Hey, Pairesta

Yay!!! Enjoy, you guys, and also that whole evening sounds pretty great!

Holy shit I ate there once and hated it but still

Grub Burger Bar

The new location in Frisco. 

It was tasty enough. My VooDoo Mushroom burger came topped with turnip root chips and absinthe-sauteed mushrooms, and the mushrooms were for sure the highlight of this burger. Licorice-bitter and booze-hot, I'm not sure I've tasted anything like them. They somehow managed to be absinthe-y without also being gross. Weird, but good. The "medium well" burger was definitely well done, but aren't they always.

I can't tell this place apart from Hopdoddy, Haystack Burgers and Barley, or any of the other fast casual burger-and-craft beer joints that are all the rage. Not that I dislike them, but it lacks personality.

Ron Howard Voice

This cracked me up. I grew up in East Plano, so Collin Creek Mall was very much our mall for much of my youth. When I saw the restaurant in your new review was located outside the mall, I had to look up its exact location. Here's a screenshot of the Google Map. Look at the only store Maps thought was worth mention at the mall.

I can think of actual closed down malls that are less depressing than Collin Creek Mall.

Yeah, Cook's review almost regret not picking that for my birthday outing. But she certainly did get a little carried away there.

 Maybe we'll do it for my wife's. We went to The Pass instead.

They recently overhauled their menu and scaled back to 5 course chef's tasting instead of 8, but you can buy "supplemental" courses that bring it back up to that number. My wife and I each added two supplements.

It was a slight step down from other experiences. I remember getting served things there and laughing in sheer joy at the creativity of it. This time the food was much more straightforwards and there seemed to be more on a focus of getting you through and out. I mean, it was all still good (except dessert, featuring a puckeringly lemon granita, and one of the upsell courses promised "caviar" that was a thin line of one egg each encircling the dish), just not quite as high an experience as other times. Plus with Oxheart gone now, I was hoping they'd up their game and make the case for this kind of creative experience and instead they seem to be making themselves to similar to Provisions, their sister restaurant.

Eater jumps in. They kinda misrepresent Ron Howard Voice though, saying he doesn't adequately acknowledge Houston and LA's Mexican food scenes when he did do that.

Last night at Tacos Mariachi the owner told me that there's a local restaurateur rule that goes something like, at least 60% Tex Mex, at most 40% real Mex, or you won't last 8 months.

Ha, just discovered CultureNap blogger Teresa Gubbins blocked me on Facebook for offenses unknown. I'm told she has blocked almost/practically everyone at the Observer and Morning News for insufficiently respecting her.

Well that sounds really awesome. Looking forward to getting to go in about a month.

This makes zero sense. Brenner has burned a trail of pissed off restaurateurs through the Dallas dining scene in her tenure and never seemed quite happy here. If she resigned and moved back to California to partner on a place, that'd be much more understandable. But staying in a city she routinely scorched for its less than desirable dining scene (in her opinion)? The knives are gonna be out.

Compare this to Robb Walsh, the dining critic for the Houston Press, who spent much of his time finding and promoting Houston and Texas institutions. When he resigned to partner at a Tex-Mex restaurant, it made sense, because there's no better champion of the value of Tex-Mex cuisine than him.

Also this casts her recent "Dallas sucks" report in a more cynical light.

Fun fact! Culturemap's own Teresa Gubbins is blocking me on all social media for reasons unknown to me. We've had a few internet type conversations over years, and every single one has ended with her misunderstanding and misconstruing my words to mean something 100x more offensive than intended and me going ahhhh crap. So I assume she just decided I'm a monster. Ugh, this sounds like a rom-com.