Burger House Website

​Burger House turns 60 this month and is celebrating today with contests, giveaways and the only thing you really care about: 60-cent cheeseburgers. The deal will be available at all Burger House locations across Dallas, Plano, Rockwall and Lubbock throughout the day.

The Observer has long had a bit of a soft spot for the House, giving the sandwich a Best Of Award back in 2007. More recently, Joe got all drool-y about the little burger restaurant fighting the good fight as In-N-Out burger descended on Dallas.

Burger House is branching out, too. The Houston Press recently reported on Burger House's plans to expand to Houston, counting on its success near SMU to repeat itself near Rice's campus.

Blah-blah-blah. Sixty cents. Burgers. Go.

​Rolling Stone, NME, and other outlets have reported that zit-laden superstars Hanson are preparing to market their own beer early next year. Cleverly titled Mmmhop, the IPA promises to bring bitter beer face to horny teenage girls all over the country. The band thinks the move is a logical extension of the other products they've marketed including a board game, a record player and enough clothing to stock an Urban Outfitter.

While bands marketing booze is nothing new, this may be the first time beer has been branded by a musical persona built on youth. Leveraged by the IPA, their hit song Mmmbob was released when youngest member Zachary Walker was just twelve years old.

The move is sure to spur other child band beer campaigns. City of Ate's top ideas include The Jackson Five's I Want You Bock, and Kris Kross' Kris Koelsch. The German style beer would sport a backwards label and make you jump, jump.

Artizone

​Supporting local farmers, ranchers, chef-driven restaurants or family-run anything is all good. But honestly? It's a beat down schlepping across all of North Texas collecting stuff from different spots. The farmer's market, Urban Acres, the cheese place, the wine place, the butcher, and what about milk? Is Braum's local enough? Four hours traversing traffic, with two hours of that time spent at stoplights and getting honked at for reading emails, pretty much takes all the fun out the best buying-local intentions. It makes you want to throw in the towel and zip through McDonald's for one of those new pumpkin pies.

But for every problem, a solution, right? Meet Artizone of Dallas. Here's how it works: Shoppers visit the website and select products from a variety of local vendors and pay just one bill. Artizone then runs about the city collecting all the goods and delivers them at a time and place chosen by the shopper.

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The only place where two stars is amazing.

​News broke yesterday that Sol's Nieto Mexican Grill at Mockingbird and Abrams closed. Gubbins got the scoop from manager Blanca Perez: "The landlords refused to make any kind of deal with us, so there is nothing we can do. After 10 years, it's heart-breaking for us to go down this way."

Landlords ... Getting locked out ... Another victim of the economy? Or might it had to do with Sol's Nieto abysmal two-star average on Yelp? Previously we've debated the pendulum swing of influence that Yelp can have. When a place continually gets lambasted in social media, it never seems to pan out well.

Recently Michael Luca of Harvard Business School published a study about the effects of Yelp and determined that a one-star increase on the site can create up to a 9 percent increase in revenue.

Does 9 percent help cover rent? Absolutely.

Love it or hate it, social media reviews (among many other things) impact business.

Donte Everett, Blu Cloud

​Blu Cloud Lounge and Restaurant opened for lunch this week at 2604 Main Street in Deep Ellum, with chef Kenneth Wilson at the helm.

"He is southern Louisiana cook," says Blue Cloud rep Samuel Jackson. "And has been in the industry for about 20 years. He specializes in southern fusion with Creole Cajun."

Blu Cloud, which is owned by Donte Evertt and his father, Darryl McCloud, is a restaurant by day and a lounge with live music by night.

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I will be your burger one day soon

​I'm wary of promoting too many events, since they often suck. But this one caught my eye, especially if you have little ones who enjoy fancy dining and nothing on your docket. Kids ought to know that hamburgers don't come from from Styrofoam trays covered in plastic wrap, but from cows instead.

Here's the deal:

Please join us at The Ranch at Las Colinas tonight at 6 pm for this fun event. We will have all of our vendor/ partners present showcasing their goods from live farm animals out front (cow, pigs, chickens, lamb and horses), to display tables with samples for the public to try like a farmer's market. The event starts at 6 p.m. thru 7:30 for the farmer's market/ petting zoo.

Many chefs I've talked to pay lip service to local sourcing. Their menus claim they use fresh and local ingredients, then supplement the claim with "wherever possible." What results is a kitchen stocked not much differently than any other restaurant, supplemented with some mixed greens from one local farm.

But the Ranch at Las Colinas seems to take ingredient-sourcing a bit more seriously. The menu lists more than 20 locally sourced ingredients and their locations -- though they won't get any credit for calling Dr Pepper local from me.

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​Later tonight, City of Ate will host the third installment of our Top Chef: Texas watching party, and the event continues to get more enticing. La Grange is extending happy hour all night, with $3 wells, domestics and drafts so you can get your drink on nice and cheap. And the taco bar is open all night too, so you can munch on stewed pork with salsa verde or brisket tacos while you wait for Lee to lacerate another finger.

Need more grease? We're giving away two tickets to Brian Regan at The Music Hall in Fair Park on January 7th, and $50 in gift cards to iPic theater in Fairview, where you can swill martinis while watching A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas.

Tacos, cheap booze, Observer bloggers and Colicchio's shiny head? Beats staying home with your cats.

PSFK

​(UPDATE: This is actually just a really cool vending machine. A really cool machine with a fancy screen that shows a VIDEO of a potato being made. But hey, you have to admit, it looks cool. I am an idiot, and I hate the internet).

(Editor's note: I also am an idiot.)

File this under Holy-Shit-Please-Let-This-Come-to-Dallas.

Adage reported recently on what could be the coolest mainstream food device ever: The Lay's Machine. This brilliant piece of design allows a chip-hungry user to insert a real potato, and by way of a Rube Goldberg-ish design, get a friggin' fresh, steaming bag potato chips on the other end.

Want.

Fast forward to today, when PSFK visualized the first wave of the Lay's marketing campaign. We have to say, it's very convincing. According to PSFK, a Walmart in Buenos Aires already has a working real-spud vending machine, and the viral video (below) hints at much more.

Even if this doesn't make it to Frito-Lay-Heaquartered Plano and Dallas (which, come on, it totally should), you should at least watch the cleverly made video below.

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​As an avid runner and cook, Lindsey Cook of Dallas loves to create healthy dishes, like her quinoa and turkey stuffed bell peppers. Easy, versatile and full of deliciousness, Cook was so smitten with the recipe that she entered it in the Aetna Healthy Food Fight contest. From there, the dish was selected as a semi-finalist, and Cook was invited to put her peppers up against other healthy recipes in a contest at the State Fair of Texas, which she won.

And for that, on December 2 Cook will travel to New York City for a cook-off against the other three finalists in the Healthy Food Fight at the ABC Studios in Time Square, where Bobby Flay will be the judge and the prize is $10,000 worth of groceries from Recipe.com. Pretty solid deal for a stuffed pepper.

"The recipe is just something I came up with in my kitchen one night," says Cook. "I wanted to make a stuffed bell pepper that didn't sacrifice flavor, had a bunch of protein, and was healthy. From that my quinoa and turkey stuffed bell pepper was born."

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Kristy Yang

The Apple Streusal Pie at Kathleen's Sky Diner

​We recently noticed a TABC notice for an application to sell liquor in the window of an empty spot in Cityville off Lemon, and it carried a familiar restaurant name: Kathleen's Sky Diner, a staple on Lovers Lane near the Tollway. We figured they were looking to expand their pie-and-diner-food empire.

Which they are, but co-owner Robert Ellington told City of Ate today that that particular spot was old news. The space was going to require more work than they wanted, Ellington said, so he and his co-owner and wife, Kathleen, have moved on to other potential locations. You'll never guess where. (Actually you probably will, because I bet my editor put it in the headline. He did, didn't he? Ugh. There goes the element of surprise. Anyway ...)

"We've been working on it for six months," Ellington said of the search for a new spot. "We're thinking maybe Oak Cliff and the Bishop Arts area."

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