Bringing You the Best

IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, ONE OF THE FIRST things you turn to in D Magazine each month is the dining reviews. In this restaurant-crazed town, keeping up with the best places to eat is a sport, one that for many outstrips the Cowboys, shopping, and trying to figure out why the TV show “Walker, Texas Ranger,” is such a big hit.

For more than 20 years, D Magazine has been the premier voice in dining criticism in Dallas/Fort Worth, the place readers have turned for straightforward, well-informed opinions about the food scene.

To continue that tradition, this month we present the all-new, revamped CityGuide, which gives visitors as well as residents a fresh, frank guide to dining, shopping, neighborhoods, and events.

The debut of the new CityGuide marks the return of dining critic Mary Brown Malouf to our magazine. For five years, from 1987 to 1993, Mary wrote a monthly dining column for D, as well as regular features about food, design, and lifestyle. For the last three years, she’s written a dining column for the Dallas Observer. Her depth of knowledge about food and acerbic, lively style make her new column, “No Reservations,” a must-read for anyone who cares about dining in Dallas.

Mary has worked in nearly every phase of the restaurant business; she’s been a caterer, owned a cafe and gourmet shop, has styled food and art-directed the photography for cookbooks, and is a board member and newsletter editor of the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Wine and Food. (Her early career didn’t reveal this passion for food; Mary has a degree in Latin from the University of Texas.)

Her debut as dining critic coincides with that of Nancy Nichols as food editor. Nancy wrote dining criticism for D in 1974, its first year in publication. (She swears she and writer David Bauer, now an editor at Sports Illustrated, discovered Herrera ’s at the start of the Tex-Mex craze.) After her stint at D, Nancy worked in Dallas’ first wine bar. La Cave, where she ran the kitchen. She then moved to Los Angeles and started her own business planning events for rock bands, film studios, and corporations. In her spare time, she traveled around the world in search of the perfect plate of gnocchi. (Nancy is the only person I know who returns from a trip to Europe not with pictures of cathedrals, but snapshots of her meals.)

Nancy has overhauled D’s restaurant listings, honing in on each restaurant’s essence and expanding the number of restaurants reviewed. She’ll direct our dozen or so “Revisits” of established restaurants in order to keep our coverage current. Sprinkled in the restaurant reviews are food and drink tidbits called “Sidedishes,” information that foodies will gobble up. We have also redesigned the reviews to make them easier to read-a small detail, but something that makes CityGuide more reader-friendly.

Overseeing the redesign is CityGuide editor and staff writer Adam McGill, who brings energy, enthusiasm, and wit to the whole section. (When we’re on deadline and stuck for a headline, we can always count on Adam to come up with something funny-and sometimes even printable.) Each month, CityGuide will now highlight the ’Top 10 Things to Do” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as well as an extensive calendar of events for the month. All event and restaurant listings now include map coordinates, too.

More changes are coming in D as we continue to bring you the most vibrant and informative magazine in Dallas. We appreciate your feedback. Send letters to the edi-:or to my attention. Our e-mail address is [email protected].