by Scott Reitz

Over the Christmas break I traveled to New York City and Washington D.C., where I ate seven meals a day doing my best to absorb as much as possible in each city. While I wandered around, I discovered a few trends on my own, in restaurants that have opened since I last visited -- ramen shops and Izakayas seemed to point to rapidly expanding Japo-fetishism, for instance -- but I also asked friends and family what they had noticed opening over the last year. Most of them remarked a deluge of Italian restaurants.

Some of the new restaurants focus on regional Italian cooking, some specialize in Italian American cooking in an attempt to recreate a lost age. Trends in larger cities have a way of trickling down to smaller ones, and there is evidence this one has already kicked off here in Dallas.

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Source: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/