Rod Dreher, you’ll remember, was formerly of the DMN. He left Dallas for Philadelphia a few weeks ago and is now suffering withdrawals from certain of Big D’s pleasures. He explains, after the jump:
You’ve got to tell the people of Dallas to LOVE their Chipotles! Desperate for any kind of non-Taco Bell Mexican food, last night I finally found a Chipotle here in the snowy mid-Atlantic. What a disappointment. Julie discerned that they appear to be using fake lime juice in their guacamole. Where is the love? I ask you.
Of even greater concern to me is that the people of Dallas may not realize what a cultural treasure Central Market is. Screw the Arts District — what I miss like crazy is the CM on Lovers Lane. I told my wife last night that if I walked into it now, I’d probably cry. Seriously! I can’t believe that for six years, I had a place that great to shop in. I hear the farmer’s markets are outstanding here, and that the Reading Terminal Market in Center City is a wonder. I haven’t had the chance to get to either yet, but I will. Still, for daily shopping, there’s a CM-sized hole in my life, and Whole Foods just can’t fill it.
Then again, I was loyal to CM in Dallas not only because it was a superior place to buy groceries, but because it was all about the aesthetic pleasure of food, without the overlay of sanctimony. (And you know how sanctimonious a place has to be to register with a sanctimonious ass like Your Working Boy.) Julie went to a super-crunchy organic co-op to check it out, and came back saying that it made her want to go to McDonalds. “Places like that are why people watch Fox News,” she said. “If you’d gone in there, you’d have come out gushing blood from every orifice, like those Ebola people.”
Oh, and can I tell you that I also miss KERA? You’d have thought that as public radio stations go, WHYY would be ass-kickingly great. Sorry, but it’s not KERA. I’m a Kris Boyd guy, not a Terry Gross guy. Granted, I’ve been enduring the Bataan death march known as Pledge Drive, but still, WHYY seems so fussy. And they don’t have Rawlins Gilliland.
Nevertheless, this is a really good place, and I am preparing for both today’s snowstorm — how we’ll get through it without Dallas TV weatherpeople freaking us out about the BITTER BLAST, I’ll never know — and for the Saints victory by cooking shrimp etouffee, gumbo and jambalaya. Oh, and despite the moronic liquor laws here, you can buy draft beer at the store by the “growler,” a 64 oz. glass jug you pay to have filled up, and return for more when you’ve drained it. Growlers are a sign that the Lord has not forsaken us, despite it all.
