164: Nick Badovinus, Dallas Restaurants, and Radio

D Magazine's EarBurner

Nick is in the pantheon of Dallas chefs. His new(ish) joint, the Brass Ram, in the East Quarter of downtown Dallas, occupies a space that once housed the broadcast studio for KLIF, one of the most important stations in the history of American radio. The space, called the Triangle Point Building, also once housed the Dallas Observer. So we bellied up to the Brass Ram bar with Nick and two former Observer staffers, Eric Celeste and our own Zac Crain, to talk about Gordon McLendon, the parrot he trained to say the station's call letters, Zac's previous life as an alt-weekly music editor, the supposed coup Eric orchestrated, and the time a certain editor thought the Observer had been the target of an anthrax attack. Oh! And we talk about restaurants and how Nick names them. We covered a lot of ground. You'll want to listen twice.