Restaurant review extravaganza 22 page 1

Here are some of this week’s most noteworthy restaurant reviews from across the country:

Broward-Palm Beach

Canyon Southwest Café

I just got back from Brooklyn, where street gluttons wait patiently in line a hundred minutes or more to crowd into a dinky storefront parlor for the pizza at Di Fara. The old guy behind the counter, Dom DeMarco, is spry and focused; his Neapolitan hand is the only one to touch these pizzas, made one at a time at a fairly leisurely pace, while his footsore customers gaze upon him with reverence. DeMarco saturates his crusts with extra virgin olive oil, scatters hunks of buffalo mozzarella and a snowfall of Grana Padano or Reggiano, snips leaves of fresh basil or oregano, and dispenses them around the steaming pie like a magician waving an herb-scented wand. About an hour or so into our wait, as we inched ever closer to the prize, the friend who’d invited me wanted to know if we South Floridians had anything comparable. Places people lined up for? Native foods worth a two-hour wait? Some little old lady with a roadside tamale stand, maybe? More >>

Dallas

Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen

Kent Rathbun opening a down-home Southern kitchen is a lot like asking an accomplished concert violinist–Joshua Bell, say–to play a fiddle tune. He can get all the notes right and yet…More >>

Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen in Dallas

Denver

Mel’s Bar and Grill

We’d timed our exit as skillfully as possible, Laura and I. The bill was paid, the plates cleared, and we were sitting at our table at Mel’s Bar and Grill almost silently, our heads down, making just enough uncomfortable small talk to dissuade anyone from coming over and starting a conversation. More >>

Houston

Taquería Jesus Maria

There was a fried mojarra on display on the front counter as we walked in the door of Taquería Jesus Maria on Spencer Highway. One look at the big fish changed my mind about what to order for dinner. More >>

Kansas City

Chung’s Rainbow Korean Restaurant

A few years ago, my friend Carol Ann traveled to South Korea to spend a couple of weeks visiting a friend. She came back loaded down with trinkets and souvenirs and couldn’t stop raving about the food: “It was very fresh, lots of vegetables and thinly sliced grilled beef served with lots of interesting and spicy condiments.” More >>

“One fan praises the ‘small-town, mom-and-pop’ comfort food at Chung’s Rainbow Korean Restaurant.”

Los Angeles

Ludo Bites

Picture a slice of Spanish chorizo, then imagine that flavor transferred intact to a cool, cream soup — animal funk, smoked paprika and all. In the bowl, arranged like building blocks, are cubes of juicy, ripe melon at the height of its summer muskiness. Toward the edge of the bowl, splinters of tart ice break the surface — ice that expresses the essence of cornichons and pickled onions, with a texture as jagged as its taste. You are sitting on the sidewalk at Ludo Bites at Breadbar, nothing but a potted plant separating you from the flow of ambulances rushing to the trauma ward at nearby Cedars-Sinai, but your mouth might as well be a thousand miles away. More >>

Miami

Eos at Viceroy Miami

Michael Psilakis (see-LAH-kees), the self-trained, 39-year-old chef behind the new Eos at Viceroy Miami, grew up in a Greek Orthodox household in East Northpoint, Long Island; his mother hails from Kalamata, his father from Crete. More >>

Minneapolis

Northeast Social

One warm summer evening not too long ago, I sat at one of Northeast Social’s sidewalk tables and watched a man in a white linen suit pour a Belgian lambic into a glass as he chatted with friends. The scene made me think of a recent market research study in which undergraduates named Facebook their second-favorite thing–right behind the iPod–and tied with the former first-place holder, beer. Would the next generation be the first to find documenting their intoxication online more appealing than the actual thing? More >>