On a Sunday afternoon, Elm Street is clogged by cars. It’s just after 1 p.m., and the horns blast and the brake lights stutter. Sidewalks are flowing with people. Inside Shoals Sound & Service is an alleviating quiet. The bartender walks to the end of the counter, fiddles with the…

At 3:15 p.m. on a weekday, R&B is polished-clean and empty. It won’t be long. It’s a brief breath of air before the plunge: over the weekend, the night crew will sear oblong beef patties until 4 a.m. The first late-night service went fine. A surge of Dallasites showed up…

There’s not much of a view at Haystack. The beer and burger joint is nudged into a strip mall overlooking a typical Dallas parking lot partially fenced off, its asphalt blanketed by a layer of dust from construction. Just above the strip mall, a tower of Turtle Creek condominiums blocks…

The familiar jangle of the convenience store bells fills the air as you push through the double doors. It’s a signal that a good meal is on its way. You’re beelining to the back of the store, through the bodega’s aisles, to the wall-bound menu that’s wrapped in ever-blinking lights…

So you’re here for the cheeseburger. You’re not alone at Greenville’s long-running bistro, and you haven’t been for years. Look around, and you’ll see and hear Grape patrons whispering about the burger across their tables. It’ll be something like “This burger won a bunch of awards.” (In 2009, it was…

All-American is a series that looks at beloved, longstanding North Texas eateries and examines their histories while exploring how the food has changed — for the good or bad — over the years. The Cheez Whiz is drizzled on as a finale. The “pizza slayers,” each wearing a leather holster…

Shark jaws hang over the front door, which means you’re somewhere else right now. Oyster brine and lemons — the bartender slices neat zest strips — create the cologne in the air. This is Dallas’ Preston Center, but once inside Montlake Cut, there is a retreat disguised as a…

All-American is a series that looks at beloved, longstanding North Texas eateries and examines their histories while exploring how the food has changed — for the good or bad — over the years. The flat-top crackles. Four beef patties go down, snapping and hissing like records, and a powder coat…

It’s never been just a bologna sandwich. Bologna is pork’s inexpensive canvas upon which you pour your memory. You know the aroma of it — tangy and sharp and so uniquely bologna. Maybe a memory emerges, for some of us, when squishy white bread fuses with a lot of mayo…

Inside the picked-clean husk of a Burger King, a new fast food joint has made its home. Unlike the ancient King, this clone from BurgerFi, a chain from Florida, has adapted to many of the advancements of modern human technologies. There are aluminum and clean lines and naked wood panels…

All-American is a series that looks at beloved, longstanding North Texas eateries and examines their histories while exploring how the food has changed — for the good or bad — over the years. It’s early. There’s a merciful quiet inside the cafeteria at the Los Lupe’s Cafeteria on Riverfront. There…

Chef Taylor McCreary never made it to Deep Ellum to devour one of the city’s best sandwiches, and, technically, he never will. He’s been piloting the kitchen at the Braindead Brewing for a month since the departure of former chef David Pena to Goodfriend, around the same time Commerce Street…

It begins — as it should at your local bar — with cold beer. About seven years ago, the idea of what food would be served out of the White Rock kitchen was a question mark on a whiteboard. Whiskey and cheeseburgers, and the runners who would hustle the burgers…

The most underestimated breakfast food in the arsenal is the meatball. There’s something about garlic-studded pork spheres, screaming awake in a sizzling-hot pan, that sends an ancestral happiness ricocheting down the strands of your DNA. Meatballs are a serene village vacation compared with the gray static that you feel when…

The automated voice you know as Google Maps announces over the phone’s speaker, “Right turn at Whataburger.” The orange burger hut is the last sign of Texas you’ll see, at least for the moment, if you’re headed to Aloha Hawaiian BBQ. The view from Aloha’s front door is a heat mirage…

It begins, as some of the best meats do, behind pit doors. A ground beef patty snoozes for a while inside a sauna of smoke. The hand-formed beef discs, dusty from Lakewood Smokehouse’s barbecue seasoning, rest  in a gray cloud until they’ve hit a rosy-middle temperature. If you like your…

It was a mistake, like discovering a crisp $100 bill on the sidewalk. A case full of tater tots arrived on Andrew Chen’s doorstep. Monkey King Noodle Company’s sides, like bok choy charred with garlic and cucumber points soaking in a head-clearing spicy vinegar bath, are street food gems after…

All-American is a series that looks at beloved, longstanding North Texas eateries and examines their histories while exploring how the food has changed — for the good or bad — over the years. It’s quiet at Goff’s after lunch. Except for the hiss of the charcoal grill and the fry oil,…