Tin Star By Jim White My review of a hot, new restaurant comes with a disclaimer: Warning! Not recommended for serious business or erudite clients, but students of sociology should have a ball. Tin Star is sandwiched between McKinney Avenue and The Quadrangle. Soft tacos and all the assorted Tex-Tex paraphernalia-salsa, smoke and sizzle as it's billed-rule the roost here. This dude ranch version of chuck wagon cooking turns out pretty good food, yet something about it bothers me. The soft tacos ($2.75), served for breakfast, lunch and dinner, are a hit. They're chock full of Southwestern ingredients and a choice of beef, pork, fish, shrimp, grilled vegetable or chicken. The grilled chicken with roast garlic, red onion jalapeño marmalade, jack cheese and sweet potato straws-was bursting with great flavors and texture. Aztec Flatbread pizzas ($6.75) are a popular item. The 8-inch creations overflow with ingredients and look more like a big tostado than a pizza. Platters range from a simple grilled chicken breast ($7.50), to the very tasty Big Spring Chicken ($8.50)-fried chicken tenders sautéed with mushrooms, spinach and bacon, drizzled with puréed chipotle. Imagine a burger and all the trimmings with no bun and you'll find it here disguised as a soft taco-a cheeseburger taco ($6.50) with fries! Meal sized salads ($7.50) have names that sound like they came from Central Casting-Hop Sing Salad and Sheriff Lee. I had the house salad ($5.75) and added grilled chicken for another buck seventy-five. The roasted garlic balsamic vinaigrette was great, but the lettuce was dry, the chicken was bland, and the vegetables were refrigerated into oblivion. If you're a fan of vintage "Saturday Night Live" you may recall the sketch where people were herded through a trendy restaurant and ate from troughs. This is the closest thing I've seen in real life. Standing in line to order; dodging people; scrounging for a place to sit. It's a microcosm of life in the late 90's: Controlled chaos, expedient and driven by market conditions-prices have already gone up. I left feeling empty-even though I had sufficient food. In fact, "mass quantities" to borrow another "SNL" metaphor. Tin Star 2626 Howell Street (214) 999-0059 Send me an Email: jwdineline@aol.com Copyright © 1998 Inter Active Media Solutions. All Rights Reserved. The interactive components of this site require that you use a current browser version of Explorer; be sure to maximize your window out so you can see the entire page. This page was created by Inter Active Media Solutions.