How Chad Houser's Cafe Momentum Is So Much More Than Playing With Knives and Fire

For more than an hour, they sat onstage, two guys just sitting around talking. And the conversation was riveting.It was the opening of "Duets," a quarterly event series hosted by the Arts & Life team of The Dallas Morning News. Session one, held Wednesday night in the auditorium of the newspaper's new building, brought together architecture critic Mark Lamster and noted chef Chad Houser. Houser owns the downtown restaurant Café Momentum, which is not your ordinary eatery. Its culinary and wait staff are populated by people who are young in age but old in hard-scrabble experience.Only half-jokingly, Houser describes his philosophy as "taking kids out of jail and teaching them to play with knives and fire."  Continue reading...