Category Archives: interviews

Veletta Forsythe Lill, Outgoing Dallas Arts District Executive Director & Mother of Dallas Food Trucks

Do you operate a food truck in Dallas? Have you ever patronized a Dallas food truck? Well, you need to thank Veletta Forsythe Lill. The outgoing executive director of the Dallas Arts District, home to internationally renowned arts institutions and free public events that she’s helped foster, fought to have food regulations reformed so that you could enjoy Dallas’ best-smelling truck and the whiz-bang of K-Mex, not to mention ignite the celebrity of at least one area blogger. So, thank her. Lill is a hero, a champion of arts, culture and cuisine and someone who knows what she likes in a taco.

What is your favorite taco-related childhood memory?
I confess that I grew up in the Midwest in the 1950s and ’60s so tacos were not a staple. Besides the standard casseroles and Jell-O dishes of the period, our ethnic food was more European Union than Latin American. My taco, Tex-Mex, Mexican food addition was born in the 1980s when we moved to Dallas. I am thrilled to say that our city and America has become far more sophisticated about our food over the years. Continue reading

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Filed under Arts District, Dallas, interviews, Lengua Sessions

Meet and Eat: Digg’s Taco Shop’s Richard Rivera

“Meet and Eat” is an occasional—rare, really—series about adventures and discussions with food writers, chefs, restaurateurs and others orbiting the food world.

The Park Cities/Upper Greenville area has a new breakfast tacos destination: Digg’s Taco Shop. The Hillcrest Avenue restaurant opened across from Southern Methodist University in February 2011. But only recently did the good, comfortable joint that bills itself as influenced by the Austin music and taco scenes begin serving breakfast tacos.

So, why did Digg’s chef Richard Rivera and business partners wait until Sept. 24 to offer breakfast tacos?

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Filed under breakfast tacos, Dallas, DFW, interviews, Meet and Eat, Tex-Mex

André Natera, Pyramid Restaurant & Bar Executive Chef

“Lengua Sessions” is a bi-monthly interview series with taco-loving chefs, bartenders, civil servants, artists, persons of interest unluckily cornered and grilled about tacos.

There has been no shortage of accolades for André Natera as the executive chef of the Fairmont Hotel Dallas’ restaurant, the Pyramid. The 35-year-old El Paso native is a wonder. He quietly transformed the Pyramid into a more than a hotel’s food establishment. Natera made the restaurant a fine-dining destination where patrons are awed by classically informed seasonal, largely locally sourced (some of it from the Fairmont’s 3,000-square-foot terrace garden) dishes. Stuffy, Natera and the Pyramid, are not. Continue reading

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Filed under Arts District, Dallas, DFW, interviews, Lengua Sessions, Texas