Back Talk Far North Dallas

Restaurant review: Twisted Root Burger Co. coming soon

Deep Ellum's Twisted Root Burger Co., which has made a name for itself among Dallas' burger eaters, is getting ready to open a second location at the southeast corner of 75 and Campbell. The opening date hasn't yet been announced by the owners.

A few of us recently hit up Twisted Root's original location and found friendly customer service (which was expected, since the restaurant's reputation precedes itself) and a larger-than-your-average-hole-in-the-wall atmosphere. The eats were definitely delectable; my Western burger with pepper jack, bacon and an onion ring was delicious even without the jalapeños (my taste buds are sissies), but luckily, there’s a section on the menu just for that, “sissy food”, a.k.a, salads. I snagged a bite of my friend’s green chili, guacamole and pepper jack burger, a mess but well worth it, and I was equally impressed by the homemade condiments and ice cream — we couldn’t leave without a chocolate milkshake. 

Besides a new location, Twisted Root also is stretching its culinary muscles with the opening of Cowboy Chow just a few doors down on Commerce. The concept is an open-range Mexican restaurant a la the method of cast iron cooking with menu items such as brisket tacos.

Texas Senator John Cornyn and John Stewart: two funny guys

Senator John Cornyn recently gave us this gem of a campaign ad. The so-called Big John ad caught the attention of Daily Show producers (see "political ads" video). Now, along with this local Kia commercial a couple weeks ago, it's the second Texas-based ad to warrant John Stewart's sidesplitting sarcasm this month. (The Cornyn ad is hilarious by itself, even sans Stewart's commentary.)

In Cornyn's defense, he told the Austin American Statesman the ad was tongue in cheek and meant to be funny. He said, quote, "“My staff convinced me it was a good idea. Maybe I need a new staff."

Noooooo! Don't fire your staff. If it is meant to be funny ... they succeeded marvelously.

Far North Dallas bank robbed yesterday

A Wachovia bank near the intersection of Belt Line Road and the Dallas North Tollway was robbed yesterday morning. The Dallas Morning News reports the suspect, who is still on the run, made off with an undetermined amount of money. The suspect is a white male in his mid-20s, about 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a groomed beard and glasses.
Anyone who has information should call the FBI at 972.559.5000 or the Dallas police robbery unit at 214.671.3584.

DART and jewelry: more questions than answers

Given DART's recent misadventures in terms of keeping track of money and budgeting, I suppose it's not a big shock that the agency is now in hot water with a jewelry vendor who claims he's being stiffed by DART employees participating in a payroll-deduction plan to pay for the jewelry. On the face of it, the plan makes a limited amount of sense: A vendor sells jewelry to employees, who have their purchases deducted over time from their payroll and given to an employee group that takes a cut of every purchase to create a fund for employee holiday parties and the like. My question: Why is DART helping employees buy jewelry anyway? As an employer, I understand why a business would want to help its employees, but DART isn't just any employer: It's a publicly funded, perennial money-loser steeped in political controversy, so why would its leaders become involved in something like this, which is just about guaranteed to blow up at some point or another?

According to the DMN story, more than $2 million in jewelry has been purchased from the vendor, and everything was fine until the employee group handling the money apparently spent too much on parties and didn't have enough to pay the vendor what he was owed. Naturally, he didn't take kindly to being stiffed, and now DART officials are having to wade into the mess and straighten it out, wasting time and resources that should be used to straighten out DART's primary issues.

Bottom line: Why are employees of public entities continually involved in dopey stuff like this? Don't they understand that by being stewards of public money, the media scrutiny and public outcry is going to be deafening and there's not going to be a good answer for any of the questions? If the DART people haven't figured this out by now, maybe we don't have the right people in charge there.

And to get back around to another pet peeve: Just wait until the city owns a $500 million convention center hotel — I can already imagine the problems we're going to be reading about then, with third-party management company employees using city-owned resources to give free rooms to each other, steal food from the kitchen, host unpaid party rooms, and on and on, with the city employee in charge of all of this too overwhelmed to keep tabs on everything. Some things are just not meant to be handled by public entities, and jewelry purchases and operating hotels are among them.

Restaurant review: Stein's Bakery

I have to be honest — I try to stay as far away from this Preston Valley Shopping Center tenant as possible. But that's only because every time I walk in, I'm afraid I'm going to devour everything inside the bakery's glass cases.

I first heard about Stein's from a friend who is a much better and much more practiced hostess than I, and Stein's is her go-to bakery for her son's birthday parties and other special occasions. I decided to follow her advice and ordered a yellow cake with cream cheese icing for my sister's baby shower.

They did a darling job using icing to create the onesie I sketched for them (and my art portfolio consists solely of stick people). But we barely had time to enjoy the design because people could not stop stuffing this goodness into their mouths. The cake was moist, the icing was sweet but not too gooey and, needless to say, it was a huge hit at the party.

U.S. has too many stores

I ran across this piece about Wal-Mart cutting expansion plans in 2009 because the world's largest retailer has too many stores "amid a weakening U.S economic environment." And if Wal-Mart has too many stores, what about the rest of the retailing world? And what does that mean for us, given that every developer in the phone book wants to build more retail in our part of Dallas over the next couple of years?

Neighborhood deals: Daily $1 sushi at Ajisen

Sure, most Japanese restaurants offer $1 sushi one or two nights out of the week. Like Asian Mint, which offers the deal after 5 p.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays.
But I have found a spot that offers $1 sushi all day, every day. So consider this your neighborhood dinner deal of the week:
Ajisen off Greenville and Central Expressway serves daily $1 sushi (expect Mondays, they're closed). Now, I know what you're thinking--this stuff must be horrible quality. Well, no. It's really not bad. Sure, you get what you pay for, so if you're expecting top-notch cuts of fish and fancy rolls, this isn't your spot.
But if you want decent sushi and a bargain, you can't go wrong here. The $1 menu includes typical selections you'd expect to find at any sushi bar, like spicy tuna and salmon.
On Wednesday nights you can also get the $10 bento box dinner special and $1 Kirin (that's a Japanese beer). And on Thursday nights you can get $1.50 hot sake with your $1 sushi.

Neighborhood deals: Free classes at Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma

I’ve never attended any of the free culinary demonstrations at Williams-Sonoma or decorating classes at Pottery Barn, but I’ve always wanted to. I guess I’m hesitant because I feel like it will be more of a sales pitch for their products than beneficial instruction.

The culinary demonstrations sound interesting, though — and yummy. Coming up this week are perfect piña coladas and simple summer desserts. The store is also offering technique classes, which I couldn’t find online, but an e-mail I received says that the classes coming up are “Extreme Ice Cream” on Sunday, June 29, and “Pizza” on Sunday, July 13. In Pottery Barn, this week’s decorating class topic is outdoor entertaining, and next week’s is mixing patterns and colors.

You can attend any of these classes at either the Knox-Henderson, NorthPark Center or Galleria locations — schedules are the same at each store. You simply need to RSVP because class sizes are limited.

The Burger King gold card: Free burgers for life

The next time you're in a neighborhood Burger King, watch carefully as your fellow burger patrons pay up to see if any are carrying the Burger King Gold Card, which entitles the bearer to gorge on BK favorites for life without ever paying the bill. There are 12 BK Gold Cards in the world right now, most in the hands of some of celebrities: Jay Leno, Jennifer Hudson, George Lucas, Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Laurie ("House"), to name the only ones that I know about after reading a story about the card in Advertising Age magazine. Given the fast-food nation movement, I can't say I'm dying to get one of the Gold Cards, but I imagine there's a certain cache in never having to buy another burger.

Free speech, spying on garbage collectors, and the Dallas City Council

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mayor Park Cities is a genius. Who am I to argue with Dallas' Only Daily Newspaper?

But I want to quote something that I wrote last August in the magazine, after Leppert took office:

Finally, being mayor is a lot different than running a business. You actually have to pay attention to the stockholders. Which would be us, the voters. We stockholders can be persistent, even those of us who don’t have columns and blogs. I was no fan of your predecessor, but she did one thing very well. She almost always sat patiently while every person who signed up to speak at the end of each council meeting made their comments. She understood that everyone deserved to be heard. I hope you realize this, that it’s not the sort of thing you’d try to fob off on a flunky. Which is what too many CEOs in the private sector would do. I wonder: Did you ever talk to any ordinary stockholder during your days in the construction business?