Gah. Sorry about the quiet few days here, but I’ve been in Texas ya’ll! I flew down last weekend for my gorgeous friend Mariam’s wedding (I mean, STUNNING), and haven’t had much time at the comp. It was my very first time down in Texas and besides the wedding festivities, I was excited about the FOOD. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to explore Dallas by way of calories, but a group of us did manage to get away one day for brunch. My friend Masuma who lives down there recommended a few places, and we ended up going to La Duni Latin Kitchen at the Northpark mall location which was near our hotel.

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I gotta admit, when I first heard of Zengo, I didn’t think it’d be so great (the name doesn’t lend itself much to first impressions). That and its dank location (40th and 3rd…I just think…suits…and…buildings…and…and yeah that’s also the first time I ever used “dank” on this blog). Plus the outside pretty much looking like a giant misplaced club made me a little dubious. But walk inside, and you’ll begin to realize all that is misleading (claustrophobics rejoice, this place is huge).

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Sorry for the MIA’ness everyone. The thingggg is, the cutest little guy came to visit me in NYC (also known as my nephew) and it was just a tad distracting. He LOVED the city. Well, he can’t talk yet but I’m pretty sure that’s what he would say. I’m also pretty sure if he could talk, he would say the food at Yerba Buena, a lively Latin American restaurant that he visited with his younger cousin was phenom.

OK, he really didn’t eat the food and he may or may not have slept throughout brunch but he did get a lot of attention from the ladies while we started with the Croquetes de Queijo, these little croquettes filled with manchego cheese that comes with pickled jalapeño salsa verde.

The real superstar is the Pan Dulce french toast. O Em Gee. My brother’s in-laws who took us here, were not kidding when they told us how delicious this dish was. It was the best french toast I’ve ever had, made with brioche toast and also stuffed with manchego cheese, dulce de leche and bananas.

We also tried the Green Chile burger (piedmontese grass fed beef, cheddar cheese, tomato, lettuce, green chile sofrito), done medium. I prefer medium well but it was really tasty and came with a side of crispy shoestring fries (tasted more like potato chips). Also, you guys would be really proud of me — I actually ordered a seafood dish too. The Chupe de Mariscos — a spicy soup with shrimp, calamari, black cod, aji amarillo broth, rice queso fresco, choclo, and a poached egg.

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Empanada Mama in Hell’s Kitchen is one of my favorite default places for a good, cheap meal. I’m a guac fanatic, and tend to gravitate towards their plantains/guac ($6.95) to start. It’s the combo of the two here more than guac here that makes it great.

I also seldom stray from my favorite empanadas there: their pizza empanada (super cheesy and delicious), spicy chicken (it’s legit spicy), their mushroom/onion baked empanada (only get this if you LOVE mushrooms like I do). Each empanada is only $2.50-$3.

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Pipa is one of those places where I think the ambiance supersedes the food, which is good but sometimes underwhelming. The whole place is outfitted with decor from its neighbor, ABC Carpet & Home, and that’s mostly gorgeous chandeliers (which makes the place look almost dream-like at night, though we went for lunch this time). The food is mostly standard Spanish fare, but that’s sometimes the thing with tapas — while it’s great for family-style sharing, sometimes it can be a tad overpriced and you leave kinda…hungry.

That said, I think the crispy calamari here is excellent. The mushroom croquettes were great too, but wish we had more than three of them. You could probably skip the tortilla Espanola and stuffed piquillos — they were just OK. Price range was from $10-$15/plate. But hey, not bad for presentation:

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