Regular Joe's Guide

Last visit: Jun 2013 First visit: Jan 2012 Oscar's moved up north to Sanger, and then closed as well. For our money, Oscar's is the best Mexican "interior" styled restaurant in NE Tarrant. Oh sure, they have tacos y enchiladas, but that's not what they excel at. Sample some of their specialty dishes, and I think you'll agree that Oscar's has some very unique recipes and flavors, which distinguishes them from other restaurants in the area. My favorite dish is the chicken breast smothered in a creamy ancho chile wash (Pollo Cozumel). Has a slight kick and is delicious. The rice and beans are well prepared and it also comes with a small salad. Mrs. RJG has a similar dish except she prefers the green poblano sauce. Chips and salsa are fairly standard, but they do have an excellent creamy jalapeno sauce if you ask for a spicier option. Oscar's is a "destination" Mexican restaurant, with a full bar and beautiful surroundings. Give it a try if y...

Mar 27, 2022 update: The last two locations closed in Jul 2019. Last visit: Jun 2013 (Richardson) First visit: 1991? (Addison) --- Original review I first ran into Humperdink's at their Addison location in the early 1990s. They're still in Addison, but they've since moved to the south side of Belt Line. It wasn't far from where I worked in those days, and it became somewhat of a "guys at work hangout". We'd have lunch, or draft players for fantasy football or baseball there - that kind of thing. At that time, Humperdink's called itself a sports bar, and they still very much have that look and feel. But during the time that we lived in Colorado, they made a key switch to calling themselves a brewery as well. Mr. RJG thinks that's a great move, as local breweries appeals to me greatly. Perhaps I got spoiled in Colorado, as brewpubs are far more active there than here in DFW (2013 note - and we're finally starting to catch up!). Humperdink...

Last visit: Jun 2013 First visit: Mar 2010 Tirelli's is looking more and more like a place you'd see in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. The windows are covered with blaring specials of sandwiches, pastas, pizzas, etc... In Long Island, South Philly or any Chicago burb, many of these type of restaurants were originally fully operating delicatessen's and butcher shops. Some of them still are. So they would plaster on the window their specials of rump roast or dry salami for x$ a pound. Sometimes with white shoe polish. Somehow Tirelli's has managed to create that same feel here in a modern Texas suburb. Once inside, the place transforms to the more familiar sites of flat screen TVs and a welcome dining area. You order at the counter - and you'll notice right away that there's a dizzying array of items to choose from. You may want to familiarize yourself with the menu before heading over. All I've had to date is their Philly Cheese and Hot Pastrami on R...

Uncle Julio's decided to shut down Mi Chula's (it was a weird concept to be honest) and plan to reopen it as Herencia sometime in 2018. Last visit: Dec 2013 First visit: Jun 2013 Mi Chula's opened right around the time I started this blog, but maybe surprising to you all, this ended up being our first visit here. The reason I'd held off was because of the fact that I knew it was related to Uncle Julio's, and figured it was just a "fast casual" variation of the same restaurant. Now we like Uncle Julio's, even though I haven't added it to this blog yet - primarily because it's been many a year since we last dined there. And, quite frankly, there are better options out there. And more or less, our presumption was correct: Mi Chula's is a quick service, order-at-the-counter, limited menu version of Uncle Julio's. In a nutshell, Mi Chula's is to Uncle Julio's what Pei Wei is to PF Changs. And, perhaps not surprisingly, they are locat...

Latest visit: Dec 2021 (Colorado Springs - Interquest) First visit: Jun 2013 (Southlake, Texas) Well lookee here. As I said in an update, it's as if we never left Texas. Right across the street from Fuzzy's is a new Torchy's, Austin's finest taco house. It's been open a few months now, so we gave it time to process the crowds. Catty corner to this is In-N-Out Burger which still hasn't seen the lines deplete. In any case, we haven't been back to Torchy's since 2015, at the Southlake location, where the reviews and updates below came from. Like Fuzzy's, this Torchy's is much more spacious than the one we were used to. Wide open space, and here they have a full bar, that looks really nice. It wasn't crowded at all on this day, and we ordered right away. Mrs. RJG & I went with some old favorites like Green Chile, Baja Shrimp (we each had this), and the Brisket tacos. Bad news. Not anywhere near as good as the below review suggests. First of ...

First visit: Jun 2013 A few years ago,  I wrote about the RJG's history with Herrera's , especially the Carrollton, Maple Avenue, and Oak Lawn locations. The Carrollton location closed, and it appears the venerable family of Tex-Mex restaurateurs pooled their money for a much nicer location in the trendy multi-use Mockingbird Station area (Central Expressway and Mockingbird). My original intention was to revisit the Oak Lawn location, but since Mrs. RJG and I needed to run over to Kuby's to buy a pile of their awesome sausages (especially Italian - both hot and mild) for the next few months, the new location was much more convenient. So let's give it a try shall we? For those expecting a dingy cafe, with plastic tablecloths, black vinyl booths with stuffing coming out, and a worn out menu with a sleepy Mexican guy wanting his menudo, then you're in for a surprise. So what exactly does an old school institution do to draw in a more well-heeled clientele? Fo...

They did finally close the south Dallas location only to reopen on Harry Hines. Herrera's continues to live on (11/29/24). Latest visit: Jun 2013 (Dallas Mockingbird - closed) First visit: 1991 (Maple Ave - closed) Herrera's, who once had many restaurants around DFW - and we tried almost all of them - are now down to 2. One is their old south Dallas location, ironically the only one we never went to. The other is in Addison, which might be a reopening situation, not sure. In the 1980s, me and my running pack would occasionally head down to Maple Avenue to devour some delicious Tex-Mex. That's where we would find our quartet of favorites, and they're all still operating to this day: Herrera's, Avila's , Rosita's, and Ojeda's. This was the era when Tex-Mex was a burgeoning phenomena, and long lines greeted visitors to all of these places. So much was the rage, that even National Geographic featured the original Herrera's when they inhabited a tiny pueb...

Latest visit: Jun 2013 First visit: Apr 2005 Roughly four years ago, the Mrs. RJG and I visited Kassandra's one Sunday for lunch, enjoyed it immensely, and.... inexplicably never went back. I cannot put my finger on any one reason why. It had been suggested from time to time. "How 'bout Kassandra's?" either of us would ask. "Maybe next time". Finally one recent evening I put my foot down, and said "We're going to Kassandra's". "OK". No explanation what our hesitation was, especially considering how good it is - as we found out again . Kassandra's is a typical hole-in-the-wall you find in worn out suburban strip centers from the 1980s and before. The kind that breeds the non-denominational start-up churches and a handful of other small businesses. For any dedicated RJG follower, this is where you have to look to find the gems. Once you walk in, it feels like an old diner somewhere in small town West Texas. It's a fa...

First visit: Jun 2013 For the second week in a row, Mrs. RJG and I decided to head to the other side of US-377 and try a newly opened Mexican restaurant. And like last week's Elote, Las Pinatas (forgive the lack of the diacritic here - I'm just too lazy to copy one in) was certainly good, but nothing exceptional. We'll get into that here in a minute. First let's talk about the history of Las Piñatas (OK, I found the right phonetic). This is the former Jalapeno's in Keller, which we wrote about a couple of years ago . Here's what I wrote in Urbanspoon: "The name change is a good idea, since I think it was causing confusion with the nearby taqueria of the same name (but different owners)." We liked Jalapeno's, though granted we only went a couple of times. Perhaps Las Piñatas is even better. Is it? No. About the same honestly. The location sits in a very odd shopping strip center off of North Tarrant. It's built on top of a hill. To get to the ...

First visit: Jun 2013 Elote Mexican Kitchen is the newest restaurant from the same owners who run the very popular Oliva Italian restaurant across the street. As soon as I heard they had "high end" tacos and "10 draft beers", we had to make a special trip. Just to clear thing up right from the start - they do not have 10 draft beers, more like 7. And only one is a local craft brew (Rahr, which is the oldest microbrewery from the area, and their taps are easily quaffed elsewhere). That's fine, I'm always happy to get an adult slurpee instead, which is exactly what I did. Elote's is a QSR, or in laymen's terms, you order at the counter. We each went with a taco combo, that allows for two tacos, rice and beans. I had the shredded chicken on a flour tortilla, and a seasoned ground beef taco in a crispy shell. Mrs. RJG settled on a shredded chicken as well as a vegetable taco, each in a corn tortilla. We each had the cilantro lime rice, and I ordere...