Cafe Izmir

Cravings can hit at weird times. So when I tweeted out "who has the best baklava in Dallas?" I got an answer from one of my best friends, Shannon, that Cafe Izmir was the clear winner. Eric and I have both been here on separate occasions years ago, (back when we were both skinny because we had not yet met each other and therefore were not binge eating every food in sight like Medieval warlord kings) but we had yet to come here together. We decided we wanted a light meal. Light for us means ordering 65% of the menu as opposed to 85-100% of the menu. 

When we walked in, we were greeted by "the most friendly staff EVAR" (Eric's words). We saw other families being greeted with hugs and handshakes as they asked for "the usual" and we instantly looked at each other and with THAT look like "WE WANT TO BE THEM." So we set out to order a lot of food and ooh and aahed to the waiter about how great everything was, hoping that after 4 or 5 times of visiting, we'd get a hug, too. We are very dependent on others to love us. To our surprise and elation, our immediate reactions to the (very delicious) food were rewarded with PRIZES* and we happily agreed to taste an off-menu chipotle hummus that they were trying out.

*more food

We started with hummus and warm pita bread. There's an option for Date Night Hummus, which has no garlic, but we don't care about that, so we opted for what we called Real Couples Have Terrible Breath and Kiss and Love Each Other Anyway Hummus. The texture was so smooth, creamy, and perfectly chilled that at first we thought this wasn't hummus, but rather, a hummus dip, because what hummus could be this smooth? But it WAS that smooth. The garlic flavor was subtle and almost sweet, not at all biting. The waiter told us they are known for their hummus, and they should be, because it was the best hummus we've ever had. The pita bread was warm and the grill marks on the pita added a richness to each bite. We used the pita to sop up every last bite. Then, before the pita bread could start expanding in our stomachs, we ordered the tapas.

This is the chipotle hummus our waiter brought us after we said we loved the hummus. It was like the diabolical twin of the hummus. Same creamy texture, same color almost, but SPICY and amazing with a subtle smokiness. We hope it makes its way 

Greek salad with pickled onions, tomatos, feta, and balsamic dijon dressing. This salad could've had a little more crunch and cucumbery goodness added to it. And Eric and I can get pretty snobby at a restaurant when there's Kraft "Parmesan style" cheese on food. I understand if you MUST have it at home, but at a restaurant? When it doesn't even need to be refrigerated? We'll pass.

Clockwise from top left: Beef piroshki, falafel, saffron infused grilled shrimp, grilled asparagus, and saffron rice.
The piroshki? Phenomenal. Great spices, a little bit of sweetness which is always a complex palate I find in Mediterranean food, and the perfect deep fried crunch with a warm but not burning hot center.
The falafel: Eric and I both prefer a moister falafel, as much as we despise the word "moist." The sauce underneath it is a delicious, parsley-filled, zesty mixture and definitely made the dish much more enjoyable.
Eric couldn't say enough good things about the shrimp and he still talks about it all. the. time. 
The asparagus was asparagus, don't waste your time.
Aaaaand I want saffron rice every day but with more and more and MORE saffron and butter on top. A tiny little pat o butter and saffron just ain't gonna cut it for me.

Saffron Ice Cream with Sugared Grapes and Pistachios: HOLY YUM. The waiter caught me licking the bowl, and then he brought me another one for free! It was so incredibly nice and I have never tasted a flavor like that in my life. In fact, now I'm thinking about going there and eating some more....

Thanks to Pinterest, I know now that supposedly, Turkish Coffee has pistachios in it and that's what makes it so sweet and powdery? Either way, this coffee is the stuff of my dreams. We couldn't tel; if it was more potent than any other coffee, because, contrary to what you might have heard, Eric and I are high-anxiety and therefore we tire ourselves out with nervousness regardless of how much coffee we drank. We fell asleep a few hours after drinking this, so surely its caffeinated powers weren't nearly as strong as we suspected.

Please go to Cafe Izmir immediately and order the hummus, the Turkish coffee, and the saffron ice cream. Start with those three because they are the ones worth filling up on. Then order everything else on the menu and devour it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Lucia Bishop Arts

We, as a couple of humans that require food to live, tend to be fairly aggressive about getting into any restaurant that others have deemed "impossible" to get a reservation at. Thanks to the tenacity of Eric calling as often as he possibly could, we got a 6:30pm reservation for 4 on a Saturday at Lucia. The look they gave us when we entered said "please stop calling us at 7am, enjoy your meal, we hope you live in another state." Or maybe it just said "you guys seem confident in your height difference." Either way, we were seated immediately with our good friends George and Angela, who had also heard that Lucia was THE ONLY place to eat a decent meal in Dallas anymore. 

Our waiter looked like a younger, distant cousin of Lou Diamond Phillips, and Angela and I proceeded to shout LOU! LOU! whenever we wanted more bread (which was every two seconds) at him. This may account for why he wasn't necessarily the friendliest waiter we'd ever met. He also made it very clear that at Lucia they a. do not split checks b. do not give you more than a little bit of the delicious bread c. if you ask for more bread, they pretend to forget and d. you CANNOT order one course at a time, you order all at once for the whole table. I tried to make conversation with Lou by asking him if he was from England because I am so perceptive and can always detect a hint of an accent. He was from Oak Cliff. Don't talk to your waiter and play around with them unless you're at TGI Friday's or a place where they write their name upside down in crayon on your table. This is our wisdom, given freely to you. That being said, this was by far one of the best meals we've ever had in Dallas, and it ranks in the top ten best meals of our lives. Here's what we had:

Cheese board- Gabietou, Smokey Blue, O'Banon, OCooch Mountain, nuts and preserves
We loved the variety and the amounts of the cheeses. George mentioned that there was a flavor in the fruit preserves and nuts that reminded him of something Cuban he ate years and years ago, and it's always fun to watch someone be transported back in time to a different place by food. To break down the cheeses for you:
gabietou: a sheep's milk and cow's milk combination cheese that is semi-soft. The rind on this cheese smells exactly like cigar smoke. It was almost an overwhelming smell, but once we tasted it, the smell made sense. If you like smokey and sour cheeses, you'll enjoy this one.
smokey blue: the bleu is always the most recognizable on any cheese plate and fairly self explanatory. We tend to prefer a spicier blue cheese, so the mild smokiness of this one wasn't our particular favorite. George and Angela loved it, though, and they are a little less into spicy foods than we are, so it's still recommended!
O'Banon: this is a mild goat cheese. There are two types of O'Banon out there; American O'Banon is slightly milder and softer than the French O'Banon. This cheese was my particular favorite because it had the tartness of goat cheese with a firmer texture.
OCooch Mountain: a mountain-style, raw milk cheese that is so nutty and firm with a little crunch. Hard cheeses are always a go-to in our house, so this one hit the spot!

Salumi misti- a tasting of house made cured meats (black pepper salame, fennel orange salame,coppa, culatello, coppa di testa, chicken liver crostini, and lardo crostini)

All of the salumi misti plate is worth trying! We couldn't get enough of the chicken liver crostini, which was so perfectly salted and toasted with that creamy, rich chicken liver on it. I did not eat the lardo crostini. As Angela and I both said, we will never be big enough foodies to eat fat on a piece of toasted bread. Our husbands didn't have much to say in favor of the animal fat toast either. My favorite was the black pepper salame, and it was nice to try the coppa di testa raw before eating it later in a bite of pasta that George and Angela ordered.

Spring pea agnolotti dal plin with tendrils and tesa

I gobbled these amazing little packets of peas and ricotta like they were little bits of ambrosia. Such an unassuming presentation, and yet the flavors were married together so perfectly that every ingredient complemented the others seamlessly. The peas were crisp and pop in your mouth when you bite down. There's no mushy, mealy texture here! This dish is the epitome of springtime and the pasta is perfectly chewy and fresh. Order it. Do not hesitate.

Swiss chard and testa casonceilli with green garlic broth

George and Angela had this dish, but we're still reviewing it because the one bite each of us had was INCREDIBLE. The green garlic broth is a revelation- bright and refreshing and not at all spicy or too strong. The pasta was, as the other dish showed, perfectly fresh and chewy. The testa casoncelli is just packed to the gills inside the pasta and was so moist and salty. We loved it!

Alaskan halibut with sunchokes, Calabrian chili, and Castelvetrano olive

Also a George and Angela dish...we understand if you'd rather eat with them than eat with us now, as they clearly ordered some delicious meals. This halibut was some of the best cooked fish I've had at a restaurant in a very, very long time. Being from Hawaii, and with Eric having been to Hawaii twice now to sample all the so-fresh-it-just-jumped-on-the-plate fish available, our standards are set very high when it comes to ordering fish in a non-coastal city. This halibut was perfect and the dressing on the salad and sides were just the right balance of heartiness and acidity for the meal.I actually think they changed the menu to have fingerling potatoes and these mixed greens rather than haivng sunchokes and Calabrian chili. Regardless, it was a fresh fish entree done right.

Veal chop with asparagus and fresh morel mushrooms

This was Eric's main dish. I wrote down the things he said about it. Please excuse the disjointed words as this was recorded between bites:

"Mmm. Oh wow. Cooked to perfection. Wow. Seasoned well. Very tender. You don't get this kind of thickness anywhere else! You can taste the flavor.Aromatic. This rub is great. Grilled right. Crunchy on the outside. Middle is medium rare. The fat brings out the flavors of whatever it was rubbed with. Dang. Wow."

For dessert, we ordered all four available. And there are no pictures because we dug in before we had a chance to photograph anything.

Carnaroli rice pudding with dried peach compote, caramel, and almonds

This was Eric's number one pick for best dessert. The texture was different from traditional rice pudding in that it's almost a light, yogurt-like texture. The caramel on top with nuts added a wonderful sweetness and depth of flavor. George, Angela, and I personally felt that this dish was missing some sort of zing. Maybe grapefruit or orange zest? It needed a little more flavor. 

Bombolini with hazelnut, chocolate, and orange

There were four tiny little donut holes that didn't really tickle my fancy. I am personally not a fan of any citrus mixed with chocolate, so I didn't expect to be blown away by this dessert. George liked it very much, as did Angela. What's funny is that out of the four desserts, each one SHOULD have been a home run for each of us, given our own specific tastes (Angela loves any sort of citrus, Eric is a lifelong fan of rice pudding, George loves chocolate, and I am the gelato queen) but they all fell short.

Caffe corretto gelato with cardamom ladyfingers and lemon cream

Cardamom is such a unique and wonderful flavor to use when baking, so I was really anticipating the cardamom ladyfingers; however, there was no distinct cardamom that came out in each bite, it just tasted like a butter cookie. The word "ladyfinger" calls to mind light, fluffy, slightly sweet pastries, but these were the texture of hard cookies and crumbled very easily. The gelato was coffee gelato- nothing great, nothing terrible about it, but very forgettable. This dish could've easily been elevated with more cardamom, a ladyfinger-like texture, and perhaps a crumbling of caramelized hazelnuts on top of the gelato rather than the almost non-existent topping of lemon cream.

Meyer lemon panna cotta with caramelized grapefruit and lemon verbena

This was MY personal favorite. It tasted like a delicious, creamy greek yogurt. I liked it the best because it was better than the other dishes, but again, the bar was set fairly low. As you're probably beginning to realize, we weren't overly impressed with any of the desserts. It's something Lucia should really consider working on. Dessert is the best way to end a meal on a high note, and a chance to take a meal from great to unforgettable. This was a missed opportunity.

Overall, we loved our meal at Lucia! I hate to be so hard on them for the deserts, but each one truly missed the mark and the bar had been set so high from dinner that we were expecting a much more awe-inspiring final course. Thanks for the meal, Lucia, and we'll be back...when we can get a reservation!

Brown Sugar Bourbon Sundaes

Oh, and there's maple glazed pecans, too. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

It was beautiful weather today here in Dallas, the perfect day to attend the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Greenville, so naturally, we took our antisocial selves to Highland Park Pharmacy for breakfast. We ate bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches on English muffins. We also split a strawberry shake to-go, because it seemed like it might be a little too my-boyfriend-broke-up-with-me-and-I'm-watching-only-Bridget-Jones-movies of us to drink the shake at the counter at 10:00am when we were the only patrons in the place and even the lone waitress kept nervously sidling away from us. This is us eating at the counter. Alone. 

But I digress. We then decided, at breakfast, that we should have hot dogs and corn on the cob for dinner, because it felt like summer outside, and we wanted to feel easy and breezy. The hot dogs were good, but the corn was the main event. It was a chili lime roasted corn on the cob and the recipe is up on Alyssia's website. Instead of drinking this down with a soda like we were doing LAST spring, we went with a local kombucha made here in Tejas. It's a good probiotic drink that satisfies the need for something fizzy without cooking your organs from the inside out, or whatever it is Diet Coke allegedly does to you. 

For dessert, we decided to improvise off of a Bon Appetit recipe. Mason jars went into the freezer to chill. Bananas were sliced. Pecans were mixed with maple syrup. Rum and bourbon were procured from under the bathroom sink. It is a huge anxiety trigger that we might have alcohol out on display at our house, and even though it's only even been used for cooking or baking, one or both of our parents could come to dinner and see the alcohol and think we are hosting a speakeasy in our bathroom and drinking all the livelong day. This scenario seems infinitely worse than when maintenance came to fix one of our sinks and when we came home, the bottle of rum was sitting on the bathroom counter as a sort of silent "Get ahold of yourselves" message to us. This was the final product of the dessert. Remember that you might be wearing fancy clothes, so keep your mouth closed, lest you drool on yourself over this picture.

See? NSFW. Here's ye olde recipe. We gobbled it down in 6 bites, tops, but the itty bitty mason jars are the perfect way to serve them. If you wanted to be generous, you could use this recipe to make 4 servings and share them with a friend or a family member who's having a bad day. Or eat all 4 and still feel perfectly satisfied with your life.

Brown Sugar Bourbon Banana Sundaes with Maple Glazed Pecans

Ingredients:

3/4 cup Bourbon or Rum (I had a little of both and mixed them)

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

3 tbsp butter

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 ripe bananas, sliced however you want 'em

1 cup chopped pecans

1/4 cup maple syrup

pinch of sea salt

Directions:

Let's start with the pecans. Heat the oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray. Do not skip the spray or you will be prying these pecans off the pan all night to no avail. Toss the pecans in the maple syrup, add that pinch of salt, and spread out evenly on the pan. Place on a nearly-top rack and roast them for 10-15 minutes. The maple syrup will bubble up around the pecans, so stir them around halfway through if you must, but you don't have to.

Pour Bourbon/Rum (Bum?) into a saucepan, add brown sugar, butter, and vanilla extract and bring to a boil. Don't shake the pan or else it might catch on fire, depending on what kind of stovetop you're using. Just like...avoid a fire. Let it bubble up for about 2 minutes, then turn the heat off and stir to make sure the sugar is dissolved. Then add back on to medium heat and simmer for 2 more minutes or so, until the sauce starts to thicken. Throw in the bananas. Don't be gentle. The threat of a fire is over now. Cook the bananas for an additional 2 minutes (we have no idea if it was 2 minutes at a time. We just know it wasn't 5 minutes, because 5 minutes is too long for any one step to last. It could, however, be up to 4 minutes). Scoop some ice cream into the mason jars that were chilling in your freezer. We used Coconut Bliss Vanilla Island ice cream, but any flavor you've got will do. Chocolate might be nice. Two scoops of ice cream should do it, then pour in the bananas and the sauce. Take the pecans out of the oven and sprinkle the pieces on top of the sundaes. Start eating it immediately and don't stop until you're trying to make your tongue a giraffe tongue to lick out the last bits of sauce. Then you've gone too far.

Who We B

We B the Birnbaums.

If you know us, chances are you have heard us extol the many virtues of the latest pop-up food joint that we've visited 4 times in 3 days, or at the very least, you've shared a delicious meal with us. We are only human, and we can't have a meal with everyone, mostly because we have sudden and crippling social anxiety attacks. We are safe here behind our computer screen.

The idea for this blog came about the other night in one of our many egotistical, Mexican coke (the soda, not the drug)-fueled rants, as we sat in a newly opened restaurant, telling ourselves that we can TOTALLY  be like Robert Irvine on Restaurant: Impossible and go into restaurants and be like, “this pasta sauce is tasteless and 40% of your staff has body odor, so let’s do this on a shockingly small budget, re-upholster your booths, paint the walls, and fix the menu!” After googling “how to become restaurant critics” and realizing we didn’t have the time or the ADHD medications to handle that, we settled on writing this blog.

Please bear with us, because the pressure to be the voice of our generation's food scene is a heavy burden to bear. For now, it’s a great way for us to let local shop owners and vendors know what we’re thinking when we eat there, and to keep in touch with our mostly out of town family, and perhaps remind them why they should be happy we don’t live near them.

Prease to enjoy the food and lifestyle witticisms of a half painfully white, half Japanese woman and her distinguished (read: elderly) Jewish husband.