Restaurant review extravaganza 21 page 1

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

Broward-Palm Beach

Truluck’s

Here in South Florida, we’ve accepted the idea that good food can be found in a strip mall. People wait three hours for meatballs at Café Martorano, stand in line at Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor, and eat some of the best rolls around at Sushi Jo — all in shopping plazas, that scourge of city planning. More >>

Dallas

Masaryk

Remember that Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times? Industrial gears grind and turn, round and round, over and over, in a graceful yet ultimately repetitive sequence until the little tramp becomes ensnared in the machine. More >>

Denver

Buchi Cafe Cubano

I was not born in Florida, thank God. I did not grow up there. I actually spent only a short portion of my life in the Sunshine State — a few months buried to the eyes in the damp and lizard-infested sloughs — and most of that time was spent slaving away in the murderous heat of some of the most embarrassing, deranged kitchens I have ever known. I never once saw the beach, had only a glancing association with the nearby ocean, and when I got home from work rarely wanted to do anything more than wring the humidity out of my brain, strip naked and drape myself bodily over the vents of the nearest air conditioner. On those few nights when I managed to peel myself off the carpet and mule-kick my up-North metabolism into something approximating a down-South footing, I would drive into Tampa or out to some swampy shitkicker bar in the distant exurbs, pant like a dog, sweat like a congressman and try to pretend for a few hours that every breath I took wasn’t like drowning a little bit at a time. More >>

Houston

Al-T’s Seafood & Steakhous

The first thing you notice about the chicken and sausage gumbo at Al-T’s Seafood & Steakhouse is the thin sheen of rich liquid fat that coats the surface. That’s usually a tell-tale sign of a flavorful gumbo. Then your eyes take in the generous chunks of chicken and plump andouille sausage that crest just above the surface. You can smell the gumbo too — the deep smokiness of the milk chocolate-colored soup combined with the tangy earthiness of the ever-­present filé powder. For anyone who loves Cajun food, it’s a mouthwatering sensory experience. And you haven’t even tasted it yet. More >>

Kansas City

Café Europa

I don’t care what Café Europa calls itself — it may be the most American restaurant in midtown. And I’m not just talking about the family-style suppers on Sunday night, a buttermilk-marinated fried-chicken deal (or one of two other entrées offered) that includes salad, mashed potatoes, green beans stewed with bacon and onion, biscuits and dessert. More >>

Los Angeles

Flor Del Rio

On hot Sunday mornings when the asphalt turns to syrup and the cats begin to pant, the pace is easier than usual on the Eastside, the wait at the bakeries briefer, El Mercado less crowded, the tamale lines at Lilliana’s both shorter and slower moving. The track bed of the Gold Line Extension, although it is set to open any week now, already looks like an abandoned urban ruin, moldering and shimmering in the heat. The brightest-colored wall murals are more oppressive than cheerful. At nine in the morning, when even the rottweilers are dozing in the shade, the only purposeful movement on Fourth Street may be the women wrestling vats of menudo into their cars. More >>

The goat of birria covered with cilantro and onions.

Miami

Anise Taverna

Liza and Gennaro “Gigi” Meoli’s first restaurant, Ouzo’s Greek Taverna, drew plenty of patrons and praise when it opened off Normandy Circle in 2002. But then it closed, and a few years later, the couple resurfaced in the Sunset Harbour neighborhood of South Beach with Ouzo’s Mediterranean Bistro. Although the Meoli hospitality was as sunny as ever, dark clouds gathered; more specifically, dark clouds of dust engulfed them from a nearly impenetrable FPL construction site around their establishment. Most folks didn’t want to maneuver through this much of a mess for meze, and the new Ouzo flamed out. More >>

Minneapolis

Victory 44

When Sauced opened in the spring of last year, it was the first restaurant to bring any sort of culinary chic to Minneapolis’s North Side. Its offerings weren’t fancy–no foie gras or top-shelf tequila–but were certainly more adventurous than those at the area’s ubiquitous greasy spoons and chain restaurants. But after Sauced closed, less than a year after its launch, North Siders were again forced to venture downtown or across the city if they were craving the gourmet burgers and scallop risottos easily accessible to those in other neighborhoods. More >>