Observer Restaurant Critic Brian Reinhart Says Good Bye for Now


So long and thanks for all the tacos.

I’ve been the Dallas Observer’s food reviewer for five and a half years and have 144 official restaurant reviews, but this ride ends October 1st. I stop pursuing my dream career: full-time influencer on Instagram. Was just a joke.

Something else is in the works and it won’t affect it, I promise. But it does mean the Observer is looking for his next restaurant critic. We have some talented candidates around to replace me and make sure our lively, opinionated and independent restaurant coverage stays as great as ever. They’ll also make sure that the next Top 100 Restaurant feature is even more informative, diverse, and surprising than mine.

But hey, you might be the next Observer reviewer, and more information will follow shortly if you want to give it a try.

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In the meantime, I’ll take a moment to act like a proud Papa Bear and get super nostalgic and tearful about my five favorite moments from this job. These are not the top five meals or five best papers I’ve given. It’s just strong, wild memories of five years of having the craziest and best job in the world.

click to enlarge Are you ready for a trip to Cheese Island?  - KATHY TRAN

Are you ready for a trip to Cheese Island?

Kathy Tran

The first time I had Cheese Island in Butthole. Back in 2016, Ben and Jon Lee, the brothers who own LA Burger, recommended a Korean bar in Carrollton. I thought, “That’s good to know,” and then inexplicably waited a whole year to visit it. I finally did it after checking the Yelp page and seeing a strange pattern: every single Korean-American reviewer commented on how hilarious the name was, or the name was offensive, or the name was offensive to a place that serves food .

That’s how I found out that Ddong Ggo means asshole. Or, in the words of founder Brian Chong, “more precisely, chicken asshole”.

And so we set out and discovered the joy of his signature dish, Cheese Island: a mountain of fried chicken (the island) in a small ocean of melted mozzarella cheese. It might be a stupid gimmick, but instead the fried chicken was really great. All of the food in the bar was like this: it sounded like a gimmick but was brilliant. I still dream of the mashup between a kimchi pancake and a cheese pizza.

Rumor has it that Ddong Ggo is no longer what it used to be under new ownership. Those rumors should be wrong because what it used to be was the funniest restaurant in the whole universe, and if we lose that I’ll be very, very sad.

That was when I got my first hate mail. It was from a dog. The dog had a Twitter account, which unfortunately no longer exists. Every day the dog posted selfies, said things like “woof” and uploaded pictures of the specials in its owner’s restaurant. Then I checked the restaurant which unfortunately wasn’t good (our bill was over $ 50 each but they ran out of dessert because they hadn’t bought enough of it at the grocery store).

That made the dog very angry. It interrupted its busy life of belly rubbing and fetching to tweet me a series of angry messages about how unprofessional I was. “You should be ashamed,” said the dog.

You never forget the first time you disappoint a dog.

click to enlarge What if this was lasagna?  - BRIAN REINHART

What if this was lasagna?

Brian Reinhart

At that time I had dinner in a sculptor’s studio. One of the coolest dinners I’ve ever had was in a temporary sculpture studio installation at the Fairmont Hotel downtown. The artist Dan Lam filled the room with her bizarre work – all soft, almost bouncing sculptures that anyone could bump, touch and pass around – and the pop-up group Nameless Chefs came with equally creative food. (Their names were Joshua Farrell, who now serves great cheesesteaks at Will Call, and Jeremy Hess.)

They asked questions like, “What if Caesar salad was soup?” “What if Salisbury steak but Wagyu?” And “What if that whole lasagna was that sticky, cheesy burnt bit on the edge?” Then they approached each of those very stupid questions with the sophistication of very intelligent cooks. And miraculously, the answers were all resoundingly delicious. Playing with your food has never been so fun.

click to enlarge The story of Circo TX is not finished yet.  - ALISON MCLEAN

The story of Circo TX is not finished yet.

Alison McLean

Back then, a restaurant collapsed and there was a lot of drama. I knew Circo was bad after visiting twice to write our review, which I wrote in an experimental style that confused a reader or two (it was an imaginary conversation between the restaurant’s imaginary founders). But aside from the mysterious lack of many ingredients and the tiny list of main dishes, I had no evidence of the real problems with Circo.

Then over a dozen former employees reached out to me, encouraged by the poor review, to paint a picture of what they thought was the most chaotic restaurant in Dallas history: money worries, a chef who stopped on first dinner , wild parties, paychecks made with a quick pay app, even a rumor about a mysterious regular in a tuxedo (although strangely, only one person has ever seen that regular. Was Circo haunted?).

When I got a tip that the restaurant would close soon, it was about talking to as many people as possible and describing the whole madness clearly. The resulting article is my most read article of all time.

There are two kickers here. One is that I missed the scariest detail of all, which was instead captured by Sarah Blaskovich of The Dallas Morning News: The restaurant’s rooftop pool had been sabotaged in “urine-littering incidents.” What? How do you throw urine exactly? I wish I had known how to ask.

The other kicker is that Circo is hiring again, according to a screenshot from the job exchange that was sent to me last month.

click to enlarge Hammelkottu at SpicyZest - BRIAN REINHART

Mutton kottu at SpicyZest

Brian Reinhart

The whole time the restaurant was empty. I’ve written about it before, but it doesn’t feel like walking into an empty restaurant, wondering where everyone is and then eating exceptionally good food.

When I first started criticizing the Dallas Observer, I was sitting in an empty restaurant eating an incredible sandwich. The lonely employee was so bored that she went too and left me all alone. I wondered how to pay. Should I leave cash on the table?

Then my mind turned to the bigger problem: where was everyone? Why weren’t they here? I thought this restaurant just needed a good break. They need one thing to make their way, and then they are no longer empty.

And then enlightenment struck: I was the break.

Hopefully that doesn’t sound egomaniacal. It wasn’t an ego trip for me. It was a responsibility. In all these five years at the service of the Observer and its readers, it has been a responsibility and duty to give dozens of restaurants a break. All of my fondest memories of the job start with empty dining rooms. Every single one.

click to enlarge Super long Niku (!) At Ebesu - ALISON MCLEAN

Super long Niku (!) At Ebesu

Alison McLean

The Bilad Bakery was the empty restaurant that evening. But SpicyZest was empty too. The Lima Taverna was literally empty on every visit and we were so concerned that we rushed to print the review because we didn’t know if they would be able to pay another month’s rent. Express Kabob was so empty I picked up a chair and dropped it dramatically for someone to come out of the kitchen.

Nobody will believe me now, but the tasting menu in the Revolver Taco Lounge was empty when it opened. One night it was just me and my friend; Another evening, Regino Rojas told me, it was just one person – the restaurant critic of another publication.

Fattoush was empty for the first time, and the Iraqi lamb kebab there is the only meal I ate on this job that was so good it made me cry. (I had a couple of drinks.)

I claim zero credit for the achievements of these restaurants. Their success is due to their own amazing talents, skills, and tastes. But it’s the honor of life to be responsible for introducing these companies to new fans. Our next critic will also feel this duty and this honor.

Even today, years later, people write to me on Twitter or Reddit that they are regulars at Bilad or Fattoush because they saw an Observer article, or that they spent their birthday in La Resistencia or Ebesu because of my suggestion. And the joy I feel when I hear something like this – well, it beats a million chocolate chip cookies.

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