Top Round Appears to Be Worth the Hype

New to the Old East Dallas neighborhood is California-based Top Round, serving sandwiches good enough for Texas and California to put their beefs aside. At Top Round’s first Dallas location, guests can enjoy a variety of roast beef, burgers and chicken sandwiches in a diner-style setting.

At Top Round, the team slow-cooks their roast beef for 10 hours daily. Their signature “round sauce,” spicy mustard, Sriracha mayo, Buffalo sauce, horseradish cream and signature Cheez Whiz-inspired "cheese wizz" are all made in-house, too.

“I brought Top Round to Texas because of the atmosphere and the food,” says store owner Jason Napolitan. “It’s something that’s different from everything else in the market, and I knew that Dallas was lacking this particular brand.”

Top Round’s Texas location features a walk-up window, where guests can purchase and pick up food quickly. It's also the first of Top Round’s locations to have a bar: Guests can enjoy cocktails like a whiskey and Coke ($8) and Top Round signature cocktails such as the the TR ranch water ($8), which is a blend of Topo Chico with guest’s choice of dulce vida lime, grapefruit or pineapple-jalapeño tequila. Texas liquors and beers like Deep Eddy Vodka and Austin Eastciders are also available.

Also exclusive to Texas is Top Round’s “plant” menu, which includes the kale slaw salad ($7.99) and the Buffalo cauliflower ($8.49). The Buffalo cauliflower features pieces of cauliflower cooked to a crisp and coated in Buffalo sauce, designed to emulate the taste and texture of Buffalo wings. Usually, these are difficult to make, but with one taste of Top Round’s, you may opt to never eat regular Buffalo wings again.

Signature sandwiches include “the horse and hole,” which contains slow-cooked roast beef, roasted mushrooms, horseradish cream and Provel cheese ($8.99). The horseradish cream gives the sandwich a spicy flair, so bold it can open up one’s sinuses. Equally as good is the pastrami burger, which contains grilled pastrami, Provel cheese, arugula, signature chef sauce and onions ($9.99).

Fries are nearly just as important as the sandwich choice, and Top Round offers five variations of curly fries.

First-timers must try the cheese fries, which are plain curly fries topped with the housemade cheese wizz ($3.99). Not to be confused with canned cheese, Top Round’s cheese wizz is a cheddar-based sauce crafted in-house that can be added to any sandwich or side.

For those wanting to step things up a notch, the dirty fries are Top Round’s version of poutine: curly fries topped with housemade gravy, Provel cheese, caramelized onions and Top Round’s signature round sauce ($4.99).

For dessert, Top Round serves housemade custards served in the forms of concretes ($5.99), shakes ($4.99) or on a cone ($2.99). Notable concretes include the Elvis, a mix of custard, brownies and peanuts, as well as the banana cream pie, a mix of custard, bananas, Nilla wafers and whipped cream.

With the opening of Top Round in this burgeoning intersection of East Dallas, Napolitan hopes the new roast beef sandwich shop can be something everyone can enjoy.

“We are planning on this space being a community-driven space,” Napolitan says. “We want people that want to be here, hang out, have a good time, bring food back to your coworkers. We want to grow with the neighborhood.”

Top Round, 4800 Bryan St. (Old East Dallas). 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday-Tuesday, 11 a.m.-midnight Wednesday-Saturday.