Regular Joe's Guide

Last visit: Jan 2009 First visit: Jul 1989 (Dallas NW Hwy - closed) Thanks to a reminder from Food and Fort Worth, Texas , the Mrs. and I decided to journey over to Ft. Worth and visit Galligaskin's. You may think it's a bit far to go for a sandwich, and it is, but I wanted to revisit a place I haven't to in over 20 years. Galligaskin's started in Dallas (near SMU) in 1972 by some guys who wanted to recreate the sub sandwiches they could get in Boston while attending college there. According to their website, they are the oldest sub shop in Texas. Really? Well a quick check of two of the most known of Texas sub chains, The Great Outdoors of Dallas (1973) and Thundercloud of Austin (1975) does indicate that Galligaskin's may indeed be the original - at least of those that are still around. At one point, the chain had grown to quite a few stores throughout DFW, including one near Bachman Lake in NW Dallas. Even though Dad and I were loyalists to the nearby Great O...

Last visit: Jan 2009 First visit: Sometime in 2004 This is really too bad. Marco's was a very good place. Then they became Porta di Roma, and we visited early in its new tenure (see below), and it was good but not the same. But it wasn't long before the comments came in that the place had turned terrible. And now it's gone. One of the beauties of having a blog is that it remains dynamic. Therefore I can make updates to past entries and re-enter them as new. In June of 2008 we wrote about Marco's, a fine Italian restaurant in Watauga. It has since changed ownership and been rebranded as Porta di Roma. But little has changed. It's still a familiar Balkan owned DFW Italian restaurant. We noticed the bread was different and the sauces tasted a bit more sour. Because of this, there's no point in a new writeup, so the below represents a slight alteration of the original posting. Porta di Roma is one of the many Italian restaurants in NE Tarrant with an Albanian ...

Latest visit: Jan 2009 (Fort Worth Alliance - closed) First visit: Apr 2004 (Southlake - closed) Sonny Bryan's now down to 2 locations - the original in Dallas and one in Richardson. That's one less than the last check, and 7 since I wrote this. --- Started in 1910, Sonny Bryan's is a Texas legend for barbecue. Its original location on Inwood Rd. and Harry Hines in Dallas remains a tourist destination. As the menu itself states, the area was then considered "Far North Dallas". Hard to imagine that today. While I've still never stepped foot in the original location with its DISD school desks (saw enough of those... in DISD schools), I do remember going to the Red Bryan's on Lombardy (Thanks Mr D for the catch!), just west of Webbs Chapel, not far from the "North Dallas" I grew up near. We had gone a couple of times on the way back from bowling at Circle Bowl when I was still a young boy in the mid 1970s. Curious - any of my readers ever bowl at ...

Latest visit: Jan 2009 First visit: Jun 2007 In 1987, Cathy Mancuso opened up an Italian restaurant in far west Ft. Worth for the simple reason that there wasn't any Italian eateries out that way. Coming from Utica, NY where her Dad ran a place called Nash's for many years, Cathy comes from the New York tradition of making high quality Italian meals for the public at large. She would have a hard time finding a more incongruous spot than this. We've had good luck at the RJG recently in finding Old School Italian hole in the wall's: Siciliano's in Garland and I Fratelli in Irving are but two examples. Add Mancuso's to the list. We have others to spring on you, including the RJG's favorite restaurant, and we hope to write about them in the coming months ahead. As we mentioned before, the Mrs. and I like to use Saturday's for our "road games" as it were, and try places outside of NE Tarrant. We first visited Mancuso's in the summer of 200...

Latest visit: Jun 2025 (Interquest) First visit: Jan 2009 (Euless, TX) HQ: Wichita, KS ---6/13/25 update It has been almost a year and a half since I last graced Freddy's with my magnanimous presence (lol). After last year's underwhelming performance, have Freddy's rectified all that has gone south? Heck no. Pretty much a repeat of last year verbatim. Lukewarm fries, lukewarm burger where the bun wasn't even close to centered. A "sundae" now they call it. And a $15 price tag for all of this greatness. According to AI, this would have been around $8 before the pandemic. Sure, it was decent tasting but they are long away from their prime. In reading below, this is four fails in a row. It wasn't always this way. Maybe it's just this location, which I must ban going forward. I had good luck at a different Jersey Mike's recently, so maybe that's what I must do - go to a different location. Location update: Freddy's are currently in 35 states (-...