Two Dallas restaurants start the year off by, well, not existing anymore, but we also get a peek at new things to come. Dish in Preston Hollow — owned by NL Group (Jalisco Norte, Dakota’s Steakhouse) — closed Jan. 2, according to a press release. “As of today, January 2, 2018,…
Chef Joshua Harmon knows his audience. A few weeks after launching a late-night bao cart in front of his trailblazing Deep Ellum restaurant Junction, Harmon is switching things up with a late-hours menu and a speakeasy that pays homage to the neighborhood’s blues history. Starting at 8 p.m. tonight, Junction…
On one of the coldest days in Dallas, the diner in Oak Cliff feels too warm to be real. Chicken-fried steak, big as the sun and shimmering with pepper gravy, steams visibly; it’s ready to go in the kitchen window like a pie in the windowsill of an old cartoon…
Most restaurants fail within the first two years, which makes it no surprise that Dallas, too, frequently sees eateries shutter with little to no warning (at least for consumers). These closures can feel like a tiny heartbreak — we form close bonds with the businesses we frequent. We make memories…
In the window at T-swirl Crepe in Carrollton is a collection of life-sized, polymer crepes. These beauties are filled with fruit that will never rot, scoops of mossy green matcha ice cream that can’t melt and shrimp that will remain ever-fresh. They provide a startlingly accurate depiction of the food that inspired…
After a decade of stellar cocktails and solid late-night eats, Dallas cocktail forefather Victor Tangos is closing after service concludes on New Year’s Eve, bartender Carlos Marquez confirmed on Facebook. Over the years, Victor Tangos has been home to some of the city’s leading bar and culinary talent, from chefs Kirstyn…
Many white American food writers call tacos and other Mexican foods “humble,” but is a cuisine humble if its flavors are brash and bright, its traditions are worn with confidence and its sandwiches are so big they resemble ocean liners? There’s nothing humble about the tostadas at Frida’s Tacolandia. They…
American cheese should be the unofficial flag of Dallas in 2017. It could hang in the sky like a glittering yellow square, stiff and proud as the American flag on the moon. American cheese is the sigil of house Dallas, and it symbolizes, all jokes aside, a real movement in…
When family and friends come to town for the holidays, one question looms heavy over the entire visit: What the hell am I going to do with these people for the next several days? The easiest answer, of course, is eat, and you can’t truly experience Dallas cuisine without going…
It’s nearly impossible to detect when a seismic shift in your life is approaching. You must watch yourself and your surroundings carefully, and there may be coincidental signs. On a normal morning in Sanlitun, a bar district in Beijing, chef Andrew Dilda would walk out of his 40-story apartment building,…
91.3. According to the National Chicken Council, that’s how many pounds of chicken Americans will have consumed, per capita, in 2017. If that projection holds, it will mean that we as a country ate more of our fine, feathered friends than ever before in one year. And can you blame us?…
Construction ruptures the ground on Davis Street. Near its corner at Bishop Avenue, workers are standing in a carved-out rectangular slice in the middle of the road, and a massive crane reaches into the sky above Stock and Barrel. North Oak Cliff is, for better or worse, changing. On this…
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. On an icy Christmas in Dallas about 34 years ago, Jesse Moreno Sr. scoured the neighborhood, looking…
It is no accident that this has been a stellar year for sandwiches in Dallas. From the boom of bars to skyrocketing construction, the city inflates with restaurants as if we’re inside a bubble made of butter. The byproduct of our little food boom is a growing movement throughout the…
This year, Observer food critic Brian Reinhart went on a very Eat, Pray, Love-esque pilgrimage around DFW, praying Google listed correct hours of operation while falling in love with strip-mall kebabs and Turkish ezme. In his soul search, Reinhart found a beautiful variety of cuisines and experiences, from Iraqi feasts in Richardson…
2017 will be remembered for a lot of uncomfortable societal change, such as the fact that Dallas barbecue is fancy now. Craft cocktails, mandatory valet, $28 chicken breasts, Ferris wheels: For some restaurateurs, a pile of meat on butcher paper isn’t enough anymore. Smoky Rose opened across from the Dallas…
Assuming you’ve done your Christmas shopping this year — and even if you haven’t — it’s safe to say many of us are a little tapped out right now. Gifts, travel, expensive sequined outfits we’ll wear to one holiday party and then never again — Christmas cheer doesn’t come cheap…
Just after Thanksgiving, you might have seen a sign on the door of Food From Galilee that caused a gravity-drop feeling in your gut. Under a red “help wanted” sign, a handwritten note on a sheet of yellow legal paper read, “Dear Customers: We will be closed due to a…
When you walk into The Statler, a distinctly Don Draper kind of aesthetic will greet you. Think wire-work chairs, marble galore and the kind of midcentury, swanky vibe that makes smoking seem like a reasonable choice. This fashionably vintage setting makes for an ideal brunch spot, and Overeasy — the…
What’s better than sandwiches? Tiny sandwiches, that’s what. The tiny sandwich is finally about to have its day at a big new food festival: Between the Buns, a Dallas Observer Slider Event. From 4-7 p.m. Saturday, March 24, sliders will rain down from the heavens at the Dallas Farmers Market. The…
Once, any talk of Texas’ barbecue belt focused on Central Texas. That belt is now, well, Texas-sized. Good barbecue can be had anywhere between the Red River and the Rio Grande. While Austin and the small towns dotting the Hill Country certainly have the edge when it comes to barbecue…
Pho is the kind of dish that makes people love to argue over authenticity and tradition. But a world without weird pho is a world we don’t want to live in, which is what drew us to the new Lime Bar & Kitchen in Irving to try the restaurant’s already famous…
