“I've lived in Elmwood since 2007,” Rhoten says. “I bought my house 17 years ago. ... Just the feel of the neighborhood kind of reminded me of where I grew up in Fort Worth, ... that feeling like a lot of the people that lived on my block and everything had been there forever.”
Rhoten is the owner of Herby’s, a burger joint on Edgefield Avenue in Elmwood. It's been open for only a few months, but if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it had also been around forever.
The interior is retro, but not pretentious. The checkered floor, bright yellow details and old-fashioned menu board give the place a warm, nostalgic atmosphere. So does the jukebox in the corner, which has a selection of music curated by Rhoten himself. The day we visited, it was spinning a Cocteau Twins record front to back.
A mural in the window depicts a cartoon version of Rhoten’s dog, Herby, for whom the restaurant is named. Everything about the place feels deeply personal.
Before sitting down with us, Rhoten was working the counter, clearing tables and visiting with guests. Friends and neighbors would frequently stop by to say hello and congratulate him on the success of Herby’s.
As we sit down to chat over one of Herby’s signature smash burgers, Rhoten is subconsciously still working, brushing crumbs off the table into his hand.
“I was just talking to a friend who stopped in who moved away from Elmwood and back to Elmwood,” he tells us. “I was talking to him about how when I first moved here, I didn't really see any younger people out and about, and now there's people who live on my street who come to my events and my parties.”
Elmwood is a neighborhood in West Oak Cliff that either despite of or because of its homey charms is becoming a rising restaurant destination in Dallas. That might explain the growing number of young people heading down to his neck of the woods to hang out.
“I think the direction it's headed right now is great,” Rhoten says of his neighborhood’s growth. “And I hope to see like more useful spaces in the neighborhood, you know?”
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Full By Now
In the past year, several food-related businesses opened on Edgefield Avenue. Though vastly different on paper, these spots share similar goals in fostering community in their neighborhood.B-Side Coffee, an indie-trendy cafe that strives to be community-oriented and family-friendly, opened around the same time as Herby’s. It’s notable for being the only cafe in Dallas that brews Big Bend Coffee Roasters, a brand out of Marfa. It's also known for its unique hours (6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.), which allow it to double as an evening dessert spot.
Its interior is dark, calming and exquisitely designed and includes a children’s play area in the back corner.
“I wanted cozy, dark colors. That's just like what I'm naturally drawn to,” says co-owner Whitney Marsh, an interior designer who decorated the place herself. “Kind of library meets little reading nook meets good coffee kind of thing.”
In the short time it has existed, the coffee joint already has the feel of an established neighborhood hot spot. It’s somehow the perfect place both to work and to bring your kids.
Completing this killer three-unit run of businesses is Olmo Market, a shop that’s constantly evolving. It got its start a little more than a year ago selling grocery items and hot foods. Now it's the home of legendary local chocolatier CocoAndre, whose new building in Bishop Arts District is still being fixed up. It’s a sweet little moment of synergy, as both businesses are owned and operated by Cindy Pedraza.
“I think my whole vision now is to make it more like the markets that I would see in Mexico that I’m so drawn to,” Pedraza says of Olmo’s future.
What has remained consistent at Olmo Market is its connection with the community, which was innate before the shop even opened. Pedraza’s parents have lived in Elmwood for years.
“My dad walked his little dog everywhere in the neighborhood, and my dad is not predominantly, you know, English speaking,” she laughs. “He speaks English now and then, but it was funny to see that he would talk to everybody.”
From the get-go, customers would ask Pedraza about her father and his dog, establishing an immediate familiarity.
“That's the thing about Oak Cliff — that when you go to a lot of the small businesses, they make you feel like you belong there like they try to interact with you,” she says. “Because you know you're gonna see them somewhere in the neighborhood somewhere later.”
Pedraza is proud not only of the relationships she’s formed with her customers but also of the milestones Olmo Market has been a part of.
“I've actually had customers that are like, ‘I just moved here. I didn't have any friends, but because of your places, I made a friend,’” she says. “That's just the kind of welcoming space that we're fostering in the neighborhood.”
When the opportunity to open Olmo Market in Elmwood presented itself, Pedraza jumped at it.
“I told my mom [CocoAndre founder Andrea Pedraza] that I just really liked this area, this little strip, but I just never thought that I would end up over here,” she says. “When it did come available. I was just so grateful. It's just been a really fun experience.”
Growing Pains
On Feb. 28, following years of advocacy from the Elmwood Neighborhood Association, Dallas City Council unanimously approved the Downtown Elmwood overlay, a plan to rezone from a community retail district to a walkable mixed-use district. This means that the zoning will shift from accommodating isolated businesses that are farther apart from each other to supporting a pedestrian-friendly shopping and dining area.The plan aims to increase walkability, calm traffic, increase parking and activate a downtown area that will boost both businesses and the community in Elmwood.
Marsh, a former president of the Elmwood Neighborhood Association, is a longtime advocate of the Downtown Elmwood overlay. She speaks of the neighborhood with the same fondness as Rhoten but with a particular emphasis on the neighborhood's older buildings.
“We wanted, like, an urban feel, because that's what we were used to,” Marsh says of her choice to live in Elmwood upon moving from Houston to Dallas. “But we really wanted the character of an old home.”
Elmwood has charming old houses in spades, including Marsh’s 100-year-old house in the area. Her friends always tell her it reminds them of a coffee shop and it serves as design inspiration for her cozy cafe.
Preserving the integrity of the neighborhood's older buildings, such as her home and the commercial space that houses her cafe, is one cause Marsh hopes the overlay will promote. We spoke to her over some hot chocolate at B-Side Coffee the day after the overlay plan was passed.
“It’s really great because there's a lot of really cool old buildings like this one that haven't been taken care of and that are decaying essentially because they can't get permitting or zoning for businesses,” she says.
Marsh also understands that a bustling and charming neighborhood isn’t worth much if it’s not safe to walk in. This is another issue the rezoning and revitalization efforts aim to address.
“It put us on the map, essentially, for the city of Dallas to give us the attention you need as far as streetlights, crosswalks and stop signs,” Marsh says. “We have a mile stretch here from Illinois to Lansford with zero traffic calming measures. And there's an elementary school and a ton of businesses here and there's nothing to protect anybody who’s walking or even driving in this area.”
Marsh speaks of Elmwood with equal parts desire to help it grow and flourish and fierce protectiveness of what’s already there. The word wasn’t explicitly said out loud, but it did haunt our conversation: gentrification.
It’s an unfortunate reality that plagues many “trendy” neighborhoods: when more affluent people begin to move to previously lower-income neighborhoods, the cost of living often rises to a point that existing residents and businesses are displaced.
It’s an issue that plagues Oak Cliff, with nearby Bishop Arts District acting as its poster child, and it poses uncomfortable questions when cutesy spots like dog parks and vegan brunch restaurants start to pop up near where you live: “Will I actually get to enjoy these fun new businesses? Are they about to price me out?”
The West Oak Cliff Area Plan, a predecessor and foundation for the Downtown Elmwood overlay passed by the City Council in 2022, aims to deal with those worries, calling for the same improvements for Elmwood addressed in the overlay while also limiting new construction.
“A lot of the neighborhoods that are impacted here have been waiting since 2017 for the protection they’ve been asking for,” Dallas City Councilman Chad West, whose District 1 includes Elmwood, said in a statement to NBC 5. “The goal is to build the community without having to tear down and displace.”
A handful of restaurant owners can’t speak for the future of an entire neighborhood. That being said, the trio operating off Edgefield Avenue expressed a commitment to keeping Elmwood’s growth community-focused and beneficial to longtime residents and businesses.
“I think it'd be really cool to see it organically grow with people from the community rather than, like, big developers,” Rhoten says. “I think that the synergy that's going on right now is really good for the neighborhood.”
Marsh is a little more blunt.
“We're not Bishop Arts,” she says. “We don't want to be Bishop Arts. We want to be an area where small businesses thrive ... and, hopefully, things maintain an affordable feel.”
Marsh, Rhoten and Pedraza all expressed a belief that the restaurants in Elmwood are symbiotic and lift each other up instead of competing. For what it’s worth, this seems to be true for at least one spot.
Respecting Elders
Lulu’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant is impossible to miss. It’s a standalone, bright yellow building with a lime green roof and its name painted prominently on multiple sides. It's celebrating 28 years of operation this year, making the establishment both loud and proud.We went on a Tuesday afternoon and the small dining room was packed and bustling with families. After enjoying some sublime quesadillas, al pastor tacos and Mexican Coke, we chatted with our server, Marylou Cardiel, who has worked at Lulu’s for seven years and was a customer there even longer.
Cardiel says that while she hasn’t gotten to know all of Lulu’s new neighbors, the owners of B-Side Coffee and Slow and Steady Coffee (another nearby new addition) have made a positive first impression.
“We like the new business. It brings in more customers because they ... send them this way for some breakfast,” says Cardiel. “They’re nice people, and they show their support by buying our food and everything,”
Pedraza’s aim with Olmo Market is to lift up the Elmwood neighborhood as a whole, including neighboring businesses.
“My goal has always been to build community, but also to highlight what's existing,” she says. “There's a saying in Mexico like … there's a toad, and then if you give a toad a little corner, it'll just kind of like spread itself.
“I don’t want to be that toad,” she says with a laugh. “I always give my respect to the people that have been here and are the OG for the neighborhood.”
