DINING SPOTLIGHT

Zato

Zato Thai Cuisine and Sushi Bar offers a relaxed contemporary environment perfect for date night or a quiet family dinner that includes noodles, traditional Thai and gourmet sushi. BYOB. Take out or delivery available.

Since 1980, we have offered the finest Chinese food in Dallas. Choose from our gourmet menu or convenient buffet.

Stone Elephant

Are you ready for some football? We have NFL Sunday ticket & ESPN Game Plan. Happy Hour M-F 4-8PM and all day Sunday. Kitchen open ‘til 2AM.

Mingle with cheese makers who share secrets on stuffing, topping, dipping and melting. From sampling stations to pairing advice, Central Market’s Hail to the Cheese will earn your vote in every department.

SPANN RECOVERY RED ($15) CALFORNIA >

Red blends — red wines made with more than one grape often misunderstood in the United States. We tend to think of them as somehow inferior to varietal wines — those made with just one grape because they need more than one grape because the quality of the first grape isn’t very good.

In fact, nothing is further from the truth. Some of the world’s greatest wines are red blends, like French Bordeauxs and Rhones and some of the best Napa Valley cabernet sauvignons. And many California wines that say they are varietals may well have more than one grape in them. That’s because federal law allows producers to include up to 25 percent of another grape or grapes without changing the name of the wine or saying so on the label. Which means that your $12 bottle of pinot noir may be only 75 percent pinot, and one-quarter something else (often syrah).

So, as the weather turns cooler, give red blends another look. You’ll be surprised at what you find, as these wines demonstrate. All of these wines are available at Central Market:

This California wine is made with four grapes, including one that is white. Look for lots of fresh red fruit, low alcohol, and the quality and value that Peirano is known for. Serve this with hamburgers or any other end-of-the-season backyard cookout.

The best

Bordeaux can cost thousands of dollars a bottle, which means value is often in short supply. Fortunately, the Goudichaud (made of merlot and cabernet) offers look at how dark and complex red Bordeaux can be. This is a wine for those who like to pair wine with cheese.

Betsy and Peter Spann are former Casa Linda residents who moved to Sonoma to make wine, where they focus on blends. The Recovery Red has six grapes, and tastes of red berries. It’s wine, but not especially heavy.

—JEFF

DALLAS

5750 E. LOVERS LANE | 214-234-7000

PLANO 320 COIT ROAD | 469-241-8300

JEFF SIEGEL’SWEEKLYWINE REVIEWS appear every Wednesday on the Advocate Back Talk blog, lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/blog

New Orleansstyle red beans

What better way to enjoy fall’s cooler weather than with this Crescent City favorite? Serve it with plenty of white rice, some coleslaw or potato salad, and the red blend of your choice. Red beans are, of course, kidney beans, but New Orleans brands like Camellia that say “red beans” seem to provide the best results.

Serves six to eight, takes 3 to 4 hours

1 lb dry red beans

8 c water

1 ham bone or 2-3 pork neck bones or 1 lb smoked sausage, cut in 3/4-inch pieces

2 onions, chopped

1 bell pepper chopped

1/2 rib celery, chopped

2 Tbsp garlic, chopped

2 bay leaves

Red pepper, black pepper and salt to taste

1. Put everything but the salt into a heavy pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, partially cover, and cook until the beans start to get tender, 1 to 2 hours depending on the beans.Check the beans periodically; add more water if necessary.

2. When the beans start to get tender, add salt. Carefully remove the ham bone or neck bones, carefully remove the meat, and put the meat back in the pot.

3. When the beans are done, in another hour or so, mash some of the beans against the side of the pot to make the mixture creamier and thicker.

ask the WINE GUY?

WHY ARE THERE WHITE GRAPES IN RED WINE BLENDS?

This is a common practice in France, where the white juice makes the red wines lighter in taste and mouth feel.

—JEFF SIEGEL

What does it take to get a drink in this neighborhood?

Navigating through 100 years of complicated laws is the current answer. After November, however, that may change.

Story by Jeff Siegel & Christina Hughes Babb

Timeline of liquor laws in Texas

1843

Republic of Texas passes what may have been the first local-option measure in North America. This means each community in the state can decide its own liquor laws, setting the scene for 167 years of confusion.

1845

TEXAS LAW BANS SALOONS, BUT IS RARELY ENFORCEDAND IS REPEALED IN 1856.

1903

Local option voting takes most of North Texas dry, except for Dallas and Fort Worth.

1887 Prohibition amendment to Texas Constitution fails, and state remains “local option”: A county, city or justice of the peace precinct can vote wet or dry. This means that parts of the same county can have entirely different liquor laws.

1917 DALLAS VOTES DRY.

Illustration by Jynnette Neal

1919

TEXASADDS PROHIBITION AMENDMENTTO STATE CONSTITUTION.

1911 The only proper attitude for “any Christian man and thoughtful citizen,” said Texas Baptists, “was one of ceaseless and truceless hostility against the entire liquor oligarchy, local, county, state, and national, root and branch.”

1920 FEDERALPROHIBITION BEGINS.

1929 Colliers magazine reports that Dallas, despite Prohibition, is wide open — reporter Owen P. White bought liquor in six places in a twoblock stretch of downtown, and there were more than a hundred others in the city. city almost to how important next month’s wet-dry election is in Dallas’ social and cultural history. It’s not only the biggest wet-dry election in U.S. history since the end of Prohibition, but it’s also a landmark moment in Dallas. Since before Prohibition — for almost 100 years — most of Dallas has been dry in one form or another. It has been as much a part of Dallas as 100-degree days and the Cowboys.

In this, our wet-dry boundaries affected everyone. In dry areas, of course, residents have had to drive across town to buy a bottle of wine or a six-pack and couldn’t even order a drink in a restaurant until 1971. Even today, the private club limitations in dry areas that went into affect in 1971 make it more difficult to order liquor in Oak Cliff and North Dallas than in Lakewood. And even residents in wet areas feel the difference. If you live in a wet part of town that borders a dry area, you witness the Friday night flight to the liquor stores that guard the border.

All of this could change next month. If voters approve the two issues on the ballot, every restaurant in the city, regardless of wet-dry status, will be able to sell beer, wine and spirits without the private club paperwork, and retailers with the appropriate state licenses will be able to sell beer and wine.

In this month’s magazine, we look at the history of Dallas’ wet-dry status, our unique (and often frustrating) liquor laws, the role religion has played in keeping Dallas dry, and what it will mean to our neighborhood if voters approve both issues.

1944

1940

The town of Preston Hollow (not yet annexed by Dallas) votes dry, 97 to 49.

1935 Two years after federal Prohibition is repealed, Texas voters repeal state prohibition. Local option returns; areas that were wet before Prohibition are wet again. In Dallas, only Oak Cliff, with beer sales, is wet.

DALLAS COUNTY VOTES WET, 47,343 TO 23,540.

2010

DALLAS’ WET-DRY ELECTION GOES TO THETEXAS SUPREMECOURT, WHICH WILL DECIDEWHETHER THERE ARE VALIDENOUGH SIGNATURES TO HOLD THE REFERENDUM. IF THERE ARE, IT WILL GO TO VOTERS IN NOVEMBER.

1956 Oak Cliff votes dry, 17,123 to 15,403, and remains dry after elections in 1957 and 1960 fail to reverse its status.

1971

VOTERS APPROVE LIQUOR BY THE DRINK IN A TEXAS-WIDE REFERENDUM. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TEXAS HISTORY, RESTAURANT PATRONS WILL BE ALLOWED TO BUY COCKTAILS.

1976: Addison votes wet, 242-70 in one of the first successful wet-dry elections in Dallas County since Prohibition. In this, it is the beginning of the end of the dry laws that had dominated Dallas for more than century. Most of the city’s suburbs would follow suit, in some form or another, over the next two decades.

2004:

Carrollton votes wet for retail beer and wine sales (6,197 to 3,173) and for restaurant alcohol sales 6,759 to 2,595).

2007:

164.

How long has liquor been a political debate?

Wet-dry has always been controversial in Texas. In 1887, a leadinganti-Prohibitionist,R.Q. Mills, accused the media of bias in its reporting ofthewetsideduringthe fightoveradding a Prohibition amendment to the state constitution:

“The Prohibitionists had a monopoly with our reporting,” and he said the media who had criticized his position were guilty of fraud.

And in 1920, prominent Dallas physician Dr. Curtice Rosser exchangedletterswithhisfriendWilliamJenningsBryan, the thrice-failed Democratic presidential candidate, about the most important issues in the upcoming presidential election. They agreed it would be war profiteering, the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles (that ended World War I) and Prohibition.

Did Dallasites make moonshine?

Stillsandcornliquorare notjusthillbillydoings.In1936, reported a Dallas newspaper, police raided a still in the “North Dallas Negro district” near what is today Cole and Lemmon. They seized 950 gallons of mash, but the still’s operatorsescaped eventhoughthe newspaper reported that the police had staked out the house for most of the night.

It’scommontoseeLake Highlandsrestaurantgoers toting their own bottles into neighborhood eateries — see TuktaThai,Tony’s or Zatos, for example — and new liquor lawsmightindirectlyaffect that trend.

Restaurateurs in dry areas, such as Lake Highlands, often choose not to pursue the private-club status necessary to sell alcoholic beverages because of the associated time and cost.

Luan Vraniqi, owner of Brothers Pizza, which once offered alcohol on its menu, saysthereisan“incredibleamount of paperwork and extra cost involved” when it comes to selling spirits in a dry area.

“You have to keep track of members, or pay a company like Unicard to do it for you, anticipate liquor sales, train staff, buy extra insurance … and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. And the payoff wasn’t worth it. “We didn’t lose money, but we didn’t really make money, either.”

If a restaurant doesn’t have a mixedbeverage license, it can allow patrons