Restaurant review extravaganza 52

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

Dallas

Fish Shack

At Fish Shack, location is not everything. Nor is presentation. Nor, come to think of it, is appearance, plate-arrival timing, or even the name of the place–when’s the last time you wanted to eat in a shack, anyway? More >>

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Houston

Hot Pot City

The waitress at Hot Pot City on Beltway 8 at Beechnut brought two pots to our table and set them on the built-in burners. Each pot was divided down the center so it held two different kinds of broth. We sampled the spicy Mongolian and herbal Chinese broths in one pot and the Thai suki and Vietnamese lau in the other. More >>

Kansas City

Prime Rib Grill by Hereford House

Earlier this month, bulldozers tore down the remains of Kansas City’s original Hereford House at 20th Street and Main after an explosion and fire had shuttered it for good in October 2008. The place was iconic — even though I never included it on a list of the city’s best steakhouses, I know a lot of people who did. More >>

Minneapolis

Szechuan / Grand Szechuan

The China you probably know–if you’re the sort to get your news from The Colbert Report, anyway–is one of dominance in ping-pong and wind-turbine manufacturing, where the internet is censored, videos are pirated, and everyone rides around on electric bicycles. More >>

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New York

Choptank

The sweet, briny taste of Faidley’s bulging crabcake was still fresh on my tongue as we hopped off the train at Penn Station and zoomed downtown to check out Choptank. Located in Baltimore’s historic Lexington Market, Faidley’s is famous for fabricating that city’s best and biggest crabcakes. More >>

Orange County

Hebaragi Korean BBQ

Did you know pigs have jowls? And that you can eat them? Well, they do, and you can. The Italians cure them into a bacon-like product called guanciale, which is sliced little-by-little and used with pasta. More >>

Phoenix

FnB

Home cooking gets all the credit for being comforting and soul-satisfying, but every so often, a restaurant comes along that’s as cozy as a warm blanket. More >>

Jackie Mercandetti

“Crispy rock shrimp with jalapeño tartar sauce (right) and farm-fresh fennel salad are only two of the reasons why three-month-old FnB is an instant classic in Old Town Scottsdale.”

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San Francisco

Pi Bar / Delarosa

San Francisco’s thing for upscale pizza has gone so far beyond fad — trend-starter Pizzetta 211 dates back to 2004, people — that it’s practically a social movement. There’s no secret why pizza is popular with customers: It’s populist. More >>

Seattle

Ocho

Ocho is not a dim or shady bar. It’s just plain dark–candlelit and shadowed, rich with velvet blackness and gilt filigree–and coming through the door at 11 p.m. on a weekend is like walking straight into a wall of noise. The music is loud, coming from a stereo behind the bar tuned to a pure Nick Hornby station. I don’t recognize a single song, but I like every one of them. More >>

St. Louis

Mama Pho Vietnamese Restaurant

Mama Pho Vietnamese Restaurant opened last November in a shuttered McDonald’s at the corner of South Grand Boulevard and Chippewa Street. Visit at the right time — a weekend lunch, say, Disney Channel programming blaring from the two flat-screen TVs, parents hunched over steaming bowls of pho, their kids plowing through plates of plain rice and sweet grilled pork — and you might believe it remains a branch of the fast-food empire. More >>