Honoring Dallas Food History

Bethany Anderson has a great article on her Eleventy Billionth blog that hit a cord, it's about honoring Dallas history. I've written about the original Dallas food superstar, Helen Corbitt in previous posts because we can so easily forget our history. In her day, her cookbooks outsold Julia's, she was the food goddess of Neiman Marcus, the premier retailer of the rich and famous (ok, so my grandmother shopped there too).

I've spent the last several weeks interviewing chef friends about their early days in Dallas, many, many of today's restaurant "families" go way back, working together in some of the finest Dallas restaurants of the late 1970's and 1980's. The Mansion, Le Rendezvous, Cafe Pacific, Nostromo (and Shannon's other -o places), Dakota's, Nana, The Melrose, The Adolphus, Riviera, Pyramid Room (anyone else remember the awesome Velvet Elvis?). Dean, Travis, Jean Pierre, Adelmo, Jimmy, Richard, Franco, Kent, Kevin, Buzzy, Alberto, Stephan, David. These were the ingredients of the restaurant soup that makes up our community even through today.

I'm hoping to accumulate these stories (and pulling some from the many Dallas cookbooks I've accumulated) to highlight the rich food history that Dallas has seen come and go over the last 100 years. For what purpose? I'm not quite sure yet, but I'm certain there's at least one great story I'll uncover that we'll be glad we remember.