Restaurant review extravaganza 32

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

Broward-Palm Beach

Restaurant at 251

Picture this: You’ve been invited for dinner at a friend’s house. He’s prepared a lovely meal — a salad of baby lettuces and herbs from the garden and a whole roasted pork loin dressed with sage and thyme. Midway through your pork loin — so juicy and tender — your host gets up. He removes the empty chairs from the room. He licks his fingers, snuffs out the candles on the centerpiece, and turns up the chandelier to its brightest setting. And then he hovers over you, waiting and watching as you chew your last few bites. More >>

Dallas

Tea Thyme & Tisane

As a kid, my parents subjected our family to a couple different themed meals on a regular basis. One was Dad’s weekly catfish and hushpuppies fry-fest. Others involved dinners at which Mom stretched a pound of meat to serve the entire table. Until my early 20s, I firmly believed you were supposed to add white bread to burgers and meatloaf. The thought of an all-meat patty? Ludicrous. More >>

Sara Kerens

“Tea is what they do best at Tea Thyme & Tisane. Wonder why?”

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Denver

Taste of Thailand

They were giving away irises at Taste of Thailand the other day — free to a good home, free to anyone who wanted to take away a little beauty. More >>

Houston

Giacomo’s

It was a cool evening, one of the first of the season, so we were eager to sit outside on the patio at Giacomo’s (pronounced JOCK-a-mo’s), the new Italian cafe on Westheimer. It drizzled now and then, but the big umbrella over our table kept us dry as we drank a bottle of plonk and made a dinner out of salumi e formaggi, as sliced meats and cheese are known in Italy. More >>

Miami

Soleá at the W South Beach

Less is more is a sound gastronomic principle, and certainly one the dining public has been eager to embrace. Sane portions, light sauces, bright flavors? Of course. Food from the Mediterranean, where the less-is-more crowd prefers to weigh anchor, likewise enjoys near-universal appeal — especially in Cuisine of the Sun-conscious South Florida. Grilled fish, fresh produce, extra virgin olive oil? Sí times three. So it would seem Soleá at the W South Beach, which emphasizes uncomplicated Mediterranean fare, would be precisely the kind of place to capture our fancy. Not necessarily. More >>

Nashville

Belle

Volunteering for a nonprofit organization can be thankless work, from raising money to stuffing envelops. But for the lucky–or strategic–do-gooder, such responsibilities also come with privileges. Like when the board members of the Belle Meade Plantation got to select a new concession to fill the vacancy left by this spring’s closing of Martha’s at the Plantation. More >>

Carrington Fox

Burger and fries courtesy of Belle’s chef Brian Hainley

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New York

The Island of Taiwan Restaurant

Judging from the evolving mix of restaurants and food courts, the Taiwanese are losing their grip on Flushing, and are being replaced by immigrants from a slew of northern and western Chinese provinces. Inevitably, the community will disperse throughout Queens, Brooklyn, and the Great Beyond. The good news is that Taiwanese restaurants may soon be popping up in neighborhoods where you never expected them. More >>

Orange County

Haven Gastropub

The Orange Circle, long the dominion of doilies, fragile antiques and that once-a-year excuse for public beer-swilling and drunkenness called the International Street Fair, has been yearning for a watering hole like Haven Gastropub–a place designed to tap (pun intended) into the annual gathering’s core demographic: lovers of beer and merriment. More >>

Phoenix

America’s Taco Shop

It’s great being the first one in your circle to discover something: the horseshoe jewelry fad, chunky-heeled boots, or a new Vietnamese restaurant. Makes you feel like a trendsetter. By the same token, when something becomes so popular that everyone’s doing it already, I’m far less compelled to indulge. (Tart yogurt and skinny jeans come to mind.) That’s the only excuse I can claim for my previous inexperience with America’s Taco Shop, a popular carne asada restaurant that opened late last year in Phoenix’s Coronado district. Eventually, I gave in to the hype — and I’m glad I did. More >>

Jackie Mercandetti

“Where’s the beef? At America’s Taco Shop, where carne asada is the house specialty.”

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San Francisco

Burmese Kitchen

The Civic Center deli known as Larkin Express was the ideal of those who love to find the hidden little restaurants of the city. It was a grungy lunch place that featured quick-service American deli sandwiches such as Reubens and tuna melts, specializing in fresh-roasted turkey, but also offered a few steam-table Burmese specialties on the down-low. Alas, the place closed at 4 and wasn’t open on the weekends, so few except the lunch crowd tried its samusa soup or tea leaf salad. More >>