Tillman's Roadhouse

Last week, we ventured to the Bishop Arts district for a birthday celebration! Courtney picked Tillman's Roadhouse for her birthday MoFF, which has been named among the top ten restaurants in Dallas by D magazine. This was actually the third time that MoFF went to Tillman's, but it was my first time to visit. Tillman's offers an upscale take on classic dishes, including their signature chicken fried steak, along with a large selection of cocktails. It's a somewhat small restaurant with lush and modern decor. We got to sit in the peacock room, which was very fancy!

This was one of many birds that watched over our meal.

Dinner started with complementary seasoned popcorn, which I think I ate an entire bowl of. I love popcorn!

We ordered the truffle goat cheese tater tots, french fry trio, and lobster tamales to start. The tater tots were amazing. They were the best thing that I ate all evening. I liked the fries as well. I stayed away from the tamales, but the fellow diners report that they were tasty. I had a hard time deciding what to order as I'm a bit particular about what I eat. I decided to try the Shiner Short Rib and subbed mac and cheese for the grits.

The food was good. The meat was very tender, and well flavored. I wasn't terribly impressed with the mac and cheese. It was good, but not the best.

For dessert we tried Tillman's special - the tableside s'mores. It comes with flavored marshmallos that you toast at your table. They were fun and tasty! I had the maple flavored marshmallow, which was a little weird, but the cinnamon sugar graham crackers were really good. The other options were mint and root beer.

Cutest little indoor campfire that you ever saw!

I can understand why people like Tillman's. It modern and cool, and they offer interesting food combinations. It is a very "foodie" type of place. I am not a foodie, and most of the appeal was a little lost on me. My opinion comes down to the fact that Ryan and I spend over $100 on our meal on a typical night out. We chipped in for appetizers and dessert, ordered two entrees, and we each had one beer. Sure it was good, and the s'mores were fun, but it just wasn't $100 good. Sadly, that seems typical of the Bishop Arts area. I'm glad that I got to try Tillman's, but I'm in no rush to go back.

Terra Mediterranean Grill

Last week we had a nice double date for MoFF at Terra Mediterranean Grill (formerly Ali Baba's) in Irving. I was thrilled because I love Greek food.

Photo credit: http://www.terramedgrill.com/

Terra Mediterranean has a nice semi-casual atmosphere - nice, but not too fancy. Most entrees are around $12 - $14, and you get a pretty large portion. And, my beer came in a longhorn glass!

I had the Gyro entree, which was amazing. The gyro meat was tender and delicious and the ziziki sauce was so good! I used the pita bread appetizer to make myself a couple of gyro sandwiches. Maybe not the best mannered move, but it was super delicious. I liked the saffron rice on the side as well. I planned to take half home, but I was hungry and it was too delicious. So I ate it all. :)

Come on, how good does that look?!

I will happily go to Terra Mediterranean again!

Babe's Chicken Dinner House

Last Friday, we celebrated Ryan's birthday at Babe's Chicken Dinner House in downtown Carrollton, TX. It's family style and serves delicious fried chicken. This is my favorite kind of place because it's fun, casual, BYOB, and serves amazing food. It's not healthy, but it's great!

You basically have the option of fried chicken, chicken fried steak, chicken fingers, fried catfish, or smoked chicken. Everyone at the table shares sides: green beans, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, and biscuits. You also get salad at the start of the meal. However, the salad is pretty much iceberg lettuce with a heavy dose of suggary dressing. I'm not a fan of creamed corn in general, but all of the rest of the food was amazing. I think I had three helpings of mashed potatoes. They aren't quite as good as the potatoes at Celebration, but they are tasty.

Delicious chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, and green beans!

Stack of Chicken Fried Steaks

Mountain of Fried Chicken

Bucket of Beer topped with biscuits!

We had a great time! This is three years in a row for fried chicken on Ryan's birthday (last two years we went to Kel's) and I hope we keep the tradition going. Who doesn't love fried chicken and mashed potatoes?

Howard Wang's China Grill

My crazy life has really gotten in the way of blogging! I'm so behind on posts, but I am trying to catch back up before the holidays start!

Last week, we tried Howard Wang's China Grill in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas. It's a cute little place, hidden in a shopping center. It's a pretty small restaurant, but we had a small group this week, so getting a table wasn't an issue. They have a huge menu with a variety of Chinese dishes and other Asian cuisine.

I'm a rather picky eater. I realize that this sounds funny from someone who writes a blog about trying new restaurants, but the truth is that I'm not very adventurous when it comes to trying new dishes. I don't care for fish or for spicy food, so Asian food tends to be tricky for me. Plus because of my diabetes, I'm sometimes wary of trying things that I'm unfamiliar with, as I'm not always sure how they will affect me. So the result of this is that I eat the same stuff at a lot of different places. :)

We started with the Crispy Crap Wontons. The others liked them better than I did, but I tried it! I liked it well enough, but it wasn't my favorite. The cream cheese covered the fishy taste of the crab.

For dinner, I ordered the tamest dish on the menu - Chicken Fried Rice. It was very good! You get a generous portion, with lots of chicken and veggies. It was enough food for me to take leftovers home. The nice thing about eating the same stuff at every restaurant is that it's easy to compare. I would say that I preferred Howard Wang's fried rice to Coconut Thai's, although I liked both.

I will say that Howard Wang's was a nice change of pace for MoFF. This would be a fun place to go with a date or a small group.

Addison Ice House

We checked the out Addison Ice House in Vitruvian Park on Halloween. We picked it because it's close to our friends apartment, where we had a sweet Halloween celebration! I thought that everyone would be in costume already at dinner....and I was wrong. Ryan was Dexter for Halloween and left some of his props in the car, so he looked normal. I, on the other hand, was dressed in my full on flapper costume. Luckily, it was super cute.

This is a nice little bar/restaurant. They have a good beer selection and a great patio. I've been once before when the weather was nice, and loved sitting outside. They have a variety of bar food - burgers, quesadillas, etc. For dinner, I had the Build Your Own Burger with avocado and bacon on a pretzel bun. It was messy and it made my blood sugar spike, but it was delicious.

Delicious burger and fries. That pretzel bun was excellent.

 I like this place - good food, good drinks, fun place to hang out. As the burger goes, I preferred Hopdoddy, but the pretzel bun at Addison Ice House was pretty great.

I do love a good Halloween party and we had a great time dressing up. What do you think of our costumes?

Me as a Flapper and Ryan as Dexter Morgan

Me and our wonderful host Lindsay

Bread Winners Cafe and TX/OU Weekend

This past weekend turned out to be much happier than expected. That's because my Texas Longhorns beat the Oklahoma Sooners in the Red River Rivalry!!!!!!! HOOK 'EM HORNS!

We started the weekend off with Meal of Food Friday at Bread Winners Cafe in Uptown. Bread Winner's has amazing brunch (excellent breakfast tacos), and serves sandwiches, salads, burgers, etc. for lunch and dinner. We celebrated Megan's belated birthday in our finest burnt orange.

photo credit: breadwinnerscafe.com

We started off with the Margherita flatbread, thinking that it would work as a good appetizer.  When they brought it out, it was clear that this dish is meant for a full meal. But never fear, we had no problem eating it! The dish was fine. I would have preferred more cheese. When in doubt, add more cheese.

We were too hungry to wait for picture taking. Pretend that this is a full pizza.

For dinner, I had the California Rollup, which is a wrap sandwich with chicken, bacon, avocado, ranch, cheese, lettuce, and tomato. Pretty much everything I like! I had fries and a Deep Ellum Dallas Blonde with it.

Avocados make life better. So do french fries.

I really enjoyed this meal. We got to sit outside and people watch again, which I love to do when the weather is nice. We also had a great server - friendly and helpful!

I've been to Bread Winners for brunch and for dinner on a couple different occasions, and my opinion is that brunch is better food wise. However, it's also super crowded during brunch on the weekend, so watch out for that! Dinner seems more relaxed, and the food is still very good!

After dinner, we tried out a bar called Kung Fu Saloon, which features vintage video games and a full bar! How fun is that! Ryan and I ducked out once the place got overrun football fans, but I'd like to go back some time.

Celebrating our seventh TX/OU weekend together! Texas Fight!

Happy belated TX/OU to you all!

Cane Rosso

Last week was my birthday (yay!), which meant that our location for MoFF was all up to me! After much thought and deliberation I settled on Cane Rosso, which serves Neopolitan style pizza. We went to the White Rock location, which I believe is the newer of the two (the other is in Deep Ellum). I was excited to try this place after hearing from friends that the food was great and after Cane Rosso was voted best pizza in Dallas by D Magazine.

Ryan and I got to the restaurant early to get our name on the list, and to have a happy hour beer on the patio. We had amazingly nice weather - I mean, it was only like 85 degrees. That is unheard of in August in Dallas. I loved the patio area at Cane Rosso. It was like a fancy picnic area, with lots of room to wait for your table.

We ended up sitting inside for our meal and we started with the Angioletti, which is fried dough with Parmesan cheese. I also had a taste of the Caprese and Carciofini (lightly fried artichokes) appetizers. All three were really good! I particularly liked the Carciofini. One advantage of MoFF is that we usually have enough people to share dishes, which I love.

This is not a great photo, but I assure you that the fried bread was tasty.

Naturally, we ordered pizza for dinner. Our waitress explained that the pizza at Cane Rosso is cooked at high temperature for a very short time, so the middle of the pizza is still doughy. It's "fork and knife pizza." Ryan and I split the Cassie pizza, which comes with hot soppressata (basically spicy pepperoni), mushrooms, tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil.

The pizza lived up to the hype! Very delicious, and pretty unique compared to other places that I've been in DFW. The prices were very reasonable as well. Ryan and I split a $14 pizza and we both had plenty of food. Next time, I want to try one of the dessert pizzas. They looked amazing, but my stomach (and my blood sugar) couldn't handle any more food.

I have a really hard time picking a "favorite" of anything, so I don't know if I can declare Cane Rosso as the best pizza in Dallas, but it is certainly top tier.  It was a great place to spend my birthday - the atmosphere is fun and lively and the food is great! They were very accommodating of our large party.  I just with it was closer to home!

 

Coconut Thai Grill

We branched out this past week for Meal of Food Friday and ventured to Coconut Thai Grill in Carrollton. I should preface the rest of this post by stating that I am not very adventurous when it comes to Asian cuisine. I am super sensitive to spicy food and I don't care for fish. That seems to limit my options at Asian resturants.

That being said, I really liked Coconut Thai! It's a bit hidden from the road and it doesn't look like much on the outside, but the inside was very cute. It's decorated with a coconut theme (makes sense right?) and it has a cozy feel.

photo credit: http://www.menuaid.com/About_Us.html

Coconut Thai offers a pretty large selection of food. I went the safe route and ordered the House Fried Rice with chicken. When the waitress asked what level of spiciness I wanted, I asked for level 0. It was tasty! The chicken had a lot of flavor, even with the super low spice level. I know it's not a very exciting order, but I liked it just fine.

My grandma teased my when I was a kid for only eating food that was white and bland looking (this dish was not bland, just to be clear). Guess not much has changed!

I washed dinner down with a Kirin Ichiban beer - sorry that the picture isn't so good. I should probably start taking pictures with a real camera instead of my phone!

Overall, this was a fun place. It was very casual, which I loved. As far as price goes, it seemed reasonable to be, with dishes costing $10-$12. I don't eat a whole lot of Thai food, so I'm not sure how that compares to other places in the area. It's about in line with our average MoFF location.

Anyone have suggestions for other Thai places in DFW? Share them with me!

Dallas Beer Kitchen

We had three great nominations for MoFF this week - I voted to Empa Mundo (which I've been wanting to try for a while) but it lost out to Dallas Beer Kitchen on Lower Greenville in Dallas.

photo credit: dallasbeerkitchengreenville.com/

I was not disappointed with this winner! As you can guess from the name, this restaurant is known for a great beer selection. They have 30 beers on tap that rotate throughout the year. On a suggestion from a friends, I tried the Boulevard Tank-7 Farmhouse Ale. It was on the lighter side, which I like, and it's made in Kansas City, where I have lots of family and friends!

Bouns: it comes in a fancy glass!

The restaurant is pretty small and we had a large party so we waited for a while. Luckily, the beer selection kept everyone entertained! For dinner, I had the As Good As It Gets burger, which is a fancy bacon cheeseburger. It comes with a garlic aioli sauce on it, which was a little too strong for me. My burger was really good, but  I wished that I had asked for the sauce on the side so that I could only add the amount that I wanted. The burgers come with a choice of french fries or chips. I had fries and they were delicious!

I mean, how good does that look?!?

There are only 2 negatives about this place - one is that the parking is not great. I parked in their lot around the corner, but it was still a little sketchy. The other is that the food was a little pricy. Not too bad, but it was a little on the high side for burgers and fries. That being said, you can tell that they use quality ingredients and the food really is tasty!

All in all, another successful MoFF!

Quaker Steak and Lube

I'm really late on this post - it's a little harder to get excited about writing a review when I don't have a strong reaction to the restaurant. I'm usually pumped to share my most recent adventure and to tell you how great the food is. Sometimes I'm disappointed in my meal of food. In either case, I have good material to write about! Our trip to Quaker Steak and Lube in Carrollton, was somewhere in the middle.

photo credit: thelube.com

Quaker Steak and Lube is a casual place that boasts the bests wings in the USA. It's garage themed (hence the lube reference) with garage doors that turn the bar area into a patio when open. It had a lot going for it. We sat in the patio area on a really nice night (especially for July in Texas) and the atmosphere was fun. They had a good beer selection and a huge menu. They offer things like steaks, salads, sandwiches, burgers, and flatbreads. We started with the 4-Wheeler for the table, which is an appetizer sampler with onion rings, soft pretzels, mozzarella sticks, and fried pickles. The onion rings were my favorite part!

I liked the tower presentation. They also served beer in towers.

For dinner, I had the California Chicken sandwich and veggies. The selling point was the avocado on the sandwich. Ryan tested out the "best wings" claim. I liked my sandwich, but it was nothing to get excited over. Don't get me wrong, the food was good! There was nothing bad about it. But it also wasn't very exciting. Ryan reports that the wings don't live up to the claim. His reaction was the same as mine - good food, not great. I don't eat wings much, so I'm taking his word.

A chicken sandwich is always a safe bet.

In a case like this, I have to weigh the pros and cons of going back. The pros are: fun atmosphere, beer selection, affordable food, and (best of all) close to home. The cons: food is so-so.

I see this being a place that Ryan and I go to watch a game of some sort, or to hang out on the patio for happy hour. It's close to our house, so it could be a fun place to stop in for a beer and snacks.

Cafe Amore

Another week, another  delicious Meal of Food! This week, we went to Cafe Amore in Richardson (they also have a location in Plano). Amore is an old favorite of my family's as it is just around the corner from our old house. I've eaten there a lot!

It was the first time that Amore won for MoFF. My two favorite things about Amore are the amazing rolls and the fact that it's BYOB!

I could really just eat these.

We had the Mozzarella and Tomato ala Caprese as an appetizer, and I had pizza for dinner.

I did the Build Your Own option with pepperoni, mushrooms, and bell peppers

I hadn't been to Amore in quite a while, but it did live up to expectations! The food here is really good, and the place is always packed on the weekends. It's a very family friendly place - the prices are very affordable and you can bring your own drinks. One drawback is that the service can be a little slow. It's not somewhere that I would recommend if you are in a hurry. That's not to say that the service is bad - in fact the servers are always very friendly. It can just take a while to get your food. We were happy to sit and chat and enjoy the evening, so speed was not an issue for us. It can also be a little tricky to get a table for a large group as they generally don't accept reservations. We got lucky and didn't have to wait, but that has not always been my experience.

Overall, the food is excellent, and the price and BYOBness make it worth waiting for!

Urban Taco

Our July Fourth weekend was a lot of fun. We got to crash friend's pools all weekend, so I finally got some sun. But we still made it to Meal of Food Friday!

We ventured to Urban Taco in uptown. It's a cute little place with a nice patio. We started out with the salsa trio, and we choose the jalapeno avocado, avocado lime crema, and the roja. I don't eat spicy food, so I stayed away from the jalapeno, but both of the other salsas were great. They had both tortilla and potato chips, both of which were good.

photo credit: dinedsrg.com/ut/mckinney.html

 For dinner, I had the De Bistek quesadillas and Ryan tried the 3 taco special - 3 tacos for $10 is a deal! My quesadillas were really good. Ryan enjoyed his too.

Delicious quesadillas - the dish that I measure all Mexican restaurants against.

Ryan's taco dinner.

The funny thing about Urban Taco was that the drinks cost more than the food. I'm not complaining, I just thought that it was funny. I was low on insulin, so I opted out of margaritas, but I hear from my fellow diners that they were great! Overall, we had a good time, and if we are down in the uptown area again, I would go back.