Regular Joe's Guide

The Dallas location closed in 2024. Other than their original Beverly Hills location, they are mainly in Asian global hotspots. Latest visit: Dec 2013 (Dallas) First visit: Jun 1982 (Dallas - old Maple Ave. locale) Barring any surprise discovery, this should be the final restaurant post for 2013. I plan on doing a summary of the year tomorrow or Tuesday if possible. For those who've been following the RJG, you'll know that Lawry's is not our typical fare (witness yesterday's My Lan entry). But my parents had some history with this restaurant, and because of that, here we are dining elegantly. So what is that history? For a brief time, from 1966 to 1967, when the RJG was just a toddler, we lived in the Los Angeles area, before relocating to Dallas. My father, who was in sales, had been transferred from New York City to LA. For their 5th wedding anniversary in 1966, they had a splurge meal at the Five Crowns, which I believe had only been open a year at that point. Wh...

First visit: Dec 2013 You may have noticed that we haven't featured any Vietnamese restaurants in the RJG yet (though Mr. Music did one a few months ago). We rarely eat Vietnamese is the obvious reason. And to be honest, we haven't been motivated to do such, and tend to spend our Asian food dollars on the excellent local Thai restaurants almost exclusively, with an occasional Chinese take-out meal. Strange then when you realize that Mrs. RJG and I, when we were dating love birds in 1996, spent most of our dinner time at one Vietnamese restaurant in Denver. That would be Kim Ba, and it remains, perhaps not surprisingly, our favorite Vietnamese restaurant in the country. We were regular visitors until 2003 when we relocated to NE Tarrant. (And I hope to write about it on the RJG at some point). So when we arrived here, we asked about local Vietnamese food, and were promptly pointed to Haltom City. We tried a couple of the noodle houses from there, and they were definitely good,...

Last visit: Jan 2014 First visit: Dec 2013 For the second new restaurant that the RJG tried, after a lengthy cold spell, I had awaited a visit from Mr. Music - a true connoisseur of the Napoletana pizza tradition - to try NE Tarrant's latest coal oven venture. With Campania (Southlake) going completely down the tubes (our last visit was not good, and it seemed to be on its last legs), and INZO (Roanoke) starting to mail it in, there is definitely room for a new pizza place in Northeast Tarrant with a 900 degree oven. Grimaldi's (Grapevine) pretty much owns this market as far as the RJG is concerned (and Coal Vines (Southlake) which is slightly different in my mind). But there's a new sheriff in town! Let me introduce to you all Apeizza e Vino, the second location for the burgeoning Denver based chain. Lafayette is east of Boulder, and it's quite ironic that one of our favorite coal oven pizza places in the Denver area is a small chain called Proto's. And the locati...

Last visit: Dec 2013 First visit: Jan 2009 --- Jun 2016 update:  Looks like a fire destroyed their kitchen, and the restaurant decided to call it a day. They had gone downhill for some time in our estimation. They were a pioneer in Northeast Tarrant for this kind of pizza though, and they should be commended for that at the very list. Since I wrote the below, it appears Campania have lost their  Vera Pizza Napoletana  certification. Whether that's due to an authentic lack of consistently meeting standards, or Campania just didn't want to pay the fees, is anyone's guess. The RJG thinks certifications in the business world are nothing more than a racket, so it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. But worth mentioning all the same. On our last visit, I felt the pizza was slightly undercooked, and this is the second disappointing visit in a row for me. I'm concerned it's "not the same as it used to be." Mrs RJG had the penne arrabiata and the sauce ...