• Home
  • popular
  • Events
  • Submit New Event
  • Subscribe
  • About
  • News
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Home + Design
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • Innovation
  • Sports
  • Charity Guide
  • children
  • education
  • health
  • veterans
  • SOCIAL SERVICES
  • ARTS + CULTURE
  • animals
  • lgbtq
  • New Charity
  • Series
  • Delivery Limited
  • DTX Giveaway 2012
  • DTX Ski Magic
  • dtx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Your Home in the Sky
  • DTX Best of 2013
  • DTX Trailblazers
  • Tastemakers Dallas 2017
  • Healthy Perspectives
  • Neighborhood Eats 2015
  • The Art of Making Whiskey
  • DTX International Film Festival
  • DTX Tatum Brown
  • Tastemaker Awards 2016 Dallas
  • DTX McCurley 2014
  • DTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • DTX Beyond presents Party Perfect
  • DTX Texas Health Resources
  • DART 2018
  • Alexan Central
  • State Fair 2018
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Zatar
  • CityLine
  • Vision Veritas
  • Okay to Say
  • Hearts on the Trinity
  • DFW Auto Show 2015
  • Northpark 50
  • Anteks Curated
  • Red Bull Cliff Diving
  • Maggie Louise Confections Dallas
  • Gaia
  • Red Bull Global Rally Cross
  • NorthPark Holiday 2015
  • Ethan's View Dallas
  • DTX City Centre 2013
  • Galleria Dallas
  • Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty Luxury Homes in Dallas Texas
  • DTX Island Time
  • Simpson Property Group SkyHouse
  • DIFFA
  • Lotus Shop
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Dallas
  • Clothes Circuit
  • DTX Tastemakers 2014
  • Elite Dental
  • Elan City Lights
  • Dallas Charity Guide
  • DTX Music Scene 2013
  • One Arts Party at the Plaza
  • J.R. Ewing
  • AMLI Design District Vibrant Living
  • Crest at Oak Park
  • Braun Enterprises Dallas
  • NorthPark
  • Victory Park
  • DTX Common Desk
  • DTX Osborne Advisors
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • DFW Showcase Tour of Homes
  • DTX Neighborhood Eats
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • DTX Auto Awards
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2017
  • Nasher Store
  • Guardian of The Glenlivet
  • Zyn22
  • Dallas Rx
  • Yellow Rose Gala
  • Opendoor
  • DTX Sun and Ski
  • Crow Collection
  • DTX Tastes of the Season
  • Skye of Turtle Creek Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival
  • DTX Charity Challenge
  • DTX Culture Motive
  • DTX Good Eats 2012
  • DTX_15Winks
  • St. Bernard Sports
  • Jose
  • DTX SMU 2014
  • DTX Up to Speed
  • st bernard
  • Ardan West Village
  • DTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Taste the Difference
  • Parktoberfest 2016
  • Bob's Steak and Chop House
  • DTX Smart Luxury
  • DTX Earth Day
  • DTX_Gaylord_Promoted_Series
  • IIDA Lavish
  • Huffhines Art Trails 2017
  • Red Bull Flying Bach Dallas
  • Y+A Real Estate
  • Beauty Basics
  • DTX Pet of the Week
  • Long Cove
  • Charity Challenge 2014
  • Legacy West
  • Wildflower
  • Stillwater Capital
  • Tulum
  • DTX Texas Traveler
  • Dallas DART
  • Soldiers' Angels
  • Alexan Riveredge
  • Ebby Halliday Realtors
  • Zephyr Gin
  • Sixty Five Hundred Scene
  • Christy Berry
  • Entertainment Destination
  • Dallas Art Fair 2015
  • St. Bernard Sports Duck Head
  • Jameson DTX
  • Alara Uptown Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival fall 2017
  • DTX Tastemakers 2015
  • Cottonwood Arts Festival
  • The Taylor
  • Decks in the Park
  • Alexan Henderson
  • Gallery at Turtle Creek
  • Omni Hotel DTX
  • Red on the Runway
  • Whole Foods Dallas 2018
  • Artizone Essential Eats
  • Galleria Dallas Runway Revue
  • State Fair 2016 Promoted
  • Trigger's Toys Ultimate Cocktail Experience
  • Dean's Texas Cuisine
  • Real Weddings Dallas
  • Real Housewives of Dallas
  • Jan Barboglio
  • Wildflower Arts and Music Festival
  • Hearts for Hounds
  • Okay to Say Dallas
  • Indochino Dallas
  • Old Forester Dallas
  • Dallas Apartment Locators
  • Dallas Summer Musicals
  • PSW Real Estate Dallas
  • Paintzen
  • DTX Dave Perry-Miller
  • DTX Reliant
  • Get in the Spirit
  • Bachendorf's
  • Holiday Wonder
  • Village on the Parkway
  • City Lifestyle
  • opportunity knox villa-o restaurant
  • Nasher Summer Sale
  • Simpson Property Group
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2017 Dallas
  • Carlisle & Vine
  • DTX New Beginnings
  • Get in the Game
  • Red Bull Air Race
  • Dallas DanceFest
  • 2015 Dallas Stylemaker
  • Youth With Faces
  • Energy Ogre
  • DTX Renewable You
  • Galleria Dallas Decadence
  • Bella MD
  • Tractorbeam
  • Young Texans Against Cancer
  • Fresh Start Dallas
  • Dallas Farmers Market
  • Soldier's Angels Dallas
  • Shipt
  • Elite Dental
  • Texas Restaurant Association 2017
  • State Fair 2017
  • Scottish Rite
  • Brooklyn Brewery
  • DTX_Stylemakers
  • Alexan Crossings
  • Ascent Victory Park
  • Top Texans Under 30 Dallas
  • Discover Downtown Dallas
  • San Luis Resort Dallas
  • Greystar The Collection
  • FIG Finale
  • Greystar M Line Tower
  • Lincoln Motor Company
  • The Shelby
  • Jonathan Goldwater Events
  • Windrose Tower
  • Gift Guide 2016
  • State Fair of Texas 2016
  • Choctaw Dallas
  • TodayTix Dallas promoted
  • Whole Foods
  • Unbranded 2014
  • Frisco Square
  • Unbranded 2016
  • Circuit of the Americas 2018
  • The Katy
  • Snap Kitchen
  • Partners Card
  • Omni Hotels Dallas
  • Landmark on Lovers
  • Harwood Herd
  • Galveston.com Dallas
  • Holiday Happenings Dallas 2018
  • TenantBase
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2018
  • Hawkins-Welwood Homes
  • The Inner Circle Dallas
  • Eating in Season Dallas
  • ATTPAC Behind the Curtain
  • TodayTix Dallas
  • The Alexan
  • Toyota Music Factory
  • Nosh Box Eatery
  • Wildflower 2018
  • Society Style Dallas 2018
  • Texas Scottish Rite Hospital 2018
  • 5 Mockingbird
  • 4110 Fairmount
  • Visit Taos
  • Allegro Addison
  • Dallas Tastemakers 2018
  • The Village apartments
  • City of Burleson Dallas

    The Farmer Diaries

    North Texas farmer unearths sweetest melon of all

    Marshall Hinsley
    Jul 28, 2013 | 6:00 am

    I am open about all my deficiencies as a farmer. I'll tell anyone about my bitter cucumbers, my inability to grow corn or my mediocre results with sweet bell peppers. But when it comes to cantaloupes, I think that I can say without breach of humility that I've got talent.

    And why shouldn't I boast? Mozart was tapping on a piano before he could walk. Likewise, I've been growing cantaloupe since elementary school, and not to have learned a thing or two about them in all this time would require a magnitude of incompetence that not even I could have attained.

    Until about 2008, I grew Hale's Best, a cantaloupe about the size of a football with sweet, orange flesh. I never chose Hale's Best; it was chosen for me as Vaughn's Backyard Garden Center was about the only place to buy seed in Waxahachie back in the '70s, and they only sold what worked. A grower could always rely on Hale's Best for an abundant harvest of delicious melons.

    Israeli melons produce a creamy, yellow flesh with a floral flavor. Most notable is their sweetness, which reminds me of pears packed in heavy syrup.

    But, a few years ago, a local farmer gave my father a few Israeli melon seeds to try. I was skeptical, but my father grew several mounds of them, and the results changed everything that I thought I knew about cantaloupe.

    So sweet and so huge were the melons that I dropped Hale's Best for good. Israeli melons performed so much better in the field that to grow anything else began to seem like a waste of time.

    The melons grew large — some as large as a bowling ball — and turned bright orange when they ripened on the vines. The plants kept their vigor even in the shadow of stingy rain clouds.

    Israeli melons produce a creamy, yellow flesh with a floral flavor. Most notable is their sweetness, which reminds me of pears packed in heavy syrup. They're so sweet, in fact, that once I ate some chocolate a few minutes after gorging myself on an Israeli melon, and so off kilter were my taste buds from the melon's sweetness that the candy was as bitter to me as baker's chocolate.

    Also worth noting is the texture of the flesh: It's both soft and crunchy, again very much like canned pears but with a powerful essence of freshness.

    As with all melons, Israeli melons require a large area with full sunlight. This year, I planted 12 basins, not mounds, with each basin spaced about six feet from the other. I sowed about six seeds in each basin, and each vine will produce at least one melon. Altogether, my harvest of Israeli melons, which began the second week of July, will net about 60 melons fit for the table.

    How sweet it is
    I found the seed for sale from Texas' own Wilhite Seed in Poolville. According to Wilhite general manager Don Dobbs, Israeli melons (old original) have been a part of the company's offerings for as long as he can remember in his more than 50 years with the 96-year-old seed supplier. It's an heirloom variety that's part of the specialty melon category never found in the grocery store.

    "Israeli melons are one of the highest in sugar content and are popular among home gardeners and specialty growers because of their flavor," Dobb says. "It has a very sweet taste and almost a peppery fragrance but almost no keeping quality.

    Israeli melons are susceptible to diseases in large commercial operations but are rarely affected in smaller garden plots.

    "Commercial growers need a melon that keeps well and can handle transport, and Israeli melons can't. They also have to be picked by hand because they can't stand up to mechanical harvesting equipment."

    Dobbs says that Israeli melons are susceptible to diseases in large commercial operations but are rarely affected in smaller garden plots — another reason the melon is a secret pleasure among a few growers in the know. As with Hale's Best and other specialty melons, gardeners and specialty growers plant small plots of Israeli melons — rarely much more than an acre.

    Larger operations prefer hybrids that are selected for durability, not flavor. With each passing decade, the older, delicious varieties of melons are being pushed out of production.

    Because of the odd year here and there when I've not had a garden and have been wholly dependent on the produce aisle, I can testify that the melons sold at grocery stores only resemble homegrown melons in appearance, and the flavor of store-bought melons is simply not worth the effort to buy them.

    For those who have discovered the benefits of gardening, Israeli melons and other specialty melons are a reward that few have experienced. For me, they're part of the perks to opting out of industrialized agriculture, declaring food independence, and adding back into my life the variety that the grocery store corporations just can't factor into their business model.

    "People who want a first-class melon with a high sugar content that's about the most delicious melon they'll ever eat in their life will have to grow an Israeli melon," Dobbs says.

    ---

    Note: Wilhite Seed treats its seed with Thiram, a fungicide that can harm wildlife. I will not buy treated seed for this reason. However, Wilhite has been very accommodating of my request for untreated seed when I add "untreated seed only" to the "additional information" section of the company's online order form.

    For sweetness, fragrance and flavor, Israeli melons are a special treat.

      
    Photo by Marshall Hinsley
    For sweetness, fragrance and flavor, Israeli melons are a special treat.
    unspecified
    news/restaurants-bars

    Steak & Ale News

    Local opening of Dallas chain Steak and Ale gets derailed

    Teresa Gubbins
    May 16, 2025 | 5:27 pm
    Steak and Ale
    Steak and Ale
    Steak and Ale

    The long-in-the-works return of Steak and Ale in Dallas is being shelved for now: The casual steakhouse chain which in its heyday had nearly 300 locations is no longer opening a location it planned for in Grand Prairie.

    According to a May 11 post from company owner Paul Mangiamele, the restaurant is definitely now a no-go.

    "After years of very hard and exhausting work for making the Grand Prairie side by side S&A and Bennigan’s happen, the rug has been yanked out from under us," Mangiamele said in his post.

    Often referred to as a pioneer in casual dining, Steak and Ale debuted in 1966, offering an affordable steakhouse experience with rustic Tudor design that included wooden beams and stained glass. In addition to steak and a signature salad bar, the menu featured then-fancy items such as steak Oscar, baby back ribs, and Hawaiian chicken with pineapple teriyaki sauce.

    The chain remained a buzzy destination throughout the '70s and '80s, but by 2008, the parent company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and the remaining locations closed.

    In 2023, businessman Paul Mangiamele, chairman and CEO of Legendary Restaurant Brands (which includes Monte Cristo sandwich purveyor Bennigan’s and Bennigan’s On The Fly, which he has also revived), launched a long-held plan to revive the Steak and Ale concept that included opening a new Steak and Ale in Burnsville, Minnesota, as well as partnering with a franchisee to open a location in Grand Prairie, side-by-side with a Bennigan's.

    The Minnesota location opened in August 2024, but Grand Prairie will not be so lucky, and according to Mangiamele, it's due to the shenanigans of the franchisee.

    "For years, we were being told by the developer and owner of the land how he was going to be our franchise partner," Mangiamele says. "He shared with me numerous times how he grew up with the brands and wanted to do his part in honoring Norman Brinker and would be a proud franchise owner. Well, after he finally (3 years later) received his money for selling some of his land, instead of being our franchise partner, he changed his tune, and wanted to instead, sell his land to us!!"

    According to Mangiamele, not only did the franchisee try to sell back the land, he tried to make a profit.

    "Our special deal was a ‘discounted’ price per foot on the land we’d need," Mangiamele says. "After a few due diligence calls, the discounted ’deal’ price was 20% higher than the comparable prices in the same area!! Simply unbelievable!"

    Mangiamele says they are still talking to other interested parties in the greater DFW area and should have more news soon.

    closings
    news/restaurants-bars
    Loading...