EATS

It's a rainy Friday morning, and I wish I were at Smoke eating breakfast instead of sitting at my desk.

But since I'm not, I thought I'd just run through a few more things I loved and didn't love about the new place at the Belmont Hotel, where Tim Byres is chef.

LOVED: The bread and butter pickles. Especially the cucumber ones. I think they're the best I've ever tasted. I could eat them all day long, even this early in the morning.

DIDN'T LOVE: The back room on a Friday night. There's a tournament-quality (according to one of the waiters) pool table back there, but the people playing pool were screaming and laughing so loud we had to shout across the table to hear each other.

LOVED: The configuration of the bar. It's kind of pointed, and arranged so there's plenty of space to sit or stand and have a drink if there's a long wait. The staff actually seems to care about people who are waiting for a table.

On Thanksgiving day, when you've had about as much turkey, stuffing and family chit chat as you can take, there's an outlet. Nearly all TGI Friday's will open up late in the afternoon on turkey day, for the first time in more than 10 years. Read more about it here.

That stands for Spiceman's Absolutely Unusual Culinary Extravaganza. And it takes place Saturday at FM 1410.

Tom "Spiceman" Spicer plans to have cooking classes and demos all day starting at 10:30 a.m. This will include wild mushroom paella cooked by the Spiceman over a bonfire. Someone will also be making duck and andouille gumbo.

Spiceman says, "Come dine, bring yo' wine and ...loose (sic) yo mind at Spiceman's Gumbo 'n da Garden."

For the uninitiated, Spicer is the city's most unusual and eclectic produce broker. He's big on local (he's harvesting greens), brings in gorgeous stuff from Louisiana (Satsumas, Meyer lemons) and helps chefs find hard-to-get produce from elsewhere (wild and cultivated 'shrooms).

FM 1410 is his storefront, where does business (anyone can buy any amount), plays his kalimbass (kalimba + bass) and farms his urban garden out back. The store is at 1410 Fitzhugh, in the block toward Central from Jimmy's Food Store at Bryan and Fitzhugh.

Australian winemaker Chris Ringland is in town, selling new releases and pouring samples. It's one of those dizzying, "if-it's-6 p.m.-we-must-be-at-Central-Market" kinds of promotional tours.

Ringland makes wine in a partnership arrangement with Dan Phillips of Grateful Palate, an importer of big-hair Australian wines so fat and juicy that Phillips handed out toothbrushes one year as a promo item.

Sigel's has enjoyed something akin to "favored nation status" with Grateful Palate, although the wines are not sold exclusively with the retailer. Ringland will be at the Old Town store (5757 Greenville) from 5 to 7 this evening, not only with some spiffy new releases (available as pre-orders, coming in December), but a handful of his most exclusive, small-production wines.

These include R Wines Anamorphosis Shiraz 2005, Evil Incarnate Shiraz 2004 and The Wine Shiraz 2004. All score in the high 90s with wine reviewers. How rare will they be in Texas? The state gets 52 bottles of the Anamorphosis, 45 three-paks of the Evil and 22 six-packs of The Wine.

Another of Ringland's finest wines, Longitude won't be open for sampling, but will be available for pre-order. (It arrives in January.) 500 bottles allocated to Texas; SRP is $1,000. The Wine Advocate gave this wine 100 points.

Do the folks at Sigel's a favor and RSVP for the free tasting event at 214-739-4012.

For this week's review, restaurant critic Leslie Brenner visited Smoke, the new restaurant at Dallas' Belmont Hotel. Do let us know what you think!

Smoke
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Photo of Smoke chef Tim Byres by Matt Nager/Special to DMN

It's time for an open house. Come on by and sample holiday specialty items and regular menu fare at Eat the World in its new location from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday. I wrote about the cafe/prepared foods store in a previous post.

If you're having overnight company on Thanksgiving, for example (the better to get a head start on Black Friday shopping), ETW's savory breakfast bread pudding sounds like a hearty day-starter. Owner Toby O'Brien also carries several Cajun-leaning dishes, such as boudin-stuffed chicken. This is the op to taste before you buy.

Eat the World is in the strip center at Royal and Abrams (northeast corner) behind the Starbucks. The last time I was there, O'Brien hadn't gotten his sign up. 'Hope it's there now.

Chalk it up to primal instincts, but Dallas dining has become a meat-and-greet this fall. From two glitzy new steakhouses and one hipster smokehouse, to an indie downtown barbecue joint, there's a beast for every bent.

Photos by Brandon Thibodeaux: (Top) Dr. Bell's BBQ: No appointment required and (bottom) buttery cracked-pepper prime strip from Bailey's Prime Plus.

One of the Daily Beast's top stories today is a photo gallery about the hottest restaurants around the country, and Samar by Stephan Pyles is one of them.

Go, Big D!

Photo of the bar at Samar by Kyle R. Lee/DMN

I know, I know...it isn't even Thanksgiving yet. But reader Liz Perez, who will celebrate her 40th birthday on Christmas, has her entire family coming and is looking for somewhere wonderful to take them for Christmas dinner.

The DMN's Bindu Varghese will be putting together a roundup of restaurants serving Christmas dinner -- look for a blog post with a link to it on or around Dec. 11. But in the meantime, are there restaurants or hotels where you've been wowed by the Christmas dinner? Do tell!

Like many chefs, Kent Rathbun (Abacus, Jasper's, Blue Plate) is offering Thanksgiving dinner fixin's to go, starting with hickory-roasted turkey with green chile-red-eye gravy. He's also making a leg of lamb, chunky garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with candied pecans, scallion sweet-corn pudding - you get the idea. You order at www.kentrathbun.com and pay through Paypal (no account needed).

But here's Rathbun's cool twist: You can access most of the recipes on the same Web site under the "recipe" pull-down. The sides and leg of lamb are the same; only the smoke-roasted turkey is missing. Click on the holiday recipe archive to unearth the green-chile-red-eye gravy. The cost for Rathbun's recipes? Zip. Zero. Nada. Enjoy.

There's a spiffy new Middle-Eastern pastry and coffee shop in Richardson: Bab el Harah. The shop, on Greenville just below Main, is co-owned by two gentlemen from Egypt; their baker arrived recently from Iraq.

I tasted three kinds of baklava, including the pistachio square you pictured on the left and the nests in the middle; they were fine, though not particularly distinguished. But the one on the right, which was just out of the oven, was spectacular -- the pastry so delicate and fine, filled with pistachios and drizzled with honey. I loved the coconut macaroon (the round white cookie on top) too. I think freshness is key when it comes to these pastries (like most). When they sit around even a couple days, they suffer, but right out of the oven, they can be amazing.

One of the owners said they'll be adding panini and drinks in a couple of weeks. For now, it's cash or check only; soon they'll also take credit cards.

Bab El Harah, 201 S. Greenville Ave., Richardson; 972-664-1119.

Do you plan to cook for Thanksgiving, or eat out? If you do plan to go out, but haven't yet decided where to go, the Thanksgiving dining listings that just went up on Guide Live can help you find the turkey day dining room of your dreams.

Check it!

Photo by Ann Stratton/Special to DMN

As promised, here's my report about the crispy braised chicken thighs dish I made this weekend from Thomas Keller's new cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home.

A few things attracted me to the dish. First, chicken thighs. They're inexpensive, easy to deal with and so much more flavorful than chicken breasts. I like braised chicken, but I'm often bothered by the slimy skin, so "crispy" sounded good. I was also intrigued by the flavor combination of fennel and green olives, especially Cerignola olives. (I have trouble distinguishing them from Castelventranos, which I buy at Central Market all the time and serve as hors d'oeuvres; I love both.)

The flavors dish turned out to be delicious and beautiful -- the flavors worked wonderfully together. However, there are some problems in the recipe, and I'll make some tweaks next time I do it.

I'm always looking for great dim sum, and lately I found some pretty good dumplings at Hong Kong Royal in Carrollton. (Thank you, Shane Stephens, for the tip many months ago...)

I particularly liked these ruffled pork dumplings (on the left) and the round ones (below), a fragile wrapper filled with shrimp and spinach. Turnip cakes and sticky rice were also very good.

Has anyone been, either for dim sum or dinner? What did you think?

And beyond that, what's your favorite dim sum spot? I have a feeling there are some amazing places out there I haven't discovered yet. (Addresses or at least approximate locations and cities are appreciated -- I love checking out the places you recommend.)

Hong Kong Royal Restaurant, 3030 Josey Lane, Carrollton; 972-492-9999

Farmer Jack Roach had beautiful East Texas field tomatoes at his table in Dallas Farmers Market's Shed No. 1 that he grew in Lindale. When I told him J.T. Lemley's crop had been washed out by the rain and never ripened for lack of sun, he said with a crinkly smile, "Well, that's because J.T. only has 30 years' experience farming, and I've got 48."

He plans to be back next week with his tomatoes, also green tomatoes and squash. Today, there were a specialty greens grower and an egg dealer, JuHa Ranch and Wackym's cookies, all in Shed No. 1. In Shed No. 2, there were the usual suspects (Texas Meats, Mawker Coffee, Kurry King) plus Rosey Ridge Bakery, BeeLiscious Spice blends (wow), Ain't No Mo Buttercakes, including caramel and pumpkin flavors, and Gulf shrimp and seafood. Slowly, slowly, Shed 2 is coming around.

It's always an event when Thomas Keller, chef-owner of Per Se in New York and French Laundry and Ad Hoc in the Napa Valley (among others), publishes a new cookbook. And Keller fans who loved flipping through the pages of the French Laundry or Bouchon cookbooks but found them too daunting to actually cook from will likely love this new one: "Ad Hoc At Home." Ad Hoc is Keller's family-style restaurant in Yountville, so these recipes are by nature more approachable than the recipes from his previous books.

I have my eye on meatballs with pappardelle (I love meatballs, and finally, they're in season!). The book includes the recipe for his renowned fried chicken, which he brines for 12 hours before dredging and frying. (The review copy we received came with some kind of kit -- I think it's brining mix and coating mix.) And hey -- there's a recipe for salt-crusted fish! (Keller combines the salt with egg whites -- four cups of kosher salt to eight egg whites, and pats that onto the fish.)

Wonderfully useful cooking tips are scattered throughout, and they're so valuable that if you went through them all it would serve as a mini cooking course with one of the country's best chefs. Here's a sample:

"The best way to sear a piece of fish or meat is over high heat. After you put the fish or meat into the pan, don't try to move it--let it cook until the bottom browns and releases on its own. When it is ready to turn over, turn it and, if possible, put it in a different part of the pan. The surface there will be hotter and give the best sear to the second side."

I never thought of that!

I just bought the ingredients for crispy braised chicken thighs with olives, lemon and fennel, which I'm going to make this weekend. I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm thinking the book, which is gorgeous to boot, would make a super holiday gift. Cover price is $50, but Amazon is selling it for $29.25.

"Ad Hoc at Home: Family-Style Recipes," by Thomas Keller; Artisan Books

Well, I have a few thoughts about Arcodoro and Pomodoro, beginning with what brought me there in the first place: the dishes with bottarga on the menu. I really do love co-owner Efisio Farris' cookbook, "Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey," and when I cooked a few recipes from it when it was published two years ago, I was surprised at the large amounts of bottarga called for in many recipes. Whole bottarga is difficult to find, and I had found a good source for it in L.A. Grated bottarga, which I easily found, is less expensive and also much less pungent and distinctive. It is grated bottarga, which Farris calls "Sardinian caviar," that Arcodoro infuses in the house-made spaghetti, he told me when I called to fact-check the review. He said the restaurant also offers, off the menu, a simple dish of dried spaghetti tossed with grated bottarga -- that's a dish, he said, you find all over Sardinina. (It was the first thing I ate in Sicily, where it's also a popular dish.) Arcodoro uses whole bottarga to slice or shave in other dishes, like the branzino carpaccio.

When I mentioned to Farris that the carpaccio had only a few flecks of bottarga on it, and therefore I wondered why it was priced so high, and that I couldn't taste any bottarga in the house-made spaghetti, so I wondered whether it in fact had any, he told me that the chef uses a very light hand with the bottarga because they're afraid people won't like it.

This is totally unscientific, but these might be taken as signs that the economy is bouncing back in these parts:

Last year, at Stephan Pyles' 9th annual Celebrity Chef Dinner (where he raises funds for the culinary scholarship that bears his name), the restaurant was half-full. This year, last Sunday's 10th annual dinner sold out and had a waiting list. It was a simpler dinner, five courses with passed appetizers, and a lot of the star chefs were local, including Pyles himself, Vijay Sadhu (Samar), Tracy Miller (Local), Matt McAllister (SP) and Zach Townsend (Pure Chocolate Desserts by Zach).

Meanwhile, Josephine's Italian Bistro owner Chris Gangi told me recently that last year at this time, his business was down 20 percent. One of the ways he coaxed people back to the restaurant was by lowering his wine prices. (He does have some sweet deals.) He says that the restaurant is filling up again, even though people are not spending as much per person.

I've heard that echoed from various restaurateurs, who say business is picking up, although people are spending less. And at the highest echelons, they might be springing for a $175 bottle of wine instead of $250. Restaurants have also been offering lots of specials to lure people back.

How does this square with what you're doing? Not so much the $175 bottle of wine, but dining out in general. Have you hunkered down and been more reluctant to eat out? Is that starting to ease? Is there someone or something that keeps you coming back to a restaurant? Did one of the specials entice you to try a new place? Or have you just floated above the fray, oblivious to the recession? Do tell.

For this week's review, I visited Arcodoro and Pomodoro, which recently moved to tony new digs at the Crescent Court. Mark Vamos takes us up to old downtown Plano for a look at the pizzeria Urban Crust. Do let us know what you think!

Arcodoro and Pomodoro
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Urban Crust
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Photo of Arcodoro and Pomodoro's grilled octopus antipasto by Ben Torres/Special to DMN

An Eats commenter, Planostarsfan, posed an interesting question in response to The Back Story: Stephan Pyles.

"I find it curious," he writes, "that restaurants like Wolfgang's and Pyle's received 4 stars (appropriate in my opinion) and a restaurant in Plano JS Chen's also received 4? While I'm a regular at Chen's and do enjoy it, I don't think it compares to the quality of the aforementioned restaurants. Moreover, the ambience at Chen's in my opinion has no comparison to the other two. That's not a criticism of Chens just my observation. Surely, this must have an impact when you think hard on what star rating you intend to give? If so, it almost seems to me that it could be construed that Chen's is an overall better restaurant than the other two. But I would have a hard time getting anyone who has eaten at all three to agree with that. Plainly stated the visual experience at Chen's is no where near the quality of Three-Sixty and Pyles and to me that impacts the review."

Thank you, Planostarsfan, for the provocative question.