AllGood Cafe Hosts Pop-Up Dinner This Weekend with Deep Ellum Café Chef Brian Hennington

We’ve taken a lot of angles on AllGood Cafe over the years. We’ve talked about their breakfast, their burger and their place as a pioneer for the Deep Ellum music scene. Plus, Nick Rallo says their chicken-fried steak is the best in town, "no argument about it."

AllGood Cafe is a music venue that also happens to have a stellar kitchen. This past year, the spot quietly celebrated its 20th-anniversary, a year in which it, along with all music venues and restaurants, limped through because of the coronavirus pandemic. But, things are starting to look better.

This weekend AllGood Cafe's owner Mike Snider is "getting the band back together," so to speak, for a pop-up dinner with Brian Hennington at the helm in the kitchen and a concert with local singer-songwriter and host of The Paul Slavens Show on KXT, Paul Slavens.

In the mid-’80s Hennington brought chef-driven fare to the neighborhood with his restaurant Deep Ellum Café. Years later, he helped Snider create the menu and some recipes for AllGood Cafe. Hennington now lives in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas where he and his family tend to a 40-acre organic farm. This weekend, Hennington will return to his old stomping grounds with a special menu for the pop-up dinner at AllGood Cafe (which includes the Deep Ellum Vietnamese grilled chicken salad). There's also a tease for the best burger in Texas, which definitely has our attention.

While dinner is served, Slavens will be on the piano, a gig he’s looking forward to.

“First off, I am going to get some great food, which is good as gold to most musicians. Next, I get to sit, fairly unnoticed, and play beautiful music that I love, quietly and unassumingly, in public, with real people, safely,” Slavens said. “And the AllGood Cafe is one of my favorite places to play. Mike knows how to treat you right.”

There will be four seatings total for this pop-up dinner and concert. Friday at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. and again Saturday at 7 p.m and 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 and include one drink or dessert. Dinner is separate. With only 40 tickets for each dinner, Snider points out that's just 40% capacity, allowing for plenty of social-distancing.

AllGood Cafe, 2934 Main St. Open 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday; 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday; 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.