Restaurant review extravaganza 26

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

Broward-Palm Beach

Ilios at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort

It was the summer of 1989, and my family was on one of our epic, summer road trips. We were just outside of Nashville and were closing in on 15 hours crammed into our beige Dodge Caravan. My father, after reluctantly deciding we’d gone far enough, started looking for somewhere — anywhere — to stay for the night. Usually, we’d find a motel that was strictly utilitarian in nature — a bed, a hot shower, a trustworthy alarm clock. But on this evening, those neon “No Vacancy” lights were lit up across town like so many fireflies, and all we could find was an upscale hotel-resort composed of individual condos. More >>

Dallas

Bella

Everyone is familiar with Dean Fearings and Stephan Pyles and the other big boys of the Dallas dining set, but this year a group of relative unknowns is challenging their celebrity chef status. More >>

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Denver

La Loma

My first date was in a Tex-Mex restaurant.

Actually, I should say that my first real date was in a Tex-Mex restaurant — real date meaning the first date which had, at its conclusion, a reasonable expectation of a girl touching me where my bathing suit covered and not, later, being able to claim it was just an accident. The first date where drinks were consumed, in other words. Where I paid for everything and acted like a gentleman and pretended that I had anything on my mind other than sex, sex or sex. More >>

Houston

Rockwell Tavern

Rockwell Tavern on Telge Road in Cypress opened in January, but the interior already looks well worn. That’s because it was furnished with used tables and chairs bought from another restaurant. When you sit down, your forearms stick to the tacky wooden tabletops. The floor is stained concrete. There’s a pool table in the middle of the bar. A bunch of cue sticks are littered around the place. Big-screen televisions are usually tuned to extreme sports. The six-month-old sports bar is something of a dump already. More >>

Kansas City

R.A. Long’s Sawmill Restaurant

I flipped on the TV last week to see, on a local news station, a man who had seen a funnel cloud — cloud, not cake — briefly touch down near the suburb of Lee’s Summit. The man had captured a little video of the event on his cell phone. As I looked closer at the man holding the cell phone, I recognized Eddie Adel. More >>

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Miami

La Sandwicherie / Chicago’s Bakery & Deli

Many years ago, while interviewing for a position as counterman at the New York Delicatessen in Boulder, Colorado, I claimed former employment at the renowned Katz’s Deli in New York. Truth is, I had never toiled at any deli, or for that matter at any restaurant, but the Katz effect got me hired on the spot. Two days later, my right index finger slid from a surprisingly slippery turkey breast into an electric slicer, and some stitching was required. A scant few days passed before a similarly shocking knockwurst-and-knife incident necessitated my left index finger get the same treatment from the same doctor — who politely suggested I might consider a line of work that didn’t involve sharp objects. More >>