Denton’s African Queen By Rob Curran I knew I was going to like Hera’s Kitchen as soon as I met the queen of this particular Olympus, chef and co-owner Mikaela Lawrence, a woman who brims with bonhomie. While I was in line, Mikaela greeted a return customer by name, and fussed over
Royal Yum: the Thai King of Denton Flava Hi valued reader! It's been over a year since we started this endeavor and until recently we've published a piece every week. We're down-shifting to a more occasional pace, but we welcome all contributions from local writers (and local funders!) Thank you for all
Requiem for a Nonna, the final chapter of the Nonna Diaries By Rob Curran Nonna's memorial weekend was bittersweet, but also sour, salty, and even a little umami. The food, predictably, was excellent. The first thing the family ate was fresh fish from the restaurant on the dock near Nonna's apartment in Miami, Monty's. It&
Union Bear: Denton's Guilty Bougie Pleasure By Rob Curran Don’t judge me for loving Union Bear. Because you were there, too, on Friday night. I saw you. Everyone who ever lived in the Denton city limits was at Union Bear last Friday night, judging by the parking lot, and we were all loving every bougie,
Pam, Queen of the Food Desert By Shaun Treat The smell of roasting hatch chilis on the back patio of Dan’s Silverleaf during a below-90’ summer afternoon – frosted pint glass in hand and fans a’blowin’ while Waylon Jennings croons on speakers inside – just may be as close to Heaven as some of us are
Spanish Tortilla, the Brock & Kate Show at the Greatest Apartment on Earth By Rob Curran I learned how to make Spanish tortilla at a dinner party in one of the world’s greatest apartments in Barcelona. It was a sprawling, three-bedroom apartment, with a tiny balcony overlooking the Gran de Gracia, the main street in the hippest hood in Europe’s hippest
Lasagna from Scratch, the Last Trigonometic Mystery Letters to a Young Chef: Rome(-Style Lasagna) Was not Built in a Day By Rob Curran I’m not sure why I make lasagna from scratch. My scratch lasagna doesn’t taste any better than your average grocery-store job, those sheaves of meaty cheese that come prepackaged in their
Crab With a 'K' Cakes By Shea Scott Inflation, shrinkflation, mortgage rates going up, so many apartments going up, does Capitalism with a 'C' got you down? Take a look at a classic engineered ingredient from the 1970's, it's Krab! Or, if you want to use a more literal
Lemonade Tour de France By Rob Curran "The connoisseur doesn’t drink wine but tastes its secrets", Salvador Dali supposedly said. What Dali and other wine thinkers such as Jay McInerney are to the grape, Lydia “Cat” Curran is to the lemon. Ms Curran knows more of the lemon’s secrets than
Mission Bouillabaisse By Rob Curran Recipe for a Denton Food Writer, or 6/7 of a Week in Provence Ingredients * One middle-aged writer, at something of a loss for intrepid assignments * Three close relatives * One credit card (preferably with a large dollar limit, and a balance-transfer safety hatch.) * One week in a
Getting Your Indian Fix in Denton By Rob Curran Shaun Ryder, the lead singer of the Happy Mondays, famously left England for Barbados to kick heroin because the Caribbean nation was devoid of the substance. Ryder was unable to find heroin in Barbados, but very able to find crack cocaine. Indian food in Denton was as
The Battle of Midway (Denton Style) By Shea Scott In April, the City of Denton announced its participation in the new Brew City, Texas program, an initiative of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild to support and elevate the craft brewing industry in Texas. Rewind to the mid-2000s when the craft brew craze started taking off with
Like Chipotle but for North Texan Enchilada Lovers By Rob Curran Mary Perez’s first act was to raise three sons single handedly in Fort Worth while working full-time in the nonprofit world. Her second act was to open her own restaurant. For her third act, she’s building the Chipotle of enchiladas. She’s off to a
Italian Beef: It's What's for Dinner in Denton. By Rob Curran What's beef? Tony of Picone's lasagna sandwich, with that blood-red ragu sauce of his, topped with a dollop of lemon ricotta. That's beef. Bazinga! A closeup of Di Abruzzo's parsley-flecked meatball. That's also beef. Beef is part
Expert Certified Best Deal in Town By Shea Scott Cheapskate, miser, skinflint, tightwad, penny-pincher, pinchpenny, and scrimper are some great contenders for words to go on my family crest, all rendered superfluous by the last name of Scott. If you're not familiar with the stereotype of the Scots as thrifty beyond what would be
El Taco H: Austin (and Mexico City) Quality on a Denton Budget By Rob Curran Denton has some great Mexican restaurants; Denton has some great bars (Editor’s note: hyperlink to bar column to be added later, when bar correspondent sobers up). In this time of relentless inflation, when every time you come back from Kroger it feels like you’ve just
Our Web Developer Went to a Benefit for Underprivileged Children and All We Got Was This Stupid Article By Shea Scott Hopefully the tone of this article in no way diminishes the incredible work of the organizers, volunteers, and vendors of The Taste of North Texas. Read more about The Denton Noon Kiwanis Club and please consider making a donation to support their Children's Clinic. Although
Lanky: Champion of the (Denton Food) World Dallas, you can keep your league-topping Stars and Mavericks teams; Arlington, you can choke on all your World Series baseball champion rings; Denton doesn’t need your sportsball baubles, cos we’ve got Lanky, undisputed champion of the gloriously weird Secret Chef reality-television competition on Hulu. Think of Secret Chef
Our Inaugural Class (everyone passed!) By Rob Curran Hottestplate.com’s inaugural cooking class has not dragged the youthful publication into any serious Salmonella lawsuits, as of press time. A GoFundme site set up for a defense fund related to the March 20 Spanish tapas evening at Flour Power cooking school on East Hickory, Denton
Triptych – A Modern (Largely) Coffee Romance By Rob Curran Betz Baker and Lois Robertson knew exactly how long the most momentous meeting of their business lives would last – 20 minutes…the time it took Lois to come up on an edible. Betz was working at Kimzey’s coffee shop in Argyle when they met Lois, who
Ten:One - The Godhead is in the Cheese By Rob Curran There’s a cosmology developed in medieval times by an Italian miller named Menocchio which holds that human life burst forth from the earth itself in the same way that worms can spring from a fermenting cheese. I first met Justin Bonard 14 years ago. We were
Aglio Pizzeria Founders and Lead Pizzaiole: Dave & Stacy Dockins By Lasamee Kettavong It’s impossible to deny the curiosity evoked when you see the Dockins’ van that once served as their tiny home as they traveled along the west coast and worked remotely. It’s sleek and shiny and has surfboards
Don't Confuse the Risotto By Kenny Severson I’m excited. I met someone. Rosalyn. We knew each other from my last job at the university. She’s a poetry teacher. We flirted at the end-of-year potluck and over the summer when she stopped by the office with her dog, Odie. Our run-ins broke up
Viet Bites and the Future of North Texas Cuisine By Rob Curran James Trinh is a salt-of-the-earth type of man, and I can almost hear him laughing at being dubbed a North Texas food hero. Bear with me. Trinh comes from a long line of Vietnamese heroes, and anyone who, like me, has lined out on an indoor soccer
