Restaurant review extravaganza 41

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

Broward-Palm Beach

Usmania Restaurant

There’s no way you’re eating brains,” my vegetarian fiancée said in a sterner voice than I’ve heard from her in a while. The look on her face told me argument was futile — not unless I was willing to sleep on the couch for the immediate future. More >>

Dallas

Urban Crust

“Where do you want to sit?” the waitress asks as I step inside Urban Crust. It hardly matters, so I shrug in response.

The waitress–her name was Lauren, according to my receipt–looks over the space, a long, narrow room cluttered with tables and booths, bounded by rough brick walls, with a stairway near the entrance and wood-burning oven toward the back. Up one flight is a small area dedicated to cushy lounge seats and a row of stools on a balcony overlooking the dining hall. The third floor features an ice blue bar and rooftop patio, which has a separate name, 32 Degrees. “I’ll put you next to my mom,” Lauren finally says. More >>

​

Denver

TAG

Troy Atherton Guard, the man behind the semi-eponymous restaurant TAG, serves the best rice I’ve ever had.

Yeah, rice. But this is no backhanded compliment. Rice is important — vitally so to maybe half the world. There are about a bazillion varieties of it, each one requiring its own infinitesimally different prep and handling, each one tasting slightly different from all the others. More >>

Houston

Cedar Creek Cafe

“We have Divine Reserve number 9,” the bartender at Cedar Creek Cafe said when I asked which Saint Arnold’s beers he had on tap. I was shocked. It was December 1, the day that the latest Divine Reserve, as Saint Arnold’s limited edition beers are known, was released. More >>

Kansas City

Wild Bill’s Legendary Steakhouse & Saloon

When the California-based Saddle Ranch Chop House finally threw in the bandanna at its huge leased space at the Legends entertainment complex in Wyandotte County, it left a few things behind. Of what remained in the dining room, what was big enough to stage a small rodeo? The mechanical bull, for one thing. Most of the rustic furnishings stayed behind, too. And the big circular bar. And Marc, the muscular bartender who looks like a cowboy — or country-western singer. More >>

Los Angeles

El Parian

If you have spent much time in South and Southeast L.A., around the boulevards and crabbed side streets that are home to much of the great northward flow, you may have come to believe that practically everything worth doing or eating originated in Guadalajara and its Mexican state of Jalisco. Guadalajara, tapatios never tire of telling you, is where you find the best tacos, the freshest vegetables, the earthiest flavors that sprout from the roasted western Mexican soil. More >>

​

Miami

Stone Grill 95

Operating a new restaurant is a real bitch, and making a profit while doing so is damn near impossible. Still, there are certain things rookie restaurateurs can do to increase their odds of success. For instance, answering the phone is helpful. When I recently dialed the month-old Stone Grill 95 in Surfside to make reservations, the telephone just kept ringing and ringing. More >>

Minneapolis

Bar La Grassa

I had my first local sighting of “jeggings” the other night at Bar La Grassa. They are a confident fashion choice that recently arrived from the coasts: skin-tight denim leggings, often worn with a top that doesn’t cover the tush and a pair of retro, round-toed pumps. They hug every curve, and then some. And they make their precursor, skinny jeans, seem as baggy as elephant skin. More >>