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Busting food trends in Dallas: 'The good stuff lasts'

"This is ridiculous," says chef Blythe Beck, when asked about a laundry list of trends that couldn't possibly be "hot." Please tell us cooking fake meat isn't a trend. And chicken: That's not a trend. C'mon. Chicken?

The idea was to chat about food trends in Dallas, but the two chefs invited to the table weren't willing to chase fashionable food.

"The good stuff lasts, and the good stuff sticks," says Beck, the owner and chef at Pink Magnolia in Oak Cliff. FT33 pastry chef Maggie Huff agreed. You won't catch her making unicorn doughnuts with rainbow icing.

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You know what never goes out of style? Great service, Huff says.

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"You'll go back to a restaurant that has pretty good food and great service. But you won't go back to a restaurant that has good food and really horrible service," she says.

What chefs want diners to care about: seasonality

Stop buying strawberries in December, they say. Diners who care about their food should care about when it's available. Huff suggests diners ask, "Is it ecologically responsible?" (And also: "Do they even taste good?") The restaurant she works at, FT33, is "a little extreme," she says, about sourcing food locally and seasonally.

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One great way restaurants continue to cook in the off-season is to pickle or dehydrate produce so it's still available. Of course, pickling vegetables and fruits is nothing new; farmers have been preserving produce for centuries.

"We have a whole army of powders and jars and vinegars," Huff says. "It's really made a big impact on how we're able to season and flavor food with things that aren't necessarily available to us."

What diners want chefs to care about: faster food

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Dallas diners want restaurant-quality food delivered to their homes. While that's possible with the many food-delivery services, both chefs say delicately prepared food often doesn't travel well.

At Pink Magnolia, Beck serves a popular chicken-fried rib-eye. She'd rather you didn't hire a driver to bring it to your house, though. "We are constantly evolving to see how we can get the food to you faster and fresher," Beck says. But better yet: Get off your couch and pay for a dinner you couldn't cook yourself.

So, what do these chefs eat?

We asked Huff and Beck to name their favorite dish. "If it's the last day on Earth," Beck says, she'd want to eat "my mom's spaghetti and turkey balls."

Huff would go for a graze of high-quality products: a gooey cheese from France, an imported ham, a handful of Marcona almonds, a slice of chocolate. "And a bottle of really good wine."

Watch our entire chat here: