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.

Hopdoddy Burger Bar

We had our first "regular" MoFF in quite a while this week. No birthdays, out of town trips, or other special stuff. Hopdoddy Burger Bar located in Preston Center in Dallas won the vote. It is known for great burgers and handcrafted beer. Ryan and I had been hearing about how good it was and we were excited to see for ourselves.

When we went to Austin a few weeks ago, we saw the line for Hopdoddy wrapped around the building, so we decided to head to the restaurant early. It was a good thing because the line was already long at 6:30! We ordered drinks and waited in line to order for about 30 minutes. It really wasn't a bad wait - we socialized and tried a couple of different beers. Ryan was excited to get a 512 Pecan Porter. It's made in Austin and very few places in Dallas carry it. I had a Deep Elum Dallas blonde.

For dinner, I had the Classic Burger with cheese and bacon and Ryan had the Llano Poblano. We shared the truffle fries. I'm of the opinion that anything made with truffle oil is probably amazing.

The classic burger. You really can't go wrong with a bacon cheeseburger.

My feelings on truffle oil was proved correct once again!

Hopdoddy was REALLY worth the wait! This is up there on my list of best burgers in town.  It honestly might be the winner. And the fries were really delicious too. The only I had that I'm not dreaming about was the Skinny Dip cocktail, which is a frozen margarita swirled with St. Arnold's Lawnmower beer. It sounded great - two of my favorite drinks in one glass. Sadly, Ryan and I split it and neither of us liked it much. I did have a taste of a friends margarita on the rocks and it was excellent. There was just something about the beergarita that didn't work.

I want to go back to Hopdoddy ASAP.  Just plan to get there early or you will have to wait.