Will van Overbeek/Houston Press Matt Martinez Jr., the "King of Tex-Mex," died on Friday. He was 63. Martinez and his family owned the Dallas restaurants Matt's Rancho Martinez and Matt's No Place as well as a stake in Matt's El Rancho in Austin, the restaurant his father founded. Robb Walsh, on his embrace of the term: Matt Jr. was attending a cooking class taught by Englishwoman Diana Kennedy, who spoke derisively of Americanized Mexican food."She said she only did authentic Mexican food, not Tex-Mex," Martinez fumed in the introduction to his book [Matt Martinez's Culinary Frontier]. "I was so insulted." To defy Kennedy and those who belittled his heritage, he decided to abandon any claim to "authentic Mexican" and...
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State Fairs prove that you can deep fry anything your heart desires. Video blogger Sarah McColl of Pink of Perfection visited the State Fair of Texas and reports on its stomach ache-inducing culinary delights, including deep-fried Coke. The dessert consists of deep-fried Coke-flavored batter nuggets topped with Coke syrup and whipped cream. "If you like funnel cakes, you'll like this," says Sarah. Deep-fried coke was created by Abel Gonzales Jr. You can watch a video of him making it on The Today Show. [via Homesick Texan] Related Deep-Fried Jelly Bean Time at the Texas State Fair Visit the Indiana State Fair: Fried Food and Crawling Through a Colon Involved In Videos: Foods on a Stick at the Minnesota State...
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I asked some of my food critic friends and some of the correspondents from around Serious Eats where they would recommend taking your mom on Mother's Day. Intel poured in from around the country. And I added my own picks, too. Atlanta John Kessler, food columnist and feature writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says: We're going to Watershed, which has a great, often overlooked brunch with cream biscuits, lard biscuits, toad in the hole, poached eggs with spinach and country ham, house-cured salmon, candied bacon. 406 West Ponce De Leon Avenue, Decatur GA 30030; 404-378-4900; watershedrestaurant.com A nice new choice might be Parish, a very cool-looking New Orleans cooking spot in an old bleach factory in one of the suddenly...
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When I asked all of you to pray for me diet-wise because I was headed to Dallas and New Orleans, I meant it. Here's the kind of thing I'm going to be doing for the next four days: My friend Robb Walsh, restaurant critic of the Houston Press, who perhaps knows more about barbecue and Tex-Mex food than any man alive, picked me up at the Dallas airport yesterday at 5:30 p.m. and announced we were going on a real Fort Worth food tour for the rest of the evening. By 6 p.m., we put our names on the list at a fried-chicken and chicken-fried-steak roadhouse called Babe's Chicken Dinner House in Roanoke, Texas. While we were waiting for...
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Kitty Crider of the Austin American-Statesman recently interviewed pastry chef Dunia Borga, known in Dallas for her Cuatro Leches cake—a twist on the traditional tres leches (three milks) cake—that "begins with a vanilla sponge cake, coarser than American butter cakes but strong enough to hold up to the sauce of three milks poured over it. Then it is covered with a caramelized Swiss meringue and dotted with the arequipe [dulce de leche, or caramel sauce]." Still not sold? Sarah Phillips of Baking911 sampled Borga's cake at her restaurant La Duni a few years ago and says, "It beats any tres leches cake on the planet, and I have eaten a lot of them! I was interested in the recipe because...
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Tina Danze visits the newly-reopened Trader Vic's in Dallas for the Morning News: "Sealed like a tomb for nearly 20 years after its closing in 1987, the lounge has been restored to its old Polynesian-pop glory. Mismatched lanterns and fishing floats hover over the dimly lit room; tiki heads and accessories salvaged from other closed locations abound; and the festive cocktails are back, along with vintage barware and over-the-top garnishes." Trader Vic's is so deliciously retro and camp in Dallas that even Tom Selleck, himself a legend of much the same stature, has visited in the last month! If like me you've never been to one, or you're yearning to relive an experience of old, their website lists all...
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