The restaurant‘s plate of six sliders is great to share as an appetizer, or enough to act as an entree. The trio includes two mini cheeseburgers, two with sliced brisket (executive chef Susie Buck‘s specialty), and two with grilled peppers and onions (so good, we promise you won’t miss the meat). If you want, however, you can order half burgers and half brisket (Buck’s recipe is a dry rub with three spices, slow-cooked for a minimum of five hours), or all grilled veggies, or any other combination.

Fries don’t come with this $7.75 appetizer, but we recommend ordering a side of them — Jack’s Backyard has a potato-wedge version that, amazingly, remain piping hot throughout your meal.

It may seem a stretch to take a chef who trained at a New York vegan culinary school and stick her in the kitchen of a diner that focuses on comfort food. But Chef Robin Gill Lacy, who came to the Cliff Cafe from Whole Foods, took over last September and has been slowly but surely making the place her own since then.

Her training means that the menu now has plenty of vegeterian options, Lacy says, but ample meat dishes remain. For example, the BLT comes with the customer’s choice of pork, turkey or tempeh bacon. And no bacon fat is used to make the gravy — though you wouldn’t know it by the way it tastes, Lacy points out.

More on the food, after the jump:

I was told that the black bean burger is one of the tastiest items on the menu, whether you’re a vegeterian or not. So I tried it, and was pleasantly surprised to find a thick, tasty patty. I chose to top it with granny smith apples and brie cheese, subtle but good, and opted for the soup of the day — a cream of corn and tomato — instead of the fries.

Another nice touch was the side of cornichons (which I later learned was the French word for gherkin) that Lacy pickles with red onion. I didn’t put these on my burger, but instead ate them out of the tiny bowl. We also ordered a couple of sides of deviled eggs as appetizers, which hit the spot. Make sure to order enough so that everyone can eat two.

I’ve not yet tried breakfast, but hear that the sweet potato pancakes are amazing. And I’m planning to try the buffalo mac and cheese the next time I’m at the Cliff Cafe for dinner.

Restaurant Review: Tejano’s

Not much on my list of childhood favorites withstand the test of time. Tejano’s, that big, beautiful Tex-Mex joint on Davis, is one of the rare exceptions. Sure, I have an appreciated adult taste for sushi bars, vegan diners and veal Frito pies, but I also have a soft spot for taco specials, enchilada plates, and free chips and salsa.

Just to make sure I wouldn’t write too biased a review for one of my favorite restaurants, I took along a friend from North Dallas who had never eaten there. The first thing he noticed was the huge circular dining room and wrought iron chandelier hanging above rows of red plastic booths. A big, stained-glass window depicting Spanish ships and Mexican Indians is lit up on one side of the wall, and photos of Marylin Monroe Elvis Presley hang on another.

My friend and I decided to order from the lunch menu and he settles on enchiladas sonoras and a small, 99 cent frozen margarita that might remind one in taste and appearances of a Slurpee. After eating here for years, I find something on the menud I’ve never ordered, a mini chimichanga. I pick it based on the sides, because as my friend pointed out, it’s the sides that matter with Tex-Mex. If the main falls short, I know I can make do with guacomole, queso, salsa, rice and beans.

The enchiladas come with shredded beef and red ranchero sauce with sour cream and rice and beans. It’s yummy, simple, and filled my friend up fast, which is good because once it got cold, the rest wasn’t so appetizing. My mini deep-friend burrito came with a cheese sauce reminiscent of Kraft and a texture that can only be described as “velvety.” It was crunchy, tasty, cheesy—basically comfort (or childhood) on a plate. It kept me full for the rest of the day, which is also good because I would hate to count the calories on that plate.

All together, the whole tab—two lunches, two small margaritas, flan and tip—was under $25. If it’s cheap, hot, fast and tasty you’re looking for when you’re entertaining in Oak Cliff, then look for the big red white and blue sign at the south west corner of Beckley and Davis.

I’ve been wanting to try the new restaurant for some time — Rob Shearer first mentioned it in his October column, and other neighbors sent out the word as soon as they saw the "open" sign in March. I stopped by a few weeks ago for lunch, but a sign was hanging in the window stating "closed for maintenance repairs".

Dinner this week worked out, however. Right now is prime patio weather, so my fellow diner and I chose ConFusion’s little outdoor enclave, complete with zen fountain, fireplace, and round-bulb string lights. It was a bit noisy, what with the traffic on Davis and the car wash right next door, but the ambiance was pretty nice. Other diners apparently had the same idea — the patio as full by the time we left at 7, with one lone diner eating inside the restaurant.

Servers were definitely attentive. My water glass was refilled (and offered to be refilled) probably 20 times in a 1.5-hour period. Now, to the food, after the jump:

We started with the dim sum, which were esssentially dumplings filled with shrimp, pork and sausage with a sweet chile sauce for dipping. The dish had six of them for roughly $7, and they were yummy.

As an entree, I ordered the Con Fusion cashew dish, and my friend ordered something with a much more complicated name that featured broccoli, peanuts and peanut sauce. Most of the menu items were right around $10, including ours. We both chose chicken as our meat (beef, pork and tofu were the other choices, plus seafood options like shrimp and scallops for an extra $3). The waiter also recommended the pad thai and the thai curry dishes. I love pad thai, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’ll like it, so I tend to try something else when testing out a new restaurant, and I’m not a curry fan, so I stayed away from that portion of the menu.

We were both pleased with our choices. The chicken and broccoli dish was pretty much drenched in peanut sauce, which my friend loved, and my dish included all kinds of crisply-cooked veggies — red peppers, onions, mushrooms, baby corn, scallions — swimming in a mild and tangy sauce. (That was another choice — mild, medium or hot could be applied to any dish.) The portions were ample, and we also loved the presentation; mine was a large square dish, and hers came in a taller square dish with a star-shaped bowl inside. The white rice was served in a pyramid shape.

The restaurant was BYOB while it was in the process of getting its liqor license, but a sign on the front window notifies customers that the license is now in hand and not to bring in their own liquor any longer. It appears that ConFusion is still working n this portion of its menu — the wrinkled print-out we were presented with the restaurant’s wine and beer list had more than half of its options crossed out.

Two more things to note: ConFusion does have lunch portions at lower prices, and serves sushi at dinner time.

Believe it or not. The soon-to-be-released America’s Best BBQ lists 100 of the best barbecue recipes from the best barbecue joints around the country, and none of them are around here. There are 15 restaurants in Texas, but none is closer than Euless – North Main BBQ’s Glazed Barbecue Ribs.

Surprisingly, none of the other Metroplex standbys are listed either: No Angelo’s, Railhead or Sonny Bryan’s. And, for some odd reason, it includes barbecue from Italy.

I promised long ago that I would sample (and review) one of Eno’s salads. I’m finally getting around to it, and just in time — spring is edging toward us, and the balmier months are the perfect time to eat salad.

We focused on the pizza in our original article on Eno’s, but the salads are just as tasty and hearty. Pictured is the General Store salad, with all kinds of veggies plus fennel, peppered pork belly, blue cheese and warm viniagrette. (Each salad is served with warm roasted bread, which you can see in the background.)

The General Store is on my list to try, but when I recently dined at Eno’s, a friend and I split the Streetside salad, which is topped with sweet peppers, olives, bell peppers, shallots, tomatoes, feta and cucumber dill dressing. Yum. We also ordered a Moma’s pie, and took about half of the pizza home.

I finally sampled one of Bolsa‘s red raspberry sangrias this week, and quickly realized the fruit juice and wine aren’t the only elements that make the drink — it’s also the crushed ice.

Ice is important (as anyone who chooses to make the drive to Sonic rather than to the nearby convenience store would attest), and Bolsa’s ice is just like Sonic’s ice. When asked if the restaurant buys their ice from Sonic, however, Bolsa co-founder Christopher Jeffers quickly squelched the idea. The restaurant uses so much ice, he says, that it bought a 750-pound custom ice machine to keep the drinks on the rocks. Also, the ice is perfect for packing fish and meat, Jeffers says.

By the way, if you Google "Sonic ice", you’ll quickly find the ice machine website featuring the "Scotsman MDT2C12", which creates what is known as "cubelet ice, ‘Sonic™ Ice’, ‘the rabbit turd’ ice or nugget ice" which "can enhance your drinking experience by melting more slowly and is easy to chew once your drink is consumed." Maybe this is the machine that Bolsa acquired? 

Dave Faries interviews Kavala chef-owner Kelly Hightower in this piece. Read it to find out why Hightower thinks he and others are drawn to Oak Cliff, and his favorite restaurants in our neighborhood (hint: one is his former executive chef post).

And since we’re on the topic of Kavala, the restaurant recently instituted some changes to combat the economic downturn, among them:

• Resuming lunch daily from 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

• All-day happy hour on Tuesdays

• Half-price pizzas on Wednesdays until 7 p.m.

• $6 martinis from 5-10 p.m. Thursdays

• A four-course prix fixe $30 menu on Sundays

I’m so glad that my fellow diner at Beckley BrewHouse suggested the fresh strawberry salad as part of our lunch. I start craving salads around this time of year when the weather gets warmer, and the fact that strawberries are in season (or close to it) made this one all the better.

Other than fresh strawberries, the field greens salad was topped with candied walnuts and crumbled bleu cheese, and tossed in a strawberry viniagrette. It hit the spot. We also had the pesto margarita pizza — basil pesto sauce, mozzarella, parmesan and fresh tomatoes — which was tasty as well, but I think I was in more of a salad mood.

And speaking of springtime weather, the majority of the BrewHouse’s dining area is outside, so take advantage of the restaurant’s patio before it gets too hot.

Be forewarned that if you head to Jack’s Backyard on a Sunday from 11 a.m.-3 p.m., you won’t be able to order from the lunch menu. But that was perfectly fine with me because I’m a huge fan of brunch — and good brunch, at that.

My choice was the Jack’s Benedict, which is pretty much eggs Benedict with bacon instead of ham, plus avocado. I ate every bite, and asked the waitress for toast to sop up the rest of the egg yolk and hollandaise. (Jack’s also has a couple of other Benedict variations on the menu.) My husband stuck with something simple — biscuits and gravy — and was more than satisfied. Another friend ordered an omelet; and another a piece of toast with a cooked egg in the middle, which included the cut-out circle of toast for "soppin’", according to the menu. I didn’t see much food left on plates by the time we finished our meal — a good sign.

None of us ordered the adult brunch beverages, but I saw plenty of tables around us with what looked like mimosas and bloody Marys, so I’m assuming that Jack’s bar — which may be bigger than the restaurant area — could whip up any kind of beverage patrons want.