Best Farm-Fresh Eatery 2016 | Patina Green Home and Market | Best of Dallas® 2020 | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas | Dallas Observer
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Best Farm-Fresh Eatery

Patina Green Home and Market

In 2016, farm-to-table means little, if anything. It's become a dubious marketing term for most restaurants that tout it, but one McKinney restaurant takes its sourcing seriously: Patina Green Home and Market. Chef Robert Lyford's kitchen is a revolving door of local farmers whose product dictates much of Patina Green's menu. A farmer pops by with 40 pounds of summer tomatoes? Lyford will whip up something with 'em on the fly. Lyford also teaches summer cooking and pickling classes using local produce and is a frequent fixture at McKinney's farmers market. Hand-crafted, minimally produced items in Patina Green's market are meticulously sourced from Texas producers like Windy Meadows Family Farm and Confituras, an Austin jam maker, making this eatery an ideal spot to grab lunch and stock up your pantry.

Best Tamales

Tamale Company

We may have found a unicorn: A local company that produces lard-, gluten- and MSG-free tamales that, even without the animal fat, are hands-down the best tamales we've had all year. Sold around town at farmers markets and select grocery stores, the Tamale Company makes flavorful, indulgent tamales in packs of six. Throw a pack in a pot of boiling water for a quick, easy dinner that tastes as homemade as you can get without spending a day making your own masa. With flavors like ancho chili pork, chicken tomatillo and black bean and corn, even Tamale Company's vegetarian goods will rival your abuelita's tamales.

Best Food Delivery

Caviar

2016 has been the year of delivery in Dallas. Thanks to services like Uber Eats, Postmates and Sourced Craft Cocktails, you can have everything from condoms to craft cocktail ingredients (with recipe) delivered right to your door. Our favorite food delivery service has proven consistent, quick and filled with options: Caviar. The service pairs with local restaurants, frequently adds new spots and offers free delivery from restaurants near-by. The app's real-time GPS tracking makes it easy to predict exactly when your food will arrive. Sometimes it's by bicycle, if the restaurant is in the neighborhood.

Best Farmers Market

McKinney Farmers Market

The best farmers markets offer not just a solid selection of locally grown produce but also integrate farmers with prepared items, artists and food. It's an added bonus if the market is in a quaint, scenic location, which is always more pleasant than buying summer squash in a hot parking lot. McKinney Farmers Market hits all the marks. Held in McKinney's historic, tree-filled Chestnut Square, this market is stocked so well with local farmers and vendors that you can easily handle an entire grocery trip in one spot. Meat, produce, canned goods, pastured eggs, olive oil — it's all there and reasonably priced. The market also hosts fundraising farm-to-table dinners featuring local farmers using seasonal North Texas produce.

Readers' Pick:

Dallas Farmers Market

Best Amuse-Bouche

Lucia

Lucia, the cozy Oak Cliff Italian spot where it's notoriously hard to snag reservations, serves up a cadre of indulgent dishes that aren't known for being inexpensive. That's precisely why it's fun that one of Lucia's most popular snacks will set you back only $1 each: the foie gras-stuffed prunes, which featured a dollop of velvety whipped foie gras in a small prune. The buttery umami of the foie gras combined with the sweet, concentrated flavor of the prune creates an intense bite that, if you're doing it right, will mark the start of every meal at Lucia.

Best Supper Club

Frank Underground

The supper club is on the rise everywhere, not just in Dallas, but one local underground dinner club outshines them all: Frank Underground. After meeting as contestants on season two of MasterChef, North Texans Jennie Kelley and Ben Starr came back to Dallas and decided to start their own supper club, one that's quickly become one of the hardest reservations to get in all of North Texas. Once you get into this dinner, though, you're in for a treat. Diners are seated around a communal table and treated to a multi-course adventure featuring local produce and engaging stories from Starr and Kelley, who also happens to be a member of the enigmatic band the Polyphonic Spree.

Best Pizza Buffet

Stonedeck Pizza Pub

Kathy Tran

Step aside, mediocre national pizza buffet chains — Stonedeck Pizza in Deep Ellum has reinvented the pizza buffet with one that, well, is actually good. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, $8.99 will net you all the thin-crust pizza and sides you want, and there's plenty to choose from. Turkey sandwiches, cold soba noodle salad, chili-flecked marinated cucumbers — this is the pizza buffet that grew up, got a bachelor's degree but still throws down hard on Friday nights. And did we mention Stonedeck sells beer?

Best Chinese Restaurant

Fortune House

Eating a dumpling at Fortune House feels like a delicious ceremony. As soon as the server pulls away the lid to the bamboo basket, steam fills the air and perfect little pouches of magic await. The Irving eatery does well with Americanized dishes like General Tso's chicken, but real treasures await on the "Shanghai flavor" menu, where you'll find impeccable xiao long bao (soup dumplings) and impossibly flavorful pan-fried pork buns. If half your table is in the mood for American Chinese food and the other half is looking for adventure, this is the place to go.

Readers' Pick:

Royal China

Best Burger

Uncle Herky Burger at Luscher's Red Hots

Brian Luscher wields his cheeseburger with the preciseness of a samurai swordsman. We believe this is the best burger in Dallas because of the way it's built: From the ground up, it's crafted to bring heartfelt, home-infused joy to the lover of the burger. The mayo is homemade. So is the mustard, for meat's sake. Hugged by a wind-soft seeded bun, the two Local Yocal waygu beef patties, thin, but not too thin, are indulged with the meltiest of melted double American cheese slices (you'll be able to pull stretchy pieces from the wrapper), pickles and caramelized-to-buttery onions. Adding peppered bacon will cut you in half, gleefully. It's a not a sandwich — it's a Hattori Hanzo sword.

Readers' Pick:

Twisted Root Burger Co.

Best Sandwich Restaurant

Goodfriend Package

Taylor Adams

On a trending corner of East Dallas, the folks from Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House brought a little something new to the neighborhood with Goodfriend Package, a sandwich spot and bottle shop that also boasts a Cultivar Coffee stand and vinyl hand-picked from Good Records. Goodfriend's sandwiches are simple and straightforward but made with attention to detail: bacon-fat mayo on a BLT made with house-cured bacon, house-made sauerkraut on the Reuben and inventive touches like the mushroom pastrami sandwich. Pop in for a breakfast sandwich on the go or hang around and browse the hundreds of craft beer bottles in their coolers.

Readers' Pick:

Jimmy's Food Store

Best Of Dallas®

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