Regular Joe's Guide

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: Mar 2012 (as Brix) So what was the final destination for the RJG before leaving DFW? Yep - INZO. Strange choice, but once again, it's somewhat random I guess. You can tell as I update this blog for 2018, we revisited a lot of our favorites before going back to Colorado. And it was for dinner - which as the note below explains - is something we hadn't done with INZO before recently. Bye-bye DFW, we'll miss you! ---7/24/17 update For years we've been going to INZO for pizza at lunch. This time we went for dinner and Italian. We've been missing out! Now we have a new Italian favorite! On this visit, we started by ordering a bottle of Cabernet. At $20, it's too cheap to pass up (yes, of course we know we can get it cheaper at the grocery store, but that's not the point). This was accompanied by fresh baked artisan bread that was served with an olive oil/black pepper mix, red wine vinegar, and fresh soft butter. We weren't...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: sometime in 2004 This was our last visit to our cherished NE Tarrant Thai restaurants. Sigh. --- We had mentioned in the Casa Milagro update that their timing had been fortuitous in regards to this blog. Magic Springroll had a similar fate, but in reverse. Magic Springroll was originally one of our "rotation" Thai restaurants, not long after we moved to NE Tarrant. Not necessarily a weekly, or even monthly destination, but one we frequented often. According to my personal database, in early March of 2008 we had a poor experience, and decided to drop the restaurant from our regular routine. Later that month, I started this blog, and never revisited again.... until late last year, not long after we stopped (again) writing. We saw that the reviews were very positive, and Mrs. RJG and I said we must go back. So we did and what we learned is that there had been a change of ownership since we last had been. In fact, not long after our not-too-po...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: 2003 There's always that "odd" visit before one moves out of town. For whatever reason we hadn't been to our local Niki's in a long time - and this post hasn't been updated since 2010. But we were hankering some local Italian food, and we'd already said goodbye to Tony's. So off we went. I also just noticed TripAdvisor had it spelled wrong (as Nikki's). I just sent in a correction. The NRH location is no longer associated with the one in Keller.  We had visited awhile back, and here's our entry. ---original 9/4/08 review Mrs. RJG and I have been regular, albeit infrequent, visitors to Niki's since we moved back to Texas in 2003. In fact, I think they're the first Italian restaurant we visited upon our arrival. Niki's, like almost all of NE Tarrant's Italian restaurants, are of a Balkan heritage. So there isn't much deviation of taste from others we've written about before on these p...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: Feb 2017 Taverna Rossa was our favorite discovery of 2017. If you recall the RJG is a huge proponent of craft  beer, and combine that with artisan pizza, and you darn near have the perfect mix. This is the type of restaurant we're starting to seek out when traveling out of town like Pies and Pints in West Virginia (both Charleston and Morgantown) and Lucky Pie in Denver. They have a wide variety of pizzas and pastas, all excellent. Personally I like their Spicy Pig pizza, because I'm in fact, a spicy pig. Their All-American is great as well (mostly these are meat pies). The pizza is appropriately crispy, with a great sauce. Their lunch special is the way to go: A personal sized pizza and a salad for $9.99. I personally think their Caesar salad is one of the best I've had - not drenched in a thick gooey overpowering monstrosity. This is a lighter blend, with crisp and cold romaine lettuce and fresh shaved parmesan cheese, and they don...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: Dec 2017 First out of the shoot is Keller's newest Vietnamese restaurant, cleverly named Pho-In-The-Box. No two for 99 cent tacos here, but damn the pho is good. This is a Mrs. RJG discovery (she's gotten good at it since we've been traveling)! Here we have some fantastic Vietnamese fare. The meatball pho I tried is some of the best I've had, with a wonderful broth, filled to the brim with cilantro and onions. The crispy eggrolls are awesome as well. I must try their stir fried chicken soon! Mrs. RJG is hooked on their tender brisket soup. We still like Big Bowl too, but Pho-In-The-Box is offering a serious challenge. And it's closer to us, truth be told. To drink, it's the fountain for sodas. I imagine it's also BYOB, if you bring your own supplies. But we've only been for lunch. As for their location, remember Yu's Gold-In ? Gone. That's too bad as they were our favorite Chinese place in the area. We had ...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: Jul 2006 Of all the restaurants the RJG covered in Dallas-Fort Worth, Tolbert's has to be considered the most "local". --- Have family from out of town, and not sure where to take them? Start right here with Tolbert's! You'll be known as the family know-it-all who has the "in" on all the good places in town. Simply put, Tolbert's is our favorite place to bring out of town guests who are looking for something uniquely "Texan". The food, naturally enough, has a traditional Texas focus with chili, Tex-Mex, chicken fried steak, beef steak, and hamburgers dominating the menu. I like to start with a bowl of red, and ask for it 5 alarm. In the old days, they use to serve it straight-up spicy. Nowadays, they provide the mix for you to add to your heat tolerance - apparently they received too many complaints about it being too hot. Obviously, the RJG dumps the whole thing in! Mrs. RJG prefers the North of the Bo...

May 13, 2022: We've learned that Jam and Eddie did eventually sell the restaurant. It's still open with great reviews, but we can't be sure until we go back. Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: 2007, not long after they opened Of all the restaurants in DFW, we'll miss Sea Siam the most. Over the years we became good friends with Jam and Eddie. But it was time for us to move... --- So much has changed since we wrote this review just over 10 years ago. Sea Siam was just starting out, and so was the RJG. In fact, Sea Siam was the first Thai restaurant we reviewed for the blog, so we had to introduce where we were coming from in regards to the cuisine. Today, Sea Siam is one of the most popular restaurants in NE Tarrant County, and deservedly so. And for our part, we have remained loyal customers for the entire time. Their children were just young teens, and now they have graduated from college! It doesn't seem that long, and yet here we are. With that prelude, I'm...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: sometime in 2003 (the location near the Northeast Mall). We started going to the one on Davis and North Tarrant right after they opened in 2004. This was our very first post for a Mexican restaurant. As is often the case, it was just a timing issue, more than a preference. We'll miss Mi Pueblo! --- There are a couple of distinctive characteristics of Mi Pueblo, that make it a recommendation for those that don't live in the area. One is the margaritas. I'm always dubious when someone recommends a restaurant based on their alcoholic drink selection. The RJG has found that the restaurant that serves the most alcohol content per drink, is generally referred to as "the best". At which point the half-in-the-bag claimant will also mention they have "the BEST food". Hmm-mmm. Well, I'm here to say that Mi Pueblo does indeed have a great frozen margarita - something that when we travel, we realize that most of the D...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 (Southlake) First visit: Jun 2005 (Southlake) Kincaid's maintains 5 Fort Worth area locations including the one below in Southlake and also one in Arlington. Kincaid's is as great as ever. Their location in Southlake is probably as close to a "regular" burger stop as can be for us. And why is that? Because this is Mrs. RJG's favorite in the area, and she's really picky about hamburgers. I finally made it to the original Camp Bowie location in Fort Worth last November (2015), and I have to say that the Southlake locale did a fantastic job of replicating the original. ---original 12/31/08 review What better way to end the year than a writeup about one of Fort Worth's most endearing institutions? Officially known as Kincaid's Grocery Market and Hamburgers, the Gentry family has been delighting visitors with their unique blend of seasoning for over 40 years. Kincaid's opened in 1946, and as the name suggests, as a local grocery. ...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: Nov 2004 As we now have moved to Colorado Springs, this is the restaurant I may miss most. I have yet to encounter anyone here who can compete with Sweet Bail when it comes to Thai Basil Chicken - Thai style! --- Not long after the RJG relocated from Denver to NE Tarrant in 2003, we discovered a place in North Richland Hills called Top Thai. It quickly became our favorite, and remained so until they closed sometime in 2005. To set the stage, my first exposure to Thai food was while in San Francisco on business sometime in the mid 1990s. It was love at first taste, and most of the Thai restaurants I tried on the left coast were of a similar style. Unfortunately Denver seemed a wasteland for Thai food. Oh sure, we had Thai restaurants, but none reminded me of the flavors of Northern California. Then we found Top Thai and that was it! The taste I had remembered so fondly. Of all the Thai restaurants in the area, Sweet Basil reminds me most of Top Th...

Latest visit: Apr 2018 First visit: Feb 2005 Another update here from the RJG archives. When we first moved to NE Tarrant in 2003, there were dozens of these places. I was anxious to try them all, until I realized they were all more or less the same: Eastern European owned, and stemming from the Moni's empire in Arlington. As time has moved on, most of these establishments have shuttered, moved on, shut down by the authorities, etc... The few that are left have carved out their own identity, and are the cream of the crop. And for us, Tony's is our go-to Italian in the area. Tony's is very similar to most of the $ and $$ Italian restaurants in NE Tarrant, and you can read some samples of that here and here . All the same, unlike many of the Italian restaurants in this category that have closed recently, Tony's continues to be very popular. Their to-go pizza side of the house is doing a land office business, as dozens of folks come in for pickups, and no doubt just as ...