried eggs. (The best bite of the year.)
Lemon cake at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse.
Steamed swordfish with a salad of fresh summer greens at Lucia.
The salad of chopped iceberg lettuce, diced tomatoes, crumbled blue cheese, avocado, and crispy prosciutto at Maggiano’s. (A good chopped salad is hard to find.)
A double-double animal-style burger at In-N-Out Burger. However, the fries are forgettable.
I got straight past the pizza and Cane Rosso and dive face first into a Cuban sandwich: a magnificent mess of tender Berkshire pork shoulder braised with beer and onions; layered with prosciutto, baby Swiss cheese, and horseradish pickles; and piled on puffy, hot bread spread with spicy mustard and Calabrian chile aioli.
The green curry chicken served in an iron pot at Malai Kitchen.
The charcuterie plate at The Grape.
The slow-cooked oxtail scented with hoja santa and served with a cob of roasted corn and masa dumplings at Mesa.

Most Pleasant Meal of the Year: Dinner at Lavendou. Sometimes the taste of the food is elevated by the overall dining experience. Usually it happens spontaneously. One cold, rainy evening I went to dinner at Lavendou with two dear friends. The dining room was crowded and festive, but not loud. The service was friendly, but not in-your-face. The food was delicious and the French wine stimulated our conversation for hours. We left full of more than food. We shared a meal that was more than just a sum of its parts on a cold, rainy Monday night.

posted by Nancy Nichols | December 30th, 2011 3:44pm | filed under Awards, Hot Links!, Nostalgia, Not-so-skinny bitches, Restaurant News, Reviews, cake, cocktails | 7 Comments »

Confession: I am Guilty of a Heinous Wine Crime

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. (more…)

posted by Nancy Nichols | November 3rd, 2011 10:46am | filed under Best Gay Hangout Restaurant Evah!, Food Crime, How About This Weather?, I Hate it When That Happens, Mistakes I made, Nostalgia, Not-so-skinny bitches, Nutjobs, Overprivileged chimps, Somebody Help, cheap wine, questionable judgment, that's just wrong., youthful spontaneous restaurants | 22 Comments »

Judges Pick the Best BBQ from Texas and Oklahoma! Now it’s Your Turn to Vote at The Red River BBQ Shootout

As I mentioned yesterday, several of us got together at the Dallas Chop House last night to judge some barbecue. The seven pitmasters (three from Oklahoma, four from Texas) got their smokers out to Main Street Garden early yesterday, pulled onto the Great Lawn (except for Big Daddy’s, whose 46-foot smoker was unable to fit on the lawn), and got to work. They were each given St. Louis-cut ribs and told to cook for five hungry judges.

We reaped the fruits of their labor last night. (We being Cathy Barber from the Dallas Morning News, Teresa Gubbins from Pegasus News, Robert Wilonsky from the Dallas Observer, and Dave Cathey from the Oklahoman.) We judged the ribs on texture, tenderness, appearance, and sauce. We judged the crust, the cut, the rub. We wondered if the ribs were too spicy. Too sweet? Was the fat cooked down? Was there too little fat? Did we like the pumpkin-y sauce? What about the hot sauce? How about that pickle? After about two hours and sampling 35 ribs apiece (don’t worry, we didn’t all of them), we were stuffed. And we’d made a decision.

The winners are all below. Go.

(more…)

posted by Krista Nightengale | October 7th, 2011 10:59am | filed under BBQ, Bring it!, Contests, Not-so-skinny bitches, cookoff | 3 Comments »

Restaurant Review: New Herrera’s Café on Maple Avenue

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.

posted by Nancy Nichols | September 27th, 2011 12:00pm | filed under Kevin Marple, Mistakes I made, Nostalgia, Not-so-skinny bitches, Restaurant News, Reviews, Tex-Mex, questionable judgment | 3 Comments »

Somebody Help This Poor Girl: Hot Dogs in Dallas

If I told you this gal’s last name, you would know she is not financially challenged. However, her lack of knowledge about good hot dogs in Dallas is deprived. She writes:

Nancy, I am in the mood for a real hot dog. Not a boiled on like the guy outside of Home Depot (YUCK!). Every time we go to New York I go to Nathan’s (YUM!) is there anything like that here?

Even though she used both “y” words, I think we should help her. Here are some links (HAH!) to several places we’ve hit: Costco. Eddie’s. Wild About Harry’s. Double Dip Frozen Custard in Frisco.

posted by Nancy Nichols | September 13th, 2011 11:45am | filed under Not-so-skinny bitches, Overprivileged chimps, Restaurant News | 26 Comments »

Texas State Fair Food: Fun or Foul?

I was talking with a friend of mine who loves the fried food madness of the Texas State Fair. Obviously many other people share her passion for fried strawberry waffles, fried margaritas, fried butter, and fried bubblegum. The recent “winners” for this year’s State Fair were announced Wednesday and the local blogs comment boxes have lit up like fried Christmas trees.

I hate it all as much as I hated eating in Paula Deen’s restaurant in Savannah. I can still smell the cloud of burnt butter that met me at the door of Lady and Sons Restaurant. The portions were obnoxiously huge and I had to shower when I got back to my hotel.

The last time I visited the Fair, I sat at one of the picnic benches and watched a family of three eat their way through a pile of food. The husband and wife, maybe in their early 40s, were obese. The woman was in a wheel chair with an oxygen tank. The husband, who weighed at least 350 pounds, was shoveling food in his mouth using both hands. The saddest sight was their son. He couldn’t have been 12 years old and already on the verge of obesity. He was listlessly staring at the ground and gnawing on a huge turkey leg.

I can hear you crying: “It’s only once a year. Live a little. Have some fun.” I can’t. That isn’t fun or funny to me. It’s gross.

posted by Nancy Nichols | September 2nd, 2011 10:00am | filed under Cult Cuisine, Expensive cheap eats, I Hate it When That Happens, Not-so-skinny bitches, Really?, State Fair, Wasted Calorie, mob scenes, questionable judgment | 32 Comments »

Studs Terkel Was My Homeboy—Or What’s On the Menu For Your Labor Day Cookout?

After staring into my fridge for the umpteenth time this week and exclaiming out loud to anyone within earshot, “Who lives here, and why don’t they buy any food??” I’ve realized that it’s time to actually go to the grocery store. And with the long Labor Day weekend ahead of us (I vaguely remember offering to host a cookout at the family compound), I’d better get on the menu-planning ball sooner than later.

Also, apropos the holiday, back in the early 1990s I went to hear Studs Terkel speak on the topic of labor and will never forget what an eye-opener it was to finally understand what the holiday was all about. It’s a fine thing to have gotten dressed-down by the cigar-smoking big pappa of the working class. I have to admit, I was a little bit in love with him after that. So every year I offer a toast Studs (and promise to name a child or dog after him someday). Often there’s a signature drink involved. One year we created a drink called “The Working Poor,” but that bummed everybody out. Another year it was a gin concoction called “Not In My Bathtub,” but the gin made everybody mean. So a new drink is in order.

Problem is, I’m flat out of ideas. So, I’m going to steal some from you. What dishes are you making for your Labor Day gathering? And while you’re at it, any suggestions for a Labor Day-themed drink are welcome. Hell, if I get enough good ones I might even mix up a few and let the guests decide.

posted by Sarah Reiss | September 1st, 2011 11:10am | filed under Delis, I'm a sucker for a man in flannel, Labor Day, Nostalgia, Not-so-skinny bitches, Procrastination is part of the creative process, R.I.P., Recipes, Second coming, Somebody Help, cocktails, cookoff, cookouts, make mine a double, menus, party, sassy pants, somebody help this poor girl out | 2 Comments »

John Tesar’s Hater’s Party Turns Into a Love-In

Anqullkah Udama, Elaine Vasquez, John Tesar, Maria Mejia, and Rich Lacamana (Photo by Desirée Espada)

I snuck in to John Tesar’s Hater’s Party last night. My friend Laura and I arrived early and watched them set up. Tesar was running around organizing the seating and the free booze and tacos in the Camanera Tequila truck parked outside the restaurant. By the time we left (7:30PM), there were about 40 people on the patio. I witnessed no hate; only love for John Tesar. Our photographer, Desiree Espada, took pictures.

Jump for the love of John.

(more…)

posted by Sarah Reiss | August 30th, 2011 1:32pm | filed under Celebrity Chefs, Cult Cuisine, Dog Friendly, Events, Food Trucks, I Went to College for This?, Not-so-skinny bitches, Nutjobs, Overprivileged chimps, Peripatetic chefs, Restaurant News, Silly Reasons to Celebrate, sassy pants |

What Would Happen if Women Opened Restaurants With Male Body Parts as Themes

‘Scuse me while I saddle up my high horse. Am I the only woman who is concerned about the sudden surge in Breastaurants. I mean really 35 additional Twin Peaks? A bar opening in downtown called The Spread Eagle? Seriously boys? How would you like to take your daughter into one of the restaurant’s the gals in our office just conceptualized. We call them Peteries.

Hunky Town, Twin Pricks, Tooter’s, Pecker’s Hot Italian Sausage, Tube Steak Junction, Cake Balls to the Walls, Nuts and Butts, Quickies, Long Dong Silver, Tally Whacker’s, Love Mussels, Wee Willie’s, Twig and Berries.

Ladies, the floor is open.

posted by Nancy Nichols | August 23rd, 2011 2:12pm | filed under Bad Names For Restaurants List, Best Gay Hangout Restaurant Evah!, Bring it!, Cheap trick for comments, ChirpyChirpy, Dog Friendly, Drinking, Goats!, Hole in the wall, I Went to College for This?, I'm about to get fired, Keep Dallas Douchey!, Merguez Sausage Hunt, Murmur, Newfangled condiments, Not-so-skinny bitches, Nutjobs, Overprivileged chimps, Procrastination is part of the creative process, Rants, RudeDudes, Silly Reasons to Celebrate, Slow News Day, Spicy foods, Yum is Dumb, breastaurants, cupcakes, hostess gifts, questionable judgment, restaurant business news, youthful spontaneous restaurants | 53 Comments »

Voting Opens for the CBS Most Valuable Blogger Awards 2011

We can’t promise you world peace or affordable health care, but we can promise to continue doing what we do best: reporting on the food, fun, facts, fantasies, and frolics taking place in the Dallas food scene. All you have to do is go to the Dining/Entertainment tab on this site, scroll to SideDish, and click on the tab to the right. You can vote once a day in each category. FrontBurner and Park Cities People are pitted against each other under Local Affairs.