Restaurant review extravaganza 18

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

Broward-Palm Beach

City Fish Market

Fish has become the food issue of the decade, as contentious and controversial as farm-raised chicken or foie gras was in the ’90s. The doomsayers claim world fisheries are collapsing; environmentalists wring their hands over the damage done to both the Earth and local economies by shrimp and salmon farms; Greenpeace stages activist pranks at Nobu to call attention to the plight of bluefin tuna. Trackers of a continent-sized swirling vortex of plastic in the Pacific Ocean tell us this vastly creepy phenomenon indicates that our marine fish are probably as full of polyethylene as your average recycling bin. More >>

Dallas

Salum

Some months ago, Abraham Salum faced a couple of moderately serious problems. Business slipped, first of all, as the recession began to squeeze diners–an issue that he might deal with to some extent if he addressed the second concern. “Some people said they would love to come in on Mondays and Tuesdays, but they didn’t want a big dinner,” the chef-owner of Salum recalls. More >>

“Creative cooking without sacrificing the everyday vibe”

Denver

Dougherty’s

I’d walked past twice before figuring out that this unmarked door on Broadway was, in fact, the place where I was going. By the host stand inside that door stood a dapper young gentleman dressed to the nines. Me? Dressed to the fours, at best. “Hour wait,” he told me. “Maybe more.” More >>

Houston

Hollister Grill

The crab cake Benedict on the Sunday brunch menu at Hollister Grill is my new favorite version of the old-fashioned egg dish. It starts off with two slices of salty prosciutto on two buttered English muffins. The ham is topped with two modest-sized but meaty crab cakes. Then come the poached eggs and your choice of regular or chipotle hollandaise. We got the spicy, smoky chipotle sauce, of course. It added just the right zing to the stack of rich crab, prosciutto and egg. More >>

Kansas City

Café Augusta

I don’t know Micheline Burger or her daugh­ter, Mijanou Cackler — I’ve never spoken to them — but if they had come to me with their idea for opening a European-style bistro in a strip mall on the west side of Interstate 35, I would have done my best to talk them out of it. More >>

Los Angeles

Green Village / Malan

Leeks with eel jam? Duck soup? Yangzhou crabmeat spring roll casserole? Braised pork knuckle with soy sauce? If you have followed San Gabriel Chinese restaurants over the last 15 years, you have probably noticed the symbiosis with the parallel scene a dozen miles east in Rowland Heights, restaurants disappearing in one location and popping up in a minimall in the latter, culinary twinning, chefs bouncing east and west in an abalone-based game of ping-pong diplomacy. More >>

Miami

Mi Rinconcito Mexicano / Pepper’s Burrito Grill

Among those who take their ethnic restaurants seriously, ambiance, service, and even taste of the food take back seats to how closely the meals hew to authenticity. This zeal for the real deal, however, manifests itself to different degrees according to genre of cuisine. Most foodies won’t fret that smoked salmon carpaccio isn’t exactly a staple of the traditional Italian dinner table, and few will quibble if their bouillabaise shows no trace of John Dory. But if the owner of a Mexican dining establishment dares to Americanize a taco, responses are apoplectic: “What a joke! The stuff they serve here is nothing like what people eat in Mexico!” More >>