Tillman's Roadhouse: Till Death Do Us Part

Thank goodness for Restaurant Week, the one time of the year that we otherwise frugal foodies can enjoy more pricey restaurants. Trying to keep along with our mission, we chose a place that was not one of the obvious go-to restaurant week picks. We chose Tillman’s Roadhouse located in Oak Cliff in the Bishop Arts District. There is also a location in Fort Worth. Both Sara and I have recently become great fans of the area that was unbeknownst to us a few months ago. It is a truly unique part of Dallas and has a great amount of character, as well as a plethora of fine dining options. We looked up several in the area and decided on Tillman’s Roadhouse, which takes classic comfort food and kicks it up a notch using unexpected ingredients.

We arrived at Tillman’s at 7pm for our Sunday reservation. We arrived and observed the décor that mixed rustic roadhouse with fancy chandeliers. The space is very inviting, there are pillows placed on the bench seats and lots of fun decorations. The atmosphere really goes perfectly with the cuisine that they serve at Tillman’s, upscale-comfort without ever getting close to pretentious.

The meal starts with some complimentary truffle oil and black pepper dusted popcorn served in a rustic ladle. The popcorn is a great starter and much less messy than the peanut route most roadhouses opt for. For the first course, I had the Texas Farms Baby Lettuce Salad with goat cheese, mandarin oranges, roasted beets, candied pecans, and orange-basil vinaigrette.  Sara had the Southwest Caesar Salad with romaine, cherry tomatoes, roasted corn, black beans, poblanos, cotija, cilantro and crispy huarache.  Both salads were tasty, however we preferred mine. The orange-basil vinaigrette and the candied pecans were a great balance with the goat cheese.

We ordered our main entrées as well as a side of goat cheese tater tots that we had heard great things about. I ordered the Post Oak Smoked Pork Ribs with house barbeque sauce and bacon-cheddar mac and cheese. Sara ordered the Chicken Fried Steak with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, poblano cream gravy, bacon lardons, haricot vert and cherry tomatoes. The goat cheese tater tots were surprisingly delectable (and addicting). Even though I had my entrée in front of me, I could not help but keep going back for more tots. I actually joked to Sara that I wanted to take the last few with me and pull a “Napoleon Dynamite.”

The ribs were good, they were very sweet on their own and the sauce helped to add a little tang. They were very tender and the meat came easily off the bone. The bacon cheddar mac and cheese was also really tasty.  However, Sara easily won the entrée round. The chicken fried steak came out as two very round steaks that were lightly crusted and drizzled with gravy. The meat actually tasted like real steak, and we were curious as to what type of meat they use. The chicken fried steak is hands down the best either of us have ever tasted. Usually there is too much batter, or the meat isn’t that great. There is neither problem with Tillman’s dish. It is absolutely mouth watering. The mashed potatoes are superb and so were the bacon lardon green beans.  We split the dishes down the middle so we got to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Then we got dessert, yes more food! Sara had the S’more with a maple homemade marshmallow with chocolate bark and a cinnamon graham. I ordered the Banana Bread Pudding with malt crème anglaise and peanut tuille. Sara won again! The S’more was delicious and was a perfect little bite to finish the meal. The marshmallow was toasted perfectly and the graham cracker was exceptional. The bread pudding was too dense and I could not really eat much of it. I love banana bread typically, but this did not translate well for me. We also couldn’t help but notice the other tables around us getting the S’more dessert as featured on the main menu, which is served tableside for the whole group. It looked incredible.

After our meal, even though I could hardly move, I proclaimed Tillman’s to be my new favorite Dallas restaurant. It is just my style, the good ol’ home cooked food but with an interesting twist. I absolutely love comfort food, but I also like trying new ingredients and flavors that I am not used to. Tillman’s combines both of these flawlessly. The regular priced menu is a little out of my usual budget, the Chicken Fried Steak usually runs $25, but honestly, it is so worth it. They also have a menu of handcrafted drinks that sounded awesome. I will absolutely return, and cannot wait to try the tableside S’mores and stuff my face with those glorious goat cheese tater tots.

Tillman's

BBQ Adventure - Thanks for all the recommendations!

Mike Anderson’s BBQ has been recommended to us over and over. So, when it came time for a BBQ foodie adventure, the decision was made pretty quickly. Mike Anderson’s is only open for lunch and is also closed on Sundays. If you ask me, any restaurant that can get away with being open 50% of the time its competitors are open and still gets rave reviews must be worth its salt. Thus, we trekked out to the medical district Saturday afternoon to see for ourselves.

The building looks just like you’d expect for authentic, country BBQ. It looks mildly rickety and has bright neon words painted on all the windows. Delightfully hole-in-the-wall chic. There is a menu on the wall and a stack of trays at the beginning of a long counter when you walk in. Step 1: tell the man what meat situation you want. We got the smoked ribs, sliced brisket sandwich and turkey sandwich. Step 2: Do you want a baked potato or are you going down the line? We all opted to go “down the line” which allowed self-service to all their sides. Each entrée came with two sides. We opted for green beans, potato wedges, dill potato salad, BBQ baked beans, fried okra, and cheesy cornbread bake, respectively. Step 3: Do you want a drink? Water is by the FREE soft serve ice cream machine J. Step 4: Grab your sandwich accoutrements and additional BBQ sauce, find a seat and chow down.

  

After assessing our own meals, we all started sampling each other’s choices. We needed to get the full experience, of course. As we were eating, we couldn’t help but notice there were several people eating the largest BBQ baked potatoes we have literally ever come across. In fact, there were so many people digging in to the world’s largest baked potatoes that I felt slightly like I may have ordered the wrong thing!

So what did we think of our Mike Anderson’s experience? Well, Haley said her turkey sandwich was really smoky and flavorful and she liked it better than Dickey’s Turkey (which we all love). Her fried okra was by far the crispiest we have had and had a yummy seasoning on it. Her cheesy cornbread bake was a favorite amongst Haley and Ben; however I am just simply not a cornbread fan…so sue me! My sliced brisket sandwich was on par with my expectations. My socks weren’t blown off, but I was pleased. My dill potato salad was fine, but those BBQ baked beans were so sickeningly sweet that none of us wanted to eat them. Ben’s smoked ribs were good, but tasted like liquid smoke was used in the recipe, which resulted in an unpleasant, lingering after-taste. The potato edges were on par, but the green beans weren’t anything to write home about. I would also like to mention that they have both regular BBQ sauce, as well as jalapeño BBQ sauce. Ben loved the jalapeño because it was more vinegary and Haley liked the traditional. Me? I am a sucker for the sweet BBQ sauce that is so true to Texas.

 Our overall experience at Mike Anderson’s lead to a very philosophical discussion about what really makes the “best BBQ ever”. None of us could really pin it down. We all have differences of opinions on sauce, meat choice, and sides we consider a necessity. I guess the “best BBQ ever” is up to each individual! Don’t worry though, Readers – we will not stop sampling Dallas BBQ hot spots and we are excited to try all your other recommendations! 


http://www.mikeandersonsbbq.com/

Friend or Foe? The Groupon hits Cafe Izmir

I read that Café Izmir located on Lower Greenville was known for “Dallas’ Best Hummus.” Being such fans of hummus and having it regularly in our fridge, we had to see what all the fuss was about. Café Izmir is a Mediterranean Tapas and Family style restaurant with dishes coming from Greek, Turkish, Lebanese and Persian cuisines. Sara, Diana and I decided that it seemed like a great place for us to catch up and share a number of dishes and some wine.

We arrived around 7:30 on a Monday night, to a very small restaurant and an extremely busy crowd. We looked around and couldn’t believe what a wait there was for a random Monday, when we overheard someone say that this was the last day that a Groupon could be used there. We knew we had an interesting night ahead of us. I love Groupon and have gotten many great deals, however not having it and being in the mix of a long wait made for a very impatient and frustrating beginning to our meal. We finally were seated about an hour later and it took about 10 minutes to even get our water. Again, I understand that the night we chose probably skews this review; however knowing that it would be busier we could not understand why one waiter was given twelve tables in our section.

The waiter gives you a piece of paper similar to sushi restaurants in which you can check how many of what plates you would like. We ordered an order of hummus with garlic (you can get no garlic if you prefer), pita bread, a chicken kabob, piroshki, veggie dolmas and a lamb roll. We got the hummus and pita bread pretty quickly and were eager to try “the best hummus in Dallas.” We dug in and were all very impressed. This hummus is uniquely spicy, due to the fact that they use raw garlic instead of roasted, which Sara so keenly pointed out. It is much creamier than other hummus that I have tried. The pita bread was delicious, very warm and fluffy and a great companion to the hummus. Sara noted that this was her second favorite hummus in Dallas and Diana and I both agreed it was very good, but could not come to the decisive conclusion that it was in fact the best. However, I am already craving some more.

We then received our other plates and began to start dividing up the food and digging in. The Lamb Roll that consisted of slow roasted shredded leg of lamb and pico de gallo wrapped in a hot tortilla was named Diana and Sara’s favorite. The portions of the plates are small, and we could have easily finished off another order of this plate. My favorite was the Piroshki which contained spiced beef, vegetables and goat cheese wrapped in sautéed bread. I absolutely loved the contrast of the goat cheese with the beef and the vegetables all wrapped in the crispy bread. I deemed it a “Middle Eastern egg roll” and loved every bite. The others enjoyed it as well.

The chicken kabob was tasty, but wasn’t anything completely different that we hadn’t tasted before. However, the chicken had a great smoky flavor and was cooked superbly. Our least favorite of the plates were definitely the veggie dolmas. They were very soggy and were lack luster in flavor, without having any meat in them. I have had much better dolmas before. The only thing left on the plates at the end of the meal was one straggling dolma that no one cared to finish off.

Since we shared a number of small plates, and had waited for such a long time, we actually felt like we had room for dessert and decided on the Izmir Special Dessert which came out in a glorious sundae dish filled with baklava, butter pound cake quarters, strawberries, vanilla ice cream, Frangelico sauce and whipped cream. This made the lack of attentive service and exceptionally long wait a little more tolerable. We dug in and cleaned the dish. It was absolutely delectable and Diana even said that it was the first time she actually enjoyed baklava. Sara pointed out that the baklava had a very distinct and unique flavor that she had never tasted before when trying the dish. I couldn’t make any brilliant observations, as I was too busy stuffing my face.

Another issue of service came up when we were waiting for our check and realized our dinner had turned into a 2 hour production. Luckily, our neighbor next to us “Jose G” offered us his extra Groupon, saving us $20 on our ticket! It definitely made the pain and frustration of waiting for so long for our meal more worth it.  Overall, I think that Café Izmir has a number of things to offer. It is a great place to catch up with people and share a variety of dishes. The food is good, particularly the hummus, dessert and our two favorite dishes. I would love to go back to meet a friend for a drink and some tapas. So often we eat a meal and feel overly stuffed and uncomfortable, where this was the perfect amount of food where you can actually enjoy eating a dessert.  I would be interested to hear about the service from other people who have been on regular nights, thinking maybe we just were unlucky. Some wise words to our followers: out of respect to fellow diners, use your Groupon before the last day it expires!!!