The Well-Fed Bong

When I went to Dallas people joked about how I was going to have to stick to steak everyday, and for the first week (not knowing any better) thats what I did - and a New York steakhouse at that. A little enthusiasm on the Internet showed me, however, that Dallas had a very lively dining scene with choices like seafood and even salads in quaint neighborhoods and hidden nooks that would compete favorably with the best in the country. Many of them were beautiful restaurants, some tiny, some huge, decorated with vert individual styles and serving excellent and distinctive food. Here are my favorite ones so far, not ranked in any order. They all serve essentially the same cuisine - modern American with southern and mexican touches. Surprisingly enough, most places are heavy on fish - but in landlocked Dallas excellent quality nevertheless. The one I've been to most often is Jaspers; its right by where I work and is open for lunch and serves a sophisticated take on American food with s...

Vegetables often have these inconvenient biological barriers that need to be removed using advanced devices called peelers. There's obviously quite some tachnology involved, given the wide variety of different kinds of peelers in the market, but they all serve the same basic purpose - to strip certain kinds of veggies naked and fill up garbage cans. I cannot do too much about those naked vegetables, but Bengalis are sensitive about filling up garbage cans (possibly because of Kolkata municipal corporation's dismal record in emptying them). They have, therefore, come up with various options to avoid the trash can - many of which are ridiculously tasty. Here are two choices that I love. First is the potato. Peeling the average potato yields a fairly substantial volume of potato peel, and Bengalis wash them up, cut them into inch-sized pieces, add a touch of flour, dip them in a generous handful of poppyseed and deep fry them to the most delicious, incredibly crispy fries ever. B...