Two New Dallas Restaurants Make Yelp's Best of List

Earlier this week, Esquire released its list of best new restaurants in America, and Dallas' yakitori omakase, MĀBO, made the cut. In late November, Michelin released its inaugural Guide in Texas, which included one star for the omakase, Tatsu, on the edges of Deep Ellum as well as recognition for 22 other North Texas spots.

Now, Yelp has compiled a list of the best new restaurants in the country. Yelp looked at full-service restaurants that opened after January 1, 2023, and ranked them on things like total volume and rating of reviews through September 1. Then, Tara Lewis, a Yelp Trend Expert, parsed through the data for a bit of nuance.

Two Dallas restaurants were in the top 20, including the Wicked Butcher, which came in at No. 6 on Yelp's best new restaurants list. This downtown Dallas steakhouse is on the bottom floor of the Comerica Bank Tower at Main and St. Paul streets, where Dallas Chop House was until it closed during the pandemic. The space suffered damage during the Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 and again from busted pipes during the freeze of 2022. Finally, it reopened early this year.

The Yelp blurb gives a shout-out to the "complimentary popovers the size of a baby's head, paired with rosemary butter," which sounds worth the trip. Can we order a drink at the bar and just get popovers? Nafees Alam, CEO of DRG Concepts, which operates Wicked Butcher, says sure, but during happy hour, we can get a plate of charcuterie with a cocktail.

Alam says the restaurant gets all its beef from Meat by Linz, based in Chicago — both wet and dry-aged, with an emphasis on aged beef, anywhere from 21 to 60 days. It attracts a lot of business lunches and diners during the week and is a popular spot for Dallasites hitting shows in the nearby Arts District on the weekend.

The Wagyu pastrami ($22) on the lunch menu looks interesting — Russian dressing, green cabbage slaw and gruyere cheese on a brioche bun. Steaks on the dinner menu start at $52 for an 8-ounce filet mignon and go up to $165 for a 32-ounce dry-aged Tomahawk.

Valet service is available at the Main Street entrance, or you can use the garage on Elm Street and the restaurant will validate your ticket.
Casa Pollastro, an all-you-can-eat Brazilian and Italian restaurant, ranks 20th on the list of best new restaurants in the U.S. We visited this spot in January 2023. There's a four-course prix fixe menu for $20 at lunch and a $36 dinner that allows for unlimited portions of pasta, spatchcocked grilled chicken and almost never-ending sides. And gelato. Yes, sir, sign us up.

Yelp identified a few other dining trends in their research: Americans surpassed the $1 trillion mark in food-industry sales this year. "Great new restaurants" is one of the top search terms on the site — so that's the trick, all you budding restaurateurs: just be a great new restaurant!

Immersive experiences create a lot of buzz, per Yelp's research, and Japanese restaurants are surging: six of the top 25 restaurants were Japanese spots, which is certainly true locally as both Tatsu and MĀBO recently earned national nods.