Best Wings 2015 | Knox Street Pub | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Wings

Knox Street Pub

It's the little things that make a plate. All over Dallas, wings are served up under-fried, timidly sauced and paired with terrible garnishes. It's enough to make you want to stick with the bar nuts. At Knox Street Pub, the wings come out with a satisfying crispness, and they're sauced with pure Frank's Red Hot, straight out of the bottle for a fiery punch. Even the garnishes are solid, with chunky blue cheese, celery that's crisp and vibrant and whole baby carrots with a satisfying crunch. There's enough veg on this plate that you could trick yourself into believing it's healthy. Don't.

Best Butcher Shop

Rudolph's Market & Sausage Factory

A lot has changed on Elm Street over the past year. The sidewalks are wider, parking your car is a little easier and from landscaping to paint everything has had a serious facelift. Through it all, Rudolph's hasn't changed a bit, which is a very good thing. The butcher shop has been selling paper-wrapped steaks, sausages and other cuts of meat for more than a century, and anyone who has shopped here hopes things stay just as they are for as long as they can. A trip to Rudolph's is a trip back in time — a time when the guy behind the counter could tell you how to roast the top round you just purchased, and your meat was raised sensibly.

Best Cookies

JD's Chippery

Alex Scott

Cookies are so good, most people don't notice much difference between a fresh cookie; one that's a little old, moist and dry; and a commercial cookie with a chemical aftertaste. But cookies baked with care from scratch taste better, and family-owned JD's Chippery carefully bake theirs in small batches at their quaint shop in Snider Plaza. They excel in the classic chocolate chip, a little crunchy on the outside and soft and melty on the inside.

Best Salad That's Actually Healthy

Whole Foods' Raw Kale and Avocado Salad

Think of Whole Foods grocery store as a city unto itself, where the salad bar functions as the "downtown." It's where the natives hunt and gather for the quick pick-up of ready-made meals. Get there early, however, for the healthiest option on the to-go table, the popular raw kale and avocado (with purple onion) salad. It contains no meat, no salad dressing —nothing cooked. How do you make a salad without dressing taste good? By smothering the chopped kale and crisp onion with creamy, squished-up fresh avocado. It's pitched to people on the stringent "raw food" diet, but for anyone's menu, it's a light, refreshing, healthy bowl o' green.

Best Brunch Abomination

Easy Slider's Glazed & Confused

In most cases, the idea of doughnut as sandwich roll is overwhelming. It's a gimmick, trotted out by the likes of minor league baseball teams trying to kill you with a full-size Krispy Kreme double cheeseburger. Easy Slider, with a little help from Deep Ellum's Glazed Donut Works, takes advantage of its staple's diminutive size to make a sweet, savory concoction of beef, cheese, bacon, pickled jalapeños and doughnut that falls deliciously short of being a gut bomb. It's available from 1 to 4 p.m. the first Sunday of the month, when the Easy Slider truck can be found at the Doublewide in Deep Ellum.

Best Pimento Cheese Sandwich

Cold Beer Co.

Lauren Drewes Daniels

Cold Beer Co.'s pimento cheese bears no resemblance to the neon orange stuff your grandmother used to keep a tub of in the fridge. It's a decadent combination of Gouda, cheddar, mayo and just a hint of jalapeño. Topped with bacon and spread between two pieces of sourdough, it makes a sandwich you'll tell your grandkids about.

Best Hangover Cure

The Ol' Number 7 at Norma's

Norma's Cafe

Two biscuits smothered in gravy, three scrambled eggs, hash browns and melted cheddar cheese topped with sausage, bacon, jalapeños and tomatoes. That's Norma's Ol' Number 7. A giant, dense, gooey mess that will take care of the physical ramifications of whatever horrible things you drank last night. It won't help with your paleo diet, but it sure does help heal a hangover.

Best Eats After 2 a.m.

Zalat

Kathy Tran

For all that Dallas' dining scene does well, late-night food service is not a strong point. Beyond the usual pancake joints and freeway greasy spoons, there isn't much to pick from for eats after last call. When Zalat opened this spring, that changed. Five nights a week — Wednesday through Sunday — the New York- style pizza joint will serve you a pie as late as 4 a.m. The pizza, especially the creative and delicious Reuben, is way better than it should be for an after-midnight nosh. Worth staying out late for.

Best Fort Worth Import

Rodeo Goat

Fort Worth's top contender for the North Texas burger throne proved itself in 2015 as its second outpost took up residence in the Dallas Design District. The Rodeo Goat features a burger named after our mayor — the Irish whiskey cheddar- and candied bacon-topped "Mike Rawlings" — and brought the Fort Worth original's Goat Balls along for good measure. Ignore the rude name, the goat cheese-stuffed beignets are little wads of cheesy goodness. Every bite of the half-chorizo Chaca Oaxaca burger is an adventure into spicy meat happiness.

Best Use of Rice Krispies Treats

Carnival Barker's Ice Cream

Aaron Barker's burgeoning Dallas institution, Carnival Barkers, is in a state of flux. The ice cream master lost his lease on his space at the Truck Yard this year, but opened his first stand-alone joint near the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff. It's a good thing, too, as even the slightest doubt about the availability of Barker's most delicious creation, the Rice Krispies treats ice-cream sandwich, featuring vanilla ice cream jammed between two Rice Krispies squares, would've been utterly snap, crackle and no.

Best Of Dallas®

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