Restaurant review extravaganza 30

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

Broward-Palm Beach

El Zocalo

An unflinching love of Mexican food commands me to do outrageous things to satisfy urges. I’ve chased down street carts, eaten things out of convenience stores that I probably should not, and cut through traffic at the mere sight of a taco truck. Also acceptable: eating standing up in the street, sitting down on dirty pavement, or jumping out of a moving vehicle. If some seedy dive in a bad neighborhood serves an authentic taco, I’ll make for it like they were giving away big-screen TVs. More >>

Dallas

Eno’s

For some reason I can’t get over the root beer float at Eno’s.

I know it’s not a difficult thing to make–unless, of course, you follow my old method of plunging ice cream into a mug of root beer and watching it fizz and boil over the rim. I know it’s something you outgrow by the time you hit, well, my age. But there’s something addictive in the simple pleasure of sitting in that building on a bright afternoon, spooning up globs of bubbly brown vanilla. Makes you want to go back for more. More >>

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Denver

Cafe Options

I love the fact that my day goes by so fast,” says Craig Dixon, chef/manager at Cafe Options. That day starts plenty early: Dixon is at the fast-casual restaurant at 1650 Curtis Street by 6 a.m. every weekday, to unlock the doors and greet the customers who start coming in when the place officially opens at 6:30 — and to watch all the people who don’t come in, walking right past Cafe Options with their Starbucks cups when they could be drinking an Americano made here from Elevations, a homegrown coffee company. More >>

Houston

Bar-B-Que Blues

The ribs were the star of my three-meat plate at Bar-B-Que Blues on Almeda. The pork was long-cooked, until it adhered only loosely to the bones. It had a satisfying crust of seasoning on the outside that made every bite more interesting than the last. The ribs looked like they came from a three-and-a-half-pound rack, a rarity in this era of oversize hogs. Barbecuers go to great lengths to find “three and a half and down” ribs because the small size yields tender meat. More >>

Kansas City

The Westside Local

The Westside Local opened in July amid lots of buzz. Managing partner Troy McEvers had worked at the popular Free State Brewery in Lawrence, and he introduced Rick Martin, another Free State Brewery veteran, as Westside’s consulting chef. More >>

Los Angeles

Don Dae Gam

Have you ever had too much pork belly — not a slab of bacon or a braised Chinese version that you are expected to share with a table of 10, but so much of the stuff, sliced thinly and arranged in pinky white curls, that you can barely see over the top? Because at Don Dae Gam, the pork-intensive Koreatown barbecue just north of the original El Cholo, the pork belly just never seems to stop, wisps spilling off serving tables and soaring above big plates. There is so much pork belly that the hardwood charcoal smoking in the center of the tabletop seems barely adequate to the task, and the procession of belly blowing across the hot stainless-steel grill can begin to remind you of the conveyor-belt scene in I Love Lucy after a few minutes — you gobble the sizzling excess just to make room for the next barrage of meat. More >>

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Miami

Charlotte Bistro

From time to time, Alice Waters would cook dinner for friends in her Berkeley home. These gatherings garnered enough exuberant word-of-mouth that before long, everyone Alice knew craved an invitation. She started Chez Panisse mainly as a means of feeding them all without going broke — and the rest, as they chez, is history. More >>