Category: Texas

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Gourdough’s Public House – Austin, Texas

Gil Garduno4:23 PM

Donuts could have gone their entire existences fat, dumb and happy with a following–mostly cops, adult men my age (39) and households with annual incomes of less than $10,000–who expected nothing more out of them than we were already getting.  Essentially just fried or fruit-filled delivery mechanisms for quadruple our recommended daily allowance of calories, sugar and guilt, donuts have always been predictable, unchanging…reliably there for us.  Our expectations for these sweet, ring-shaped fried cakes weren’t exactly very high.  Then something changed.  Donuts became “gourmet,” experiencing a much-needed make-over.   In recent years, several foods have experienced a similar artisinal reinvention, metamorphosing from tasty enough moths into glorious, flavor-packed butterflies.  A more demanding public–especially those of us who self-gloss as foodies…

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Lucy’s Fried Chicken – Austin, Texas

Gil Garduno8:04 AM

“I‘m only eating the skins, so the chicken’s up for grabs.” ~Joey Tribbiani Several of my earliest memories of growing up in agrarian Peñasco, New Mexico involve chickens.  Some of those memories–such as getting viciously pecked by my Grandma Piedad’s cantankerous old rooster–were rather painful.  Other memories, however, were of mischievous fun my brothers and I had with our friends Estevan and Gabriel Lopez.  Once, for example, we emptied the contents of an entire can of beer onto the corn and grain mixture fed to the chickens.  It was hilarious fun watching drunken chickens stumble about and especially seeing the old rooster become overly amorous with the young chicks but not being able to do anything about it because he…

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Contigo – Austin, Texas (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno11:59 PM

There are a phalanx of “best of” lists online and in print publications that celebrate restaurants deemed true stand-outs worthy of accolades.  Such lists are obviously very subjective though by no means definitive.  That holds true as well to the concept of restaurant review ratings, a mere snapshot in time valid really only to that reviewer at that very specific date and time of a visit.  Still, when we travel, I study the restaurant scene at our intended destinations, taking the pulse of what lay diners and cognoscenti have to say and yes, how they rate a restaurant.  When we visit a restaurant in a city to which we travel, we’re unfailingly well armed with information and know full well…

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El Ranchito Cafe & Club – Dallas, Texas

Gil Garduno12:41 PM

In the Mexican neighborhoods of west Dallas, adventurous “gringo” diners who grew up on Tex-Mex cuisine have apparently discovered the wonderful cuisine of Old Mexico. On the night we visited, this was evidenced by the lively and decidedly “white” crowd enjoying their meals almost as much as the generations of Mexican-American patrons craving (and receiving) authentic tastes of home. Since moving to the United States from Monterrey Mexico, entrepreneur and owner Laura Sanchez has carved a niche in the Dallas Mexican food arena and has done so by not deviating from her roots. Authenticity resonates in the cuisine as it does in the corridos belted out by the Mariachis. El Ranchito’s salsa packs a punch unlike the tomato and cilantro…

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Kincaid’s Hamburgers – Fort Worth, Texas

Gil Garduno3:24 PM

Local, statewide, national and international acclaim for Kincaid’s Hamburgers places this former grocery and market in stratospherically elite company as one of, if not THE best hamburger restaurants in the world. In 2003, Michael and Jane Stern, America’s preeminent dining Americana authorities proclaimed Kincaid’s one of America’s top ten burgers. A book called The Perfect Hamburger, replete with effusive testimony by long-time patrons, was published in 1999. Call it blasphemy if you will, but I believe perfection can be improved. Add New Mexico green chile and you would have the very best hamburger I’ve ever had. Even without green chile, Kincaid’s does serve a phenomenal burger, each one containing a half pound of 76 to 80 percent lean chuck roast…

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Celebration – Dallas, Texas

Gil Garduno6:54 PM

To adventurous restaurant patrons, the term “foodie” is often used with derision to connote someone who won’t eat somewhere unless Zagat’s has proclaimed it fork worthy. In theory foodies won’t boldly go where Zagat’s (or in the absence thereof, the local fishwrap) hasn’t gone before. Chowhounds, on the other hand, are (at least by definition) adventure eaters who blaze new trails and traverse the deepest, darkest regions under America’s spacious skies for undiscovered treasures. Sometimes the twain does meet and there’s consensus among foodies and chowhounds about a restaurant which both can agree is something special. Such is the case with Celebration which for 30 years has prepared good home cooked meals fresh daily. The restaurant’s walls are adorned with…