RESTAURANTS

Who is that man robed in heavy red velvet, and why is he capering along the dangerous edge of Saturday afternoon traffic on Upper Greenville? At least, one must hope, he’s being paid for what he is doing-a dance intended to lure jaded seekers of fun and frolic into his place of employment. We, on the other hand, are here to plunk down twenty-nine of our own good dollars each for the dubious pleasure of joining several dozen strangers packed hip-to-hip along naked plank tables and eating juicy foods with our fingers. Beguiled betimes by a game troupe of costumed players, we will obediently don gilded-paper crowns, raise our plastic beer mugs on cue, and stickily applaud the king’s jokes, the minstrel’s music, the magician’s ability to pull many live doves out of his sleeve.

The scene of all this mildly brazen tomfoolery is the Royal Feasting Theatre of the new Medieval Inn, which is betting that out-of-towners, conventioneers, and, yes, even real Dallasites are ready for a sort of throwback dinner theater-one that might result, say, from a chance mating of Scarborough Faire and Dick’s Last Resort. The more conventional side of the inn’s operation, a restaurant called The Pub, is reviewed elsewhere in this issue (see “Eating Around,” page 91). The whole enterprise stands out as probably the most adventurous new entry in a Dallas dining season destined to be made up otherwise, it appears, mainly of reruns, revivals, and repertory revisions.

The current most persistent activity points in the revised repertory direction. Without putting too fine a point on the dining-as-theater parallels, that reference mostly applies to an ongoing shift of young chefs from merely respected cast members at near-past seasons’ hottest openers to starring roles in new American productions, their own or someone else’s. Blame-or credit- the economy downturn we’re all tired of talking about: Dallas diners have gotten as dollar-conscious as a gone-broke bank’s new board.

Accordingly, fortune (or lack of it) has dealt us a heaping new handful of choices in some of our best-loved locations. Jack Chaplin, former City Cafe chef, has opened his own restaurant and grill on Lower Greenville to good notices (See “Eating Around”). David Feder, of Sam’s Cafe fame, will launch his own place in December. Ed Guinen only cooked at the Mansion and Crescent Court; he heads the kitchen at the Buffalo Club, an American grill in Deep Ellum. Chef William Gutherie, who helped launch Elm Street Winery, now holds the kitchen reins at the Quadrangle Grill,

Meanwhile, will the slow drift toward a Mediterranean invasion become a mainstream current as predicted? A couple of recent North Dallas establishments (Michelangelo’s, Pasticcio’s) have built some momentum; perhaps the Grand Kempinski’s new Monte Carlo, as yet unreviewed, will turn the tide from American grilling to the combined nuances of southern France and northern Italy.

Meanwhile, too. the reruns raise their own questions: will Cafe Margaux regain the ground it lost moving from Lovers Lane to that vast Oak Lawn mausoleum, now that Tom and Kay Agnew have moved it to cozier quarters? Will Del Frisco, whose name used to be Dale Wamstad, bring red-meat lovers back to his reopened Lemmon Avenue establishment in the same droves he drew before selling out to Mike Piper, who transplanted to The Crescent?

And finally, back at the ranch: does the newest and gaudiest departure in dining, Medieval Inn, really represent a significant trend? God help us if it does: the all-aged crowd there when we visited seemed to have a grand time mastering black bean soup without a spoon, but please-I’d rather think of this eat-with-your-fingers idea as a one-shot solution to a poignant question that waits to haunt us all: where are the yups of yesteryear to go when they outgrow Dick’s?