There’s More To Dallas Cuisine Than Food Trucks
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
As the saying goes, an army runs on its stomach, and the collected students, faculty, contractors, and staff of St. Remedius Medical College qualified as an army, in perseverance if not in weaponry. The convoy of food trucks outside the campus gates were just part of the efforts to keep everyone happy and alert, as were college standbys like the Glass Glyptodont. However, St. Remedius was just a subset of Dallas, and Dallas cuisine by the time of St. Remedius’s disappearance was, erm, eclectic.
Most casual visitors to Dallas learned firsthand of the city’s addiction to chain restaurants, especially chain fast casual places. This was the town that introduced the world to Chili’s and Fuddrucker’s, but suburban and North Dallas residents’ preference for extruded food-like product hit its height with The Bag, a chain of ostensible burger joints where all meals were served in a large pouch with a single nipple and a tag reading what was allegedly inside. Burgers, fries, fried pies, milkshakes, cookies…all went into a food mill and went straight into the pouch. The idea was so successful that for the short time it dominated the American restaurant scene, The Bag inspired a whole line of copycats and supplemental venues, of which the bar Popul Vuh survived by serving classic Mayan pulque in its original and best consumption. Eventually, the fad died off, mostly due to issues with plasticizer consumption and the inability of customers to confirm that they got chiliburgers instead of cheeseburgers after all, but a rumor that every The Bag pouch had exactly the same contents accelerated its decline.
Moving closer to downtown, the area around the Park Cities was already hooked on salt. Salt in food, salt in beer, salt in margaritas, salt in pecan pies…if restaurants couldn’t pile it on, what was the point? Standard iodized salt switched to Himalayan pink salt to kosher salt to big chunks of rock salt, all shoveled on with a smile. Eventually, the trend had to hit its Euclidean ideal, ending with the Lower Greenville Avenue hangout The Salt Lick. Taking advantage of its patrons’ obsession with all things halite, The Salt Lick cut out the middleman, skipping food entirely for multi-flavored salt licks, as well as oats, carrots, and graze for the local Beast Culture advocates and Creative Onanism staffers. Its flagship location featured a rooftop patio that became a world-famous butterfly garden, mostly due to the number of regulars with salt glands.
Directly competing with The Salt Lick was the Irish/TexMex fusion gastropub The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly: contrary to popular opinion, its name was not a description of its menu but a second place choice, as the original name “Rum, Sodomy, & The Lash” was already taken by the on-campus pub started by Southern Methodist University to protect its students from underage drinking arrests. Located near the famed Steakley’s Antwar Saloon on Greenville Avenue (not to be confused with Steakley’s Banshee Breakfast Bistro), GBU was noted for its extremely low lighting (whether to conceal the food or to hide what happened in the rear booths, none could say for certain), overuse of Scotch Bonnet peppers (particularly in the signature dish, “Alamo Colcannon”), and a live Celtic Music night every Tuesday frequented either by the assembled Harkun Diplomatic Corps or by the denizens of multiple local anime conventions. Most waitresses attested that the Harkun were better tippers, less likely to skip on their checks and/or grope waitstaff, more likely to buy food and drink instead of ordering one glass of water for a table of 12, and certainly less aromatically challenged. The Harkun also appreciated the Alamo colcannon.
The greatest story involving Dallas restaurants, though, involved St. Remedius peripherally, when the pub The Perky Plecostomus (so named after the owner’s hyperactivity and lack of chin) purchased a surplus scrying window from the annual St. Remedius surplus sale. Ostensibly, those inside the pub looked out onto a floodplain associated with the Wealden Supergroup in what was now England, some 135 million years ago. For years, a lone aspiring writer sat every Saturday beside that window, breaking away from the view to scribble in a notebook before taking in spinosaurs, nodosaurs, and sauropods walking to the window, snuffling a bit at the interface, and then moving on. One day, he looked up to see a lone human figure moving among trees in the distance, bringing this up to the other patrons and receiving nothing but derision. The writer persisted, coming back every Saturday and eventually catching the eye of the figure, who understandably thought the scrying window to be a trick of some kind. The great love affair of Kennedy Thompson and the Pictish princess and mage Drusticc is worthy of its own specific story, beginning with that first view and ending with his herculean efforts to rescue her and bring her to the 21st Century (only to have her return to her original place because dinosaur hunting was in her blood by that point), but until the Perky Plecostomus shut down after its site was purchased by real estate developers and the pub razed, menus contained a thumbnail guide to the story, including the only surviving photo of the starcrossed lovers before they left permanently to return to the Valanginian Epoch. The book written by Thompson and sent back, along with part of his foot and the partial head of the allosaurid attempting to remove the whole thing as the chronal transfer took hold, was nowhere near as popular, but it can still be found in various forms in local bookstores through North Texas.
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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