Inside My Table #82 | Contents
ExcerptOn the coverJill DeGroff is a graphic artist and also the vice president of the Museum of the American Cocktail. Her true passion, however, is caricaturing the folks she encounters in the bars and restaurants where her work often takes her. Departing from tradition, Jill steers clear of luminaries and aims for the artists, bar keeps, musicians, chefs and other denizens of the bar world, drawing inspiration from masters like Gvignol Massaguer, Art Speigelman, Al Hirschfeld and Otto Dix. Her work appears in industry magazines, including Beverage Media, Imbibe and Theme, and can be viewed at http://www.kingcocktail.com/viewfromtherail.htm |
HOUSTON BITES BACK
Includes Letters to the Editor, Noteworthy Openings & Closings, Tasting the Town, Recommended Reading, Texas Holiday Gifts, Question Box, Recipe & more
32 WHAT DO YOU DRINK WITH FRUITCAKE?
The holiday foods are arriving. Some are heartily welcome and some … well, you know. To help enjoy the good, the bad and the ugly of holiday foods, we suggest you pair them with a glass (or two) of wine. By way of getting you started, we have selected 12 holiday nibbles and some adventurous wines to drink with them. Cheese ball and Viognier? Who knew?
By Brent Sloan
34 EATING ASIAN: OUR GUIDE TO HOUSTON’S NEW CHINATOWN
Houston’s “New Chinatown”—an amazing pan-Asian eruption of restaurants, food markets, businesses and services along Bellaire Boulevard in far Southwest Houston—is an intense culinary and cultural adventure. Luckily, for every question raised there are a hundred delicious possible answers. So polish off your chopsticks and get ready to eat!
By Nikki Metzgar
46 CORKS: NEW WORLD SYRAH
Wine pro Randall McCrea and guest taster Karin Dreger go glass to glass in this point/counterpoint column. This issue, they taste and rate Australian Shiraz and North American Syrah.
64 SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED TABLE MANNERS
You can tell a lot about a person by how they act in a restaurant. It’s a place we go to fill one of our most primal needs—food—and when we are hungry and our blood sugar is low, we can inadvertently reveal more about ourselves than we intend.
By James Sulak
11 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
11 TABLE TALK
22 FOOD LOVER’S QUIZ-INE
Feast Daze Round the World: A Winter Holiday Quiz
26 MR. ANON’S 2007 TURKEY AWARDS
48 THE GNOME RANGER
Our bar gnome visits Uny Tran at Benji’s
50 DINING WITHOUT BORDERS
A Walk and a Nosh
52 LISTINGS
Eating Up Chinatown
54 RESTAURANT REVIEWS
Bob’s Steak & Chop House
Brasserie Max & Julie
Polo’s Signature
55 ADVERTISER DIRECTORY
