Five reasons you will love Matchbox, new Dallas restaurant (hint: Blueberry french toast)

The nation’s capital doesn’t usually export anything to us in Texas that we are particularly fond of. Matchbox, based in Washington, DC, is the exception.

• Matchbox is celebrated for their pizzas, which are fired in a brick oven and topped with good quality ingredients. Know a friend from DC? Every one of them will tell you they are crazy about Matchbox’s pizzas.
• Like the look and feel of Houston’s or R&D Kitchen? Me too. You’ll like Matchbox just as much. (Ask for one of the two private dining tables, snuggly tucked in a lucite box overlooking the main dining room.)
• Blueberry muffin french toast. On the brunch menu. There, two things I can’t often abide, but Matchbox made me a believer. I envisioned Sam’s Club blueberry muffins sliced then dunked in batter.  Couldn’t have been more wrong. Matchbox makes a blueberry-studded cake, gossamer light, thickly slices it, then dips it into an egg and cream custard. It’s as if blueberry pancakes got together with Emeril’s custardy bread pudding. You will love this stuff. It’s brunch crack. (Those cinnamon buns are damn good, too.)
• Crab sandwich. Matchbox calls it a crab “sammich,” which is fine by me, but the street cred comes from their recipe, which hails from Annapolis, Maryland (where they know a thing or two about Chesapeake crabs) and involves nothing more complicated than crab, spices and butter.
• Everything really is made from scratch and comes in fresh. The only thing in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer is ice cream. (Yep, I looked.)

More here.