EATS

Tina Danze reports:
Monday night at York Street, chef Sharon Hage crafted an elegant five-course meal to match five rare Asian teas. No one missed the wine -- not even sommelier James Tidwell of the Four Seasons' Café on the Green (it was his night off, but he scribbled notes as if at a wine tasting).

The dinner was organized by members of The T-Bar (a local tea club) and The Cultured Cup, the tea emporium in The Shops at Preston Center.

It takes a finely tuned palate to identify multiple flavors in a tea and mirror them in an intriguing dish with clean flavors. But Ms. Hage -- a five-year veteran of such pairings -- was up to the challenge. Course after course, she delivered remarkable flavor and texture combinations that paired seamlessly with the complex teas.

...and that's very sad for all the employees who reportedly arrived for work yesterday morning, only to find the door locked. The Lakewood and Preston Center locations of the chain also closed recently.

But there's some encouraging East Dallas eatery news over on PegasusNews.com. T.G. says that the vacated Carrabba's in Lakewood Shopping Center will soon become the new home of Ali Baba, which is relocating from Lower Greenville.

A manager from Ali Baba's Richardson branch is quoted: "We're hoping to have the Lakewood location open by April -- Greenville Avenue isn't what it used to be."

Agree? Disagree?

Yes, dear voters, the long-awaited Texas primary is finally here.

For weeks now, we've seen presidential candidates and their surrogates, fanning out everywhere across the state. And we've noticed that, somehow, they all end up eventually at restaurants...most often Tex-Mex restaurants.

Hillary Clinton, for example, was at Herrera's in Dallas today. But the place that has drawn every pol within our borders seems to be Mi Tierra in San Antonio.

John McCain was just there this morning, and recently Mike Huckabee also made a stop. What's more, while he was at Mi Tierra, Huck bumped into that other guy from Hope, Ark. -- Bill Clinton. Who apparently had made it a point, while in S.A., to stop by the Menger Hotel for some mango ice cream.

There are all kinds of partisan reasons to campaign frequently in Texas. But the food has got to be one of the best nonpartisan reasons to keep coming back as often as possible.

Especially when the alternative would be slogging through the snows of Ohio, eating pierogi.

Nestled beneath American Airlines Center's massive video screen, and across the plaza from mega-watt eateries N9NE and Nove, two upstart tastemakers are bringing their own electricity to Victory Park.

Late last month, they flipped the switch on a boutique Mexican cafe and tequileria (it gets easier to pronounce after a margarita) dubbed La Condesa Comida y Tequila.

Consider it the little eatery that could.

Photo: La Condesa founders Jesse Herman (left) and Donald Chick (right) at Victory Plaza shot by Carter Rose.

Petroleum products? Check.
Ingredient derived from rocks? Check.
Click here to read more about author Steve Ettlinger's quest to understand the ingredients in some popular processed foods.