Courtney E Smith

Bring a pair of people who are serious about food to the State Fair of Texas and what you’re going to get are evaluations that are a lot deeper than the average person’s take on deep-fried bites.

El Carlos Elegante is adding a half-dozen dishes to its menu that highlight Mexican street food and the foods developed to feed the working class, illustrating how these dishes can reach fine dining heights. It’s an approach not unlike French and Italian cuisine, with roots in dishes developed to feed the poor.

When Misti Norris decided to move her restaurant, Petra and the Beast, from its original location in a renovated gas station in East Dallas to the home of a former barbecue spot in Lakewood, she not only increased the size of her dining room significantly. She also gained a much bigger kitchen and two large smokers that were left behind.

Graham Elliot’s distinctive white glasses frames, a long-running signature look for the MasterChef host, are not the first thing that catches my eye when I walk into Le Margot, his new restaurant in Fort Worth, although they are eye-catching. That honor goes to a gorgeous wall along the dining room covered in what appears to be horse hair in ever-deepening shades of pink and maroon.

RRestaurant Beatrice was closed on an afternoon late in February, but the place was far from quiet. The staff at the 2023 James Beard Award nominated restaurant was in an education session with Dr. Vicki Pruente, the director of research for Palacios Marine Agricultural Research. Her organization is all about restoring oyster reefs through new development and restoration. \

There are 26 bottles of wine in one keg, according to Sixty Vines CEO Jeff Carcara. And, true to its name, the wine bar always has 60 kegs of wine on tap. Kegging wine is nothing new. Carcara recalls seeing it for the first time in South Florida back in 1999.

TheThe best chicken-fried steak in Texas can be found at Jerry’s Restaurant on Highway 190, just off Lake Livingston. Sure, I’m biased — it’s the chicken-fried steak I’ve been eating for my whole life at my family’s restaurant, which is named after my late grandfather. But I’ve had a lot of chicken-fried steak, and this version at Jerry’s, served under heaps of cream gravy, with a side of mashed potatoes and a salad, is the one I measure all other chicken-fried steaks against. Jerry’s version...

On the trail of a folk song ghost.

Few stages in Texas have seen as much as the Longhorn Ballroom’s.

"If you start any dish with the proper technique and proper treatment of ingredients, the flavors will burst through. With that same philosophy at Restaurant Beatrice, we’re going even further back. We’re collectively starting this entire restaurant with a new kind of consciousness."

Across more than 50 years, the music of artists including Dolly Parton, Alanis Morissette, and Megan Thee Stallion has been used to communicate the anger and grief around the fight for reproductive rights.

Everyone has a song that has been ruined by an ex. Each week, music journalists Courtney and Melissa sit down with a guest to discuss the one song they can never hear quite the same way again thanks to a past relationship.

A lesser-known fact about this literal rock star is that she’s been fostering dogs for years and lives with two rescues, Buster and Lavender.

It’s one paw in front of the other for some of these dogs, who are adjusting to what it means to finally be safe.

While TV shows aren’t using music as prolifically as they once did or introducing us to as much new music (there are a lot of great shows leaning heavily on catalog songs and fewer shows like the recently completed tastemaker Insecure), it’s still a fantastic music discovery tool.