CHAPARRAL RESTAURANT

From the Dallas files comes a 2004 menu of the Chaparral Restaurant & Lounge at the downtown Dallas Adam's Mark hotel, and, if the Wikipedia article for the hotel is correct, was one of the most exclusive restaur>ants in Dallas. The restaurant closed sometime prior to 2008 among an ownership change...though it might've closed as early as late 2006 when the hotel was doing a renovation just prior to its sale.

But, by 2004, even if the restaurant was still a nice restaurant, its best days were behind it. It was not the high-class experience it once was, and if they're stooping so low as to print their menu in brochures in tourist locations (where I got it), they were on their way out. Sometimes restaurants are just like that. The 2006 review at least indicates that the restaurant stayed true to its end; if there was one thing that Fearless Critics (the Houston guide) taught me, by the late 2000s there was still a breed of old line, upper-end hotel restaurants that were mostly captive-audience, stuffy restaurants with overcooked steak. A sector of life that I never experienced, of course, but I wonder if this restaurant was like that.