​Restaurant Opportunities Centers United has released a new restaurant guide. The 52-page guide makes no mention of food quality, ingredient sourcing, or a customer's dining experience, but instead focuses on how well restaurants treat their employees. Wages, benefits and advancement opportunities are evaluated across more than 180 restaurants, giving silver and gold prizes to highest performers.

Here's how a few Dallas restaurants fared.

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​My first run-in with Private Social came just after the restaurant, helmed by Top Chef alum Tiffany Derry released its lunch menu. I noticed the noodles right away. Leslie Brenner and I had been begging Dallas for a proper Japanese noodle house, but it has never materialized. Perhaps a decent hot bowl of ramen for lunch would make for a decent consultation prize?

Noodles are serious business in Japan. There's ramen, the long, thin noodles made from wheat flour; udon, which are thick and plump; darker soba noodles, made from buckwheat flour; and others, too. Cooks stage for months just to get the chance to work with noodle masters, and then only work with a certain type. There's a compelling scene in David Chang's Momofuko cookbook where the young chef travels to Japan to learn ramen but accidentally ends up in a soba noodle house. Chang asks if he could also learn other noodles and the request drew the master's ire. "There is only soba," Chang is told. And then he's shown the door.

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Whataburger.com

​This is strange. An oddity, or meaty Halley's comet, if you will:

Whataburger's introducing a new chicken fajita taco that has (as you can see above) a whole chicken breast inside its flour tortilla, with onions, poblano and red bell peppers. Sounds kinda great? Well, here's the surprising part: it's sorta kinda not that terrible for you.

Served as is, the taco weighs in at 420 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 29 grams of protein. Using their fancy nutritional chart, I knocked off the oils and brought it down to 360 calories. Not too shabby.

Unfortunately, just one damn taco is 1,262 mg of sodium. But hey, it could be much, much worse.

I know you've been there. It's late on a Tuesday and your boss has just handed you your ass on your last project. You're tired. You're stressed. You need a drink. And despite having a few bottles of wine on hand you don't have a corkscrew to open any of them.

I found this handy video on YouTube, and my office door jam in an attempt to release the nectar of the gods. It went poorly. I'm guessing I need a firmer surface?

eBay User coldloathing

​Hey everyone! Just wanted to give you a heads-up that the "Dark Knight Rises Chip" is up to 75 bucks on eBay. The seller points out the single, phenomenal chip originated from a Lays  bag, and that he has "never seen one like it before." So, you'll probably want to "be the first to have food food that naturally immortalizes the Dark Knight."

Sokolata

You look pretty good, for a vegan.

​Foodbitch's inboxes fill each day with a metric shit-ton of offers, flash sales and discounts. Here are some of this week's foodfull best.

Living Social: 4-Course Chocolate-themed Meal for 2 at NCuisineIt must be close to Valentine's Day, the way restaurants are going choco-crazy and offering love-themed dinners at $75 per head. At least at NCuisine in Lakewood, just $74 will get you dinner for two. It's a pretty small space, and I hear they only take cash, so purchase this soon and bring a few $10 bills for tip.

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Don't worry they're not moving.

​During my second trip to Tto Tto Wa, the Korean fried chicken joint I reviewed this week, I was determined to blow it out. I'd tried dumplings, chicken feet and some other dishes -- none of it as good as the spicy chicken, mind you -- and wanted to work even further toward the boundaries of Angela Kim's menu.

So I decided to try the chrysalis. Kim -- who was starting to become curious about this strange guy coming into her shop, taking pictures with his iPhone and asking a ton of questions -- explained that the silk worm pupae, known a beondegi in Korea, were typically eaten while sipping soju. This was important intelligence, because I had just ordered 3000 ccs of Coors Light and there were only two of us at the table. She warned that mixing the two -- beer and soju -- could cause me to get very drunk. I told her that sounded about right, and ordered a bottle of soju and the chrysalis anyway.

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Jonathon's Facebook

Lipitor not included.

​Jonathon Erdeljac is trying to kill you, according to some recent activity on his Facebook page. The chef behind Jonathon's Oak Cliff posted this picture and dropped the following to clarify the train wreck:

I call it "Tha' Nooner" 1/2# patty, ham, Swiss, bacon, American, tomato, mayo, and a fried egg on a toasted bun...

As soon as we confirm the coronary atrocity is actually available on the menu we'll send Sandwich Correspondent Justin Bittner over for a proper evaluation.

Via Foodbeast

​There's so little left to conquer. There's little territory left unbaconed. It's in our cookies, our perfume, our lube, and our adhesive bandages. Oh no, no, it's not a bad thing.

Following in Denny's meatsteps, Jack in the Box has kicked off a new bacon campaign that wants you to marry bacon in the name of their $4.99 BLT Cheeseburger and bacon milkshake. Yes, there's a whole website dedicated to the bacon campaign. And yes, it's only available for a "limited time." And yes, there's a partnership with Thrillist that allows you to buy a Bacon Tuxedo.

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Flickr

A scene from the original Left Bank in France

​Last November, Brooks Anderson and his brother Bradley, who are responsible for Veritas and Restaurant AVA, announced that, along with two other partners, they would be opening a new restaurant in the Bishop Arts District. Like restaurateurs often do, they agonized over names before eventually settling on "Left Bank." Sounds French but still approachable -- that was the logic. The new place was to have a strong wine offering and feature a casual, bistro-inspired menu.

But only a few days after sending out a news release announcing the restaurant, Brooks got a letter from the West Coast. A law firm in California claimed that their client owned rights to that name because the group owned three locations of a restaurant named "Left Bank Brasserie."

"I almost fell out of my chair," Brooks says.

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