Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

Category: FRANK

  • A FRANK Tale: Poison!

    Since almost the first day FRANK opened, nearly 3 years ago, we have wanted to do a theme centered around poisonous foods.  Why?  Because SO MANY of the foods we eat are poisonous!  Either if prepared or harvested improperly, or if eaten in too great a quantity.  Some poisonous foods we appreciate SPECIFICALLY for their…

  • A FRANK Tale: REAL Mexico

    (Most photos in this blog appear courtesy of Stephanie Casey at Frugal Foodie Dallas, who live-blogged our menu for us!  Thanks, Stephanie!) We’ve been wanting to do Mexican FRANK for a very, very long time.  Since the beginning, in fact.  BUT…when you live in a place like Texas, which is oversaturated with both TexMex AND…

  • A FRANK Tale: Eggs Galore

    I’m vastly behind on FRANK blogs…well, because we’ve been doing FRANK so often recently.  And each one has truly been epic enough to deserve its own blog.  This past April we celebrated our 2 year anniversary, and we decided to revisit the theme of our very first FRANK back in 2012…”The Egg.”  We had chosen…

  • Sous Vide Scotch Eggs

    The Scotch Egg was invented in a pub in London, and it was an intriguing, if crude, concept.  A hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage, breaded and fried or baked to a crisp.  But hard boiled eggs are truly one of the worst inventions of mankind.  Yes, they are a convenient and nutritiously dense snack. …

  • A FRANK Tale: New Orleans

    Jennie and I both love New Orleans.  We’ve never been there together, unfortunately.  But we’ve each enjoyed some potently inspirational trips there separately, and when it came to deciding this March’s FRANK theme, it was a no-brainer.  Normally we fight for a few days to come up with the theme, but this one transpired effortlessly…

  • A FRANK Tale: Aphrodisiacs Galore

    (Most of the photos in this blog appear courtesy of the incredibly talented Piya Trepetch, who flew in from the Bay Area to dine at FRANK with us.  Check out his amazing website and Facebook page, chock full of spectacular images!) At FRANK, we love our holiday themes.  For several months, Jennie and I have…

  • A FRANK Tale: NYE 2013

    Many of my readers have said they love my FRANK blogs more than any other, so I’ll try to blog about every FRANK dinner so you can all get a hint of what the experience was like for our diners.  Please note that there are only a few photos of plated dishes on this blog…Jennie,…

  • A FRANK Tale: Bread, Bread, Bread

    In mid December of 2013, Jennie Kelley and I decided it was finally time for a FRANK theme that we had been toying with for more than a year: Bread.  Homemade bread has been an integral part of our menus at FRANK since the very beginning, and diners always tell us that our homemade bread…

  • FRANK: The first MasterChef love child

    During the filming of MasterChef season 2, Jennie Kelley and I had become very close.  During one pressure test challenge, our team was safe and we were watching the opposing team battle it out from the safety of the balcony above.  Jennie and I were distraught, watching our friends cooking at the very limit of…

  • Easter FRANK…a Tale of Texas Foraging

    After my seemingly endless blog about the underground restaurant FRANK that I run with my bestie Jennie Kelley from season 2 of MasterChef, I though I’d be done writing about FRANK for awhile.  However, our Easter seatings in March were so incredibly epic and special, and so many of you have requested the story behind…