I am likely not the only one to have received and cracked open over the holidays Paul Freedman’s new oeuvre, the big, ambitious tome titled Ten Restaurants That Changed America. His list—Delmonico’s, Antoine’s, Schrafft’s, Howard Johnson’s, Mamma Leone’s, The Mandarin, Sylvia’s, Le Pavilion, The Four Seasons, and Chez Panisse—takes us mostly to New York, but also New Orleans, San Francisco, Berkeley.
To seek a country’s founding restaurants is to trace its socio-politico-cultural history. In Ten Restaurants …, we see the rise of a distinctly American fine dining, the appeal of the egalitarian, the first frissons of the “exotic,” the game-changing advent of Alice Waters’ produce-focused revolution.
And what if we were to ask the same question of Dallas? What establishments would make our shortlist?
The Zodiac Room, whose popovers launched a thousand ships and ten zillion refined ladies’ lunches? (If this sounds familiar, catch more blasts from the past with D’s “30 Years of Dining in Dallas” feature from 2004.)
Gene Street’s Black-Eyed Pea, the tip of a great, fried-chicken iceberg?
Routh Street Café and Fearing’s, where Stephan Pyles and Dean Fearing rooted down with Meccas of Southwestern cuisine?
Parigi?
Bolsa, which arguably first nurtured the farm-to-table movement to maturation before it went on to bloom here, there, and everywhere?
India Palace, where we first had tikka masala?
For its contributions to Tex Mex, El Fenix? (Or perhaps you were more moved by the more recent pioneers, the Cuellars or Mico Rodriguez?)
If this is a time of looking forward and looking back, do we agree on our game-changers?
(And while we’re on the subject of greatest and most iconic, Andrew Knowlton’s delightful “Welcome to Hillstone, America’s Favorite Restaurant,” from last year’s March issue of Bon Appétit is also worth a read.)
