EATS

North Texas may be landlocked, but that doesn't mean we don't love seafood. Do you have a go-to spot for fried catfish and shrimp, or oysters, or an indulgent dinner of in-season salmon?

Post a comment on your thoughts about the best seafood restaurant in the area below, or email us at dining@dallasnews.com. We'll publish some of these comments in a print version that will appear in a future issue of Guide.

It took a hefty amount of driving and chowing for us to select our critics' picks: Seafood restaurants are more prolific here than one might expect. And since seafood spots are generally divided into three price and style tiers - seafood shacks/oyster bars, mid-level eateries and fine dining ventures - we took care to sample and ultimately include a broad mix. We're sure you'll have plenty to say about those we did and didn't include.

Here are our faves:

Guide staff writer Nancy Moore called from Amuse to let Eatsians know that Amuse will only be Amuse through August 23. The next day, the restaurant closes for a makeover. When it re-opens on September 3, it will be Sala, which will serve Tex-Mex. The owners -- including chef Doug Brown -- will stay the same.

If you're a regular at Jimmy's Food Store, you already know that brothers Mike and Paul DiCarlo have closed out their regular groceries, which the neighborhood depended on at one time, and gone all-Italian.

I went by yesterday, and Paul showed me where they've made room for more wine and expanded the olive oils and sauces, among other things, in response to demand. Then he sent me home with a bottle of the best-selling jarred pasta sauce. Oh my gawd.

Wine columnist Rebecca Murphy gives this report on Bottle Shock:

I went to see Bottle Shock last night at Angelika.

It's about the 1976 blind tasting of California and French wines conducted by Steven Spurrier (played by Alan Rickman, left), a Brit who was running a Paris wine shop and school called Academie du Vin. The judges were all French, and much to their chagrin, they picked Napa Valley wines over the French: the white Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 1973 and the red Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon 1973.

My movie mate and I had a tasting to see which wine goes best with buttered popcorn. We had an Italian pinot grigio, a California chardonnay and a French Champagne, all available at Angelika.

The chardonnay on its own was quite nice, but the butter flavor in the popcorn diminished the wine's fruit. The Champagne was good both with and without the popcorn. The pinot grigio was very lightly flavored, even a bit insipid on its own, but crisp and lively, great for a Texas summer evening and its crispness cut through the buttery fat.

Rebecca Murphy

If I say "American artisanal cheese," I'll bet your brain doesn't light up with "Wisconsin." 'Bet you didn't know that 90 percent of the state's milk goes into cheese-making, and it's the only state that requires a license to make cheese.

Those are some of the tidbits we learned at Abacus' Wisconsin Cheese and Wine Dinner Wednesday. Wisconsin cheese is one of Kent Rathbun's pet projects, and he brought in master cheesemaker Sid Cook with his Carr Valley Cheese Co. cheeses and others for the occasion.

Read on for some dinner highlights. And yesterday, I found one of the cheeses locally.