The end of summer has brought my appetite back
Normally, I include a recipe. This week, I am not cooking for you.
I am outsourcing.
Somewhere between the oppressive heat, the new website, the open house, and the general chaos of trying to relaunch The Dallas Registry before either of us is completely ready, my appetite has returned. It did not return quietly. It arrived demanding hamburgers, pizza, and enough smoked meat to concern my physician.
So, in place of a recipe, here is what I actually want to eat, and yes, I 100% have been emotional eating this past week.
A proper Dallas hamburger
Dallas has no shortage of chefs who would like to reinvent the hamburger. I respect their ambition, but sometimes I simply want beef, cheese, a good bun, and enough grease to require both hands and several napkins.
Maple & Motor remains one of the obvious answers. It is straightforward, satisfying, and completely uninterested in pretending a hamburger needs a personal brand.
Then there is the Stoneleigh P Burger. The P has been feeding Dallas since 1973, and it still understands the value of familiar food, strong drinks, and a room where nobody needs to explain why they are there. The burger comes on a pumpernickel bun with lettuce, tomato, red onion, Creole mustard, and homemade garlic mayonnaise. That is not culinary theater. That is lunch.
Adair’s Saloon also deserves a place in this conversation. The room is dark, the walls are covered with evidence of previous evenings, and the hamburger is exactly the sort of thing one hopes to find in a Dallas bar that has survived long enough to stop caring about trends.
The pizza currently occupying my thoughts
The Stoneleigh P has recently added pizza to its already persuasive list of reasons to visit, and the one calling my name is the Hot Honey Pepperoni Pizza.
It is a thin crust pizza with house made sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, and a drizzle of house made hot honey. Salty, spicy, sweet, crisp, and completely unnecessary, which is precisely why I want it.
The P describes itself as unpretentious, welcoming, and proudly local. That description also works for the pizza. It is not trying to teach you anything. It is trying to make you order another slice.
You can see the current offerings on the Stoneleigh P menu.
Barbecue requires no seasonal justification
If the hamburger and pizza do not settle the matter, barbecue will.
At Lockhart Smokehouse in the Bishop Arts District, the meat is smoked over Texas post oak and served at the counter on butcher paper. Brisket is always a sound decision, but the Kreuz Market sausage is what gives Lockhart its direct connection to one of the great barbecue traditions of Central Texas.
Order a little of everything. Tell yourself you are sharing.
You are probably not sharing.
Over in Deep Ellum, Pecan Lodge remains one of the city’s most recognizable barbecue destinations. Brisket, pork ribs, sausage, pulled pork, and burnt ends are all available to test the structural limits of a paper tray. If moderation is not part of the day’s plan, the Hot Mess piles shredded brisket, chipotle cream, cheese, butter, and green onions onto a large sweet potato.
It is less a side dish than a cry for help.
Dallas, I am hungry again
Perhaps this is what the end of summer does. The heat has not exactly left, but we have stopped being surprised by it. We know how to move through Dallas now. Air conditioning, shaded parking, cold drinks, and strategic meals.
So there is no recipe this week. There is only an appetite and a short list of places capable of handling it.
A hamburger at Maple & Motor. Hot Honey Pepperoni Pizza at the Stoneleigh P. Brisket and sausage in Bishop Arts. Burnt ends in Deep Ellum.
Food, food, delicious food.
I am back, and apparently, I would like one of everything.
