We visited Dallas for a family event. Being Europeans, we’re not used to American culture, so we had some surprises:
- Some restaurants and cafés serve food at the table in boxes;
- Many places served bad coffee, although I found nothing spitworthy;
- There were a shocking number of homeless people, as though the locals lack empathy;
- I understand the main endemic languages are English and Spanish, but most of the bilingual documents I saw were in English and French;
- Texans don’t tip the cleaners in public toilets, although admittedly that was with a sample size of two;
Since it’s Dallas, we had to try Tex-Mex cuisine. We ate a pretty good lunch at Miriam’s, in the arts district. The flavour was clean and happy, the dish was light yet filling: it was, for me, a near perfect lunch. If you’re there, try it out.
We ate in two Italian restaurants. Each celebrate their Italian roots loudly, but were really about as Italian as a Chinese dumpling—neither served espresso! Having said that, the first, Revenna, did a pretty good tagliatelle with cheese sauce. The second, Campisi’s, served the worst pizza I have eaten in my life. It was absolutely disgusting. The only flavour was salt. If someone invites you to a meal there, tell them no, you’ve got prior commitment smell–testing the exhibits in a fart museum.
Dallas coffee was sometimes good, sometimes poor. As I said above, I found nothing awful. I didn’t find an excellent coffee bar, although the local Starbucks was perfectly good. Two coffee places bizarrely served their espresso unpleasently tepid. Fortunately, the bakery next to our hotel (the Westin) served a perfectly good espresso, with an over–salty breakfast in boxes, so my morning meals were confusing, but sorted.
Overall, the city was an interesting place to visit. We didn’t have time to do more than skim the surface, but we skimmed enough surface to know, like many big cities, there’s a lot more to explore.