With fall in full swing, lots of foodie events are taking place across the Metroplex. Among the biggies: The North Texas Beer Week launched Halloween and runs through Nov. 9 with restaurants and breweries across the area. One of the central events? HopChef is a national food and wine pariting competition, but it hasn’t made its way to Dallas … until now. Local chefs — including Ashley Yancey (The Libertine Bar), Rodman Shields (The Common Table), David McMillan (Meddlesome Moth), Oliver Sitrin (The Blind Butcher), Rick Stewart (FM Smokehouse) and Stan Rodrigues (Whiskey Cake), pictured — will gather at Trinity Groves on the evening of Nov. 3 to create dishes paired with Ommegang beers, and one will be selected, but the real winner is you for getting to taste them all.
The Greenville Bar & Grill is back! A fire several years ago destroyed most of the original space along Lower Greenville Avenue where the neighborhood bar stood for decades, but when it was rebuilt, only Terilli’s returned in the old space. After several false starts with other concepts, new owner Shawn Foley, an SMU grad, has restored the pub rumored to have been given one of Dallas’ first liquor licenses. Executive chef Richard Sipovic has designed a menu of gastropub favorites, including fried chicken skins (and, if you want more, fried chicken), a succulent rabbit pot pie, deviled eggs and a simple sesame-seed-bunned hamburger to rival Snuffer’s.
Now that Dallas Voice has moved into the Design District, we’re glad that the Renaissance Hotel has completed its renovation, because it makes it easier to get to Asador, the restaurant inside the hotel that specializes in farm-to-fire cuisine. Chef Brad Phillips cultivates relationships with local purveyors (among them legendary cheesemonger Paula Lambert) to highlight their dishes on his newly-launched seasonal menu, including a charcuterie plate of applewood-and-mesquite-smoked duck and a wild-caught tilapia with exquisitely prepared farro that serves as a kind of Cajun fried rice. Hopefully he’ll serve that on its own as well! It would be a meal in itself.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 31, 2014.