DINING

During my recent bouts with steak and Italian food, I had to change pace to maintain my health. Sometimes my plans backfired, and the change of pace nearly did me in, leaving me longing for the security of steak and ’taters. Here are my most notable adventures.



The greatest void in the Dallas restaurant scene is the lack of a first rate seafood restaurant. There are a few pretenders, but consistently high quality fish simply does not exist.

The closest thing we have is Oporto’s Oyster Bar, 2929 Henderson. When you catch them on a good night, the food can be quite good. When you don’t, it can be worse than bad catfish fried in crankcase oil.

Some items on the menu tend to be more consistent than others. The oysters on the shell (6-$1.50; 12-$2.75) are always fresh and tasty. The Escargots Bourguignonne ($2.75) are delicious. The remainder of the appetizers listed are mediocre at best, with the possible exception of the Oysters Rockefeller ($2.95), which are passable if you haven’t been to New Orleans lately.

The soups are all pretty good. The New England clam chowder, chock full of clams, tops the list. The Lobster Bisque with sherry is creamy and filling. The Louisiana Crab Gumbo is inconsistent; once delicious, again bland, which is heresy for gumbo.

The specialty of the house is broiled Boston schrod (sic) ($5.25), served with lemon butter. It is the best fish on the menu. The broiled red snapper ($4.95) and the whole baby flounder, saute muniere ($4.95), are tasty also. The baked, stuffed sole, the broiled salmon with hollandaise and the sole Marguery are all poorly prepared and overcooked, a cardinal sin in cooking seafood. The live Maine lobster ($8.95), broiled or boiled to perfection and served with drawn butter, is thoroughly enjoyable and as good as any in town.

The entrees are served with a salad or cole slaw and choice of potato. The salad and cole slaw are both fine. The au gratin potatoes are runny and rubbery and the french fries are generally soggy. The a la carte string beans, which the waiter promised me were fresh, were not. (They weren’t frozen, they were thawed.) After that, I never even thought of trying their corn on the cob or creamed spinach.

A word about service. At best it has been adequate. At worst, it has been pretentious and rude.

The house wines by Inglenook ($4.25 a litre) are adequate for the fare and a well-stocked bar can provide aperitif or dessert spirits.

Food ***

Service **

Ambience***

(2929 N. Henderson/826-2553/Daily 5-11, Fri. & Sat. til midnight/MC, BA, AE)



Furred and feathered game delicacies have always been among my personal dining favorites. So when I heard of the Hungry Hunter in Keystone Plaza, a restaurant purporting to specialize in such specialties, I was excited.

The hunting lodge atmosphere and the sumptuous-sounding menu seemed a good omen; I was fully expecting the Hungry Hunter to fulfill its promise of exotic wild game dining. Unfortunately, the food itself simply didn’t make it. The Russian wild boar ($7.50) tasted amazingly like A&P pork and the Mouflon, an exotic mountain sheep, tasted as exotic as a Safeway shoulder chop of lamb.

While the game is not particularly wild or good, all is not lost. The brace of quail ($7.25) and the Long Island duck ($6.95) are decent standbys. The service is attentive and friendly. There are offerings of steak and seafood if you aren’t in the mood for the tame game.

Food**

Service ***

Ambience ***



(Keystone Park, 13931 N. Central Expwy./ 690-8090/Lunch: 11:30-3 except Sat., Dinner 6-11, Fri. & Sat. til midnight/Bar open til 2 a.m./MC, BA, AE)



When someone first mentioned a new restaurant in North Dallas called “Oz,” I naturally imagined the worst -a brigade of funny tin or straw waiters, munchkin bus boys and a giant ruby slipper salad bar. A place to avoid at all costs. I wasn’t about to be choked on Wizard’s filet and yellow brick corn.



Then the publicity barrage started. According to the buildup, only the finest chefs, managers, architects, etc. had been hired from all over the world to create the Ultimate Restaurant. My first suspicions were assuaged, but I had new ones. Could they actually deliver on their promises? I was determined to be highly critical of their operation, even though they were new and surely hadn’t yet hit their stride. They came through with very few holes in their hype.

The “fascinating contemporary decor” promised is definitely here. There are neon light forms and mirrors galore. It is all very well done, but I think rather more suited to their discotheque (probably open by publication time, but not at this writing) than to the dining room. It is not unpleasant, but somewhat incongruous with the menu of haute cuisine.

Once seated and presented with the menu, all thoughts of surroundings vanish. Oz serves dishes rarely, if ever, encountered in Dallas. There is a full page of hors d’oeuvres, and the choice is difficult. If you plan on a heavy entree, then the oysters or smoked fish would be a good start, but the Quenelles of sole with Nantua sauce are sublime. The oysters are the freshest and you can get them on the shell ($4.50), or baked in butter and mushrooms ($5). The smoked salmon is from Ireland and available solo ($4.50) or with an assortment of smoked eel, trout, and sturgeon ($4.50). It is all top flight. The Quenelles ($3.50) are dumplings of sole baked with a lobster sauce. They are so light they disintegrate in your mouth and the combination of flavors delights your palate. You won’t find them prepared better this side of Lyon.

If you plan a light entree, then you could start with the exquisite truffle-flecked pate of duck ($4); the escargot ($4), prepared with red wine butter, sealed in ceramic shells with puff pastry (a nice change from the ubiquitous garlic and shallot butter); or the paté baked in puff pastry, served with a vermouth sauce.

There are two soups listed, and a soup du jour. The brie soup is delicious, but too heavy, in my opinion, to fit into the smooth progression of a large dinner. Cold avocado soup is available if you like light soup.

Oz is proud of its fish which it flies in from Boston. The red snapper broiled and served with white butter sauce ($7.25) is perfect. The sauce is very simple in its ingredients, but difficult to prepare well. At Oz it is very well prepared, indeed.

Striped bass is on many menus on both coasts, but rarely encountered elsewhere. You can get this delicious fish at Oz with a light Pernod sauce ($16 for two) which compares favorably with the best houses in New York or San Francisco.



There is, of course, beef available -either filet or strip broiled or Chateaubriand roasted with appropriate sauces. My dinner companions praised them, but after my recent round of steaks (Vol. I No. 1), I politely declined and stuck with baked pheasant with a game and currant sauce ($24) for two. It was tender and juicy, the way pheasant is supposed to be, but seldom is. On another occasion I had sweetbreads in Madeira sauce ($9), always a good test of a kitchen. Oz passed cum laude.

All entrees are served with a plate of vegetables-of-the-day, which failed to measure up to the standards set by the rest of the food. They were awful. The bread served also left something to be desired. Small complaints considering the overall excellence, but at a place like this there should be no complaints at all. Hopefully it’s just opening pains.

Also, the dining room staff seems to be suffering from lack of coordination. The service was pleasant, but just wasn’t in sync. Serving carts would be ceremoniously set next to the table, then whisked away before anything had been served. The diners at the table next to us found fault with the way their beef was cooked and there was no effort made to correct the mistake. (After this and another complaint about the beef, I visited Oz again, breaking my self-imposed ban, specifically to test the steak preparation. My tournedos was exceptional, but, lo and behold, it was cooked one grade too much.) The usually charming and delightful sommelier, Igor, couldn’t have cared less about the carafe of house wine ($8) and the half bottle of Burgundy I ordered. But on a subsequent visit, he vindicated himself by personally selecting an unlisted wine for me. It was exceptionally good and a perfect accompaniment to the dishes I had ordered. It is the little things that establish a reputation, and I hope that these nits will be ironed out before your visit to Oz.

The wine list is as impressive as the menu. Most of the bottles are in the $10-$20 range and are carefully selected to complement your dinner. The house wines ($8 en carafe) are also quite good and complement most of the dishes on the menu. All of the wines represent good values even though several are over $40 per bottle and a few on the prestige list are in the $100 range.

Oz is a private club and dinner is by reservation only. Call for membership information.

Food*****

Service ****

Ambience ****

(5429 LBJ Freeway/233-5755/Tue.-Sun . 6-11 p.m./Reservations only/MC, BA, AE)



The atmosphere at The Bellmaster, according to the Bellmaster, can be likened only to San Francisco, New York and New Orleans. I’m not sure how one place can be likened to three such distinct places, especially if that place is in North Dallas’ Carillon complex. At any rate, the restaurant is quite pleasant for lunch or a cocktail.

In fact, lunch at The Bellmaster is one of the most enjoyable experiences in Dallas dining. The service is smooth and cordial, the food reasonably priced and good, and an aura of relaxed elegance surrounds you.

Boudreaux shrimp ($2.25) is a pleasant appetizer consisting of two large shrimp with an indescribably good sauce, remoulade-type with avo-cadoes and herbs. The liver pate ($2) is pleasantly seasoned and served in ample portions. The marinated crab claws ($2.75 for two persons) are somewhat soggy, but the vinaigrette marinade is good.

The lunch entrees include soup and a somewhat soggy salad. The onion soup is flavorful and rich. The vichys-soise is fine but not overwhelming. The turtle soup, available a la carte, is the clear variety and only fair. The gumbo, also a la carte, is delicious – truly Creole.

The entrees are priced from $3.50-$7 and the portions are Lucullan. The frog legs ($7) are huge and cooked perfectly in a light batter and served with the Boudreaux special sauce (same as the shrimp). The veal scallops in whiskey ($7) were said to be in a light whiskey sauce, but turned out to be in a rich cream sauce with a hint of whiskey. They were excellent, huge, and very filling.

At night, the whole scene changes. The room is somehow not as pleasant in artificial light. And there’s a menu change -the same selections at higher prices (the same shrimp Bou-dreaux are now $2.95) with soup and salad a la carte. Wine, which seems more important at an evening meal, is expensive. Everything, including the service, is slicker but not as personal. The live entertainment is good but also contributes to the change in feeling. The change is slight, but definitely perceptible.

The food at night is generally as good as at lunch (but once I had a thin vichyssoise garnished with paprika which was not so good). The Lamb Chops Royale ($9) are a pleasant oasis in the Dallas lamb desert. You get two large double chops cooked to order with mint jelly and spiced peanut butter. (I tried the spiced peanut butter in the interest of objective gas-tro-journalism but couldn’t appreciate it. A malaisian speciality, no doubt.) The whole baby flounder is very good and seemed absolutely fresh, but I didn’t care for the pan roasted oysters Orleans.

Once again, at night the portions were so large I couldn’t manage dessert.

All in all, a much better bet for lunch than dinner.

Food ***

Service ***

Ambience ****

(Carillon Plaza, 13601 Preston Rd./661-9353/Lunch: Mon-Fri. 11:30-2:30. Dinner: Mon-Fri. 5-12, Sat 6:30-12/Bar, “membership” only, til Fri. & Sat/Reservations/ MC.BA)