Locations in Dallas

This locally owned and operated brewery in Dallas' Medical District specializes in New England-style hazy IPAs. They produce a plethora of beers; often multiple new beers each week. Celestial hosts a lot of events weekly and annually. Follow them on social media to keep track. They have a large tap room and patio.

Suddenly, temaki restaurants are all over Dallas. Handrolls, to use the English word, are small cylindrical rolls of dried seaweed paper wrapped around a quick mix of sushi rice and fish, cucumbers or anything else. They’re a fast-casual version of sushi, basically, and handrolls are meant to be eaten almost as soon as the chef finishes making them. (In other words, don’t get all precious with your Instagramming.) The most careful, considered handroll spot in town is Nori, where chef Jimmy Park builds tasting menus of four or five rolls with ultra-high-quality cuts of tuna belly, freshwater eel and more. Fresh, not prepackaged, wasabi is available. There’s also a kitchen in the back that can produce excellent cooked dishes like takoyaki, the fried dough balls filled with chunks of octopus.

Fun fact: Chef Jimmy Park is a Nobu veteran who moved into handrolls after a brief stint in the poke business.

When Oddfellows brought in chef Anastacia Quiñones to introduce a dinner menu, Bishop Arts had no idea what it was in for. The all-day-breakfast diner, famous for coffee, waffles and hipster patrons, is now even better at dinnertime. Indeed, the fabled brunches that drove gentrifying Oak Cliff types to stand in hourlong lines Sunday mornings are getting a little uneven. The service is, too. But dinner at Oddfellows has been so thoroughly transformed that one can’t help hoping Quiñones and her crew feel liberated to serve whatever the hell they want, at any time of day. A crab tostadita starter ($12) nicely illustrates the quality of the new dinner menu: tostadas small enough to be glorified crackers, piled up with crab meat, avocados and lettuce. It’s a refreshing, bright bite of food, big enough for a weight-watching meal. Farro is on the menu in three places, including a risotto, with good reason: The kitchen does this tough-to-cook grain consistently right. Try the farro salad, with avocado, pea shoots and tangy lemony dressing, plus a few bonus slices of cucumber and radish. A capellini pasta dish with invigorating house-made arugula pesto and half-molten chunks of mozzarella is another patio fare winner Need something more gluttonous? Go for the shrimp and grits.

The menu of savory crepes at Whisk changes with the seasons and with the inspiration of Julien Eelsen and his chefs. Many of the most deluxe are topped with what amounts to meal-sized salads. There are breakfast and dessert options, too; at breakfast, consider the fiery-hot shakshuka crepe with a runny egg yolk perched in the middle, or a crepe filled with smoked salmon. Eelsen, a Parisian native, delights in the flavors of Oak Cliff, sourcing local barbecue and deli meats for some of his dishes. During the pandemic, Whisk has kept its dining room resolutely shut, only adding patio seating in the fall. For takeout or patio customers, there’s one new addition to the menu’s temptations: eggy breakfast sandwiches, often topped with rustic European ingredient combinations like beer-braised onions and molten French cheese.

Top pick: Almost anything at Whisk makes for a fabulous picnic.