Part of living in a city like this, that is a medium-sized city with a college in it, is that people filter in and out on a regular basis. So you have a lot of friends who are new to town.
Inevitably, the subject of Kitok's comes up and, if I'm lucky, they've yet to try it. That's when I insist they dine there and I offer to dine with them.
For the sake of helping you be proactive about Valentine's plans, I'm going to go ahead and roll out this blog, but be advised that I'll be updating it. It should be an evolving list of Thursday-night date possibilities.
If you know of anything we should include, send it to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Last week we created a fair amount of buzz with the simple revelation that a big-name burger chain was looking at Waco for possible expansion.
So I figured I would begin this week with local burger joint news. Dave's Burger Barn in Lacy Lakeview is up and running again with a sparkling new expanded dining room, complete with a huge projection TV.
If you haven't been to El Crucero, then you haven't been to one of our favorite Mexican food restaurants in town.
But perhaps your reason is that you work far from there and don't have time to get there on your lunch break. Well then there's good news for you. El Crucero, located on Highway 77 just a quarter-mile from the traffic circle, is now open on Friday and Saturday evenings until 8 p.m. So what are you doing for dinner tonight? You won't find better Mexican food for the price than El Crucero.
I have to confess that I might have done some trespassing today. I had no reason to believe I wasn't allowed to drive onto and park in the Aldi parking lot. There were other cars parked there. But before I left, I had the feeling that at least one person didn't want me there.
Anyway, I left.
The Califorina-based burger restaurant In-N-Out, which first came to Texas in 2011 and has since opened 16 stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, has plans to come to Waco.
In an email interview with Carl Van Fleet, In-N-Out's vice president for planning and development, we learned the burger joint is getting closer to opening a Waco location.
We told you about the new cafe/froyo joint called Yazzi's when it opened in November. Like many restaurants, it purposely opened quietly and is now ready for a more public "Grand Opening."
Yazzi's is making a big branding push this week, including sponsoring the Baylor Lady Bears game against Kansas on Wednesday night. This will probably prompt folks to ask "what is Yazzi's?" — a question I've heard a few times since November. My answer has been that it's a sandwich, salad and froyo place in the Bagby shopping center across form Baylor, kind of where Big Daddy's used to be.
Cafe Homestead's first special dinner event of 2013 will fall on Valentine's Day. If you're looking to make it special for someone special, then this is a slam dunk.
The dinner will feature French cuisine at two seatings — 5:30 and 7:30. The price is set at $48 per person. Here's an overview of the menu:
There's a new spot for catfish and chicken near Baylor as Louisiana Catfish & Chicken opened on La Salle in January. I stopped in for info, not lunch, on Monday, but it smelled great and I'll stop in again soon for eats.
My friend Kaley Eggers alerted me to the presence of this new joint. She was at the Heart of Texas Fair & Rodeo back in the fall when she and some friends came across these folks at a booth. They dined and visited and learned that there would soon be a Louisiana catfish place opening in Waco.
It occurs to me that as much as I love to watch sports at a sports bar or at the pub, when it comes to the most high-profile game of the year, it's like Christmas morning — it feels like it should be celebrated in someone's home.
In the last 10 years, it's also become somewhat of a tradition to make chili or something in that realm for Super Bowl eats. My friend Jeremy and I began making homemade gut paks a while back, but that evolved into his Jeremy's World Famous Chili from Wisconsin when he moved to Milwaukee for a couple of years.
