Epicurean Dallas

Last week I met up with Oliver in Dallas. We stayed at the Ritz Carlton Dallas (ahhh-mazing) and had a wonderful time!!! I always love to go to a new city and explore it and for cool and quirky new places. This time it was all about fooooood. When people think of good food they think New York and Los Angeles. I think that a lot of new cities are on the up and coming....HELLOOO Vegas!! Hell, its the host city of Top Chef this season. Other places on the way up include Miami, San Fransico, and Dallas to name a few. Of course this is in my opinion, but watch you'll see. These places will become more main stream.

SO, here are a few of my highlights of foood while in Dallas.

Off the Bone. A Gourmet BBQ restuarant. Having a boyfriend who is quite particular in what he wants to eat we asked the concierge where to go to get good BBQ. He gave us directions and off we went. Off the Bone was kind of in an industrial area of Dallas, past the Convention Center. Set in a relatively big parking lot, painted white with red trim, I think it was an old gas station. Entirely take-out this food was AMZING. Lemme break it down for you...Smoked Pecan Baby Back Ribs, Honey Spiced Baked Beans (I'm not usually a baked bean eater) and Tri-Colored Spiced Pasta. Wow. It was SO good. When I was finished, I went back in and told Dwight(owner and chef) that Off the Bone was the perfect name for his restaurant because my ribs literally fell of the bone. I am salivating thinking about it....yummy!

The Cupcakery. okay, maybe not a meal....but cupcakes are awesome!! This is a whole new trend in the bakery/pastry world. Yum. Yum. Yum. I was a little put off that the girl behind the counter looked anorexically thin, but was immediately distracted by the amazing display case of cupcakes. I got the Strawberry Lemonade Cupcake. It was lemon cake swirled with fresh strawberries, and topped with strawberry cream cheese and a strawberry. It also had like food glitter on it.

My next top pick was the Coconut Bliss...sweet coconut cake with cream cheese frosting sprinkled with luscious coconut flakes. Other cupcakery favorites include the Mound of Joy, Southern Belle, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup.

Decorated inside with hot pink and just cool awesome-ness, there was a whole wall of pictures of celebrities enjoying cupcakes. Come to find out there is another store in LAS VEGAS. Duh. Just go and google (or bing) The Cupcakery images to see yummy pictures of glittery and delicious looking cupcakes!

CRAFT. Anyone heard of that little show I referenced earlier called Top Chef? Tom Colicchio is the owner and executive chef of this brand, which restaurants in Atlanta, Dallas, and LA also has craftbar (ATL and LA), craftsteak (Vegas, NY, and Foxwoods/CT) and 'wichcraft (NY and Vegas).

This was a no brainer that we would have to eat here. Set in the contemporary W hotel, this restaurant is SO cool. With a huge backdrop of wine, walls of black cow fur, and leather, craft had filament lightbulbs hanging down too. Just go look it up online. Its so beautiful. It is the type of restaurant that I strive to own one day.

I ate the cavatelli with veal ricotta meatballs. Oliver had the craft burger (not your average burger). You should be jealous people. jealous. This food was so good. Rich in flavors but not overpowering. Think of what Tom says on TopChef when he describes the winning dishes. He is definitely worthy to judge those people. I feel so cool to have eaten there. It was SO good. Can't wait to eat there again. What I really liked about this restaurant was that it wasn't pretentious. An average person can go there, read and understand the menu, and definitly appreciate just how good this food is prepared!!