The Best Grilled Cheese in Dallas, Anyway You Damn Please, at Sky Rocket Burger

Honestly, get the grilled cheese anyway you damn please. Add a runny egg (over-medium or over-hard, too) or grilled jalapenos, just a few or a whole nest of them, and onions.

Raw white onions? No, a spread of caramelized onions is my personal choice: Heavily peppered onions, grilled until their burnt gold, melding with butter and cheese is superb between Texas toast.

If you’re not into a bunch of simmered down onions, that’s fine. You can do anything, really: Get a little bit of extra American cheese or, like, a lot of extra cheese, add bacon or tell them to shower it with hot sauce.

The special-order grilled cheese is an off-menu but popular way of doing things at Sky Rocket Burger — you’ll need to call-in or, in Deep Ellum only, order online to build your own. One hero had added two quarter-pounder patties to his grilled cheese earlier in the day, as owner Scott Wagner tells us. The best patty melts are the ones invented just for you.

Sky Rocket Burger is one of Dallas’ best cheeseburgers by a mile. It’s also been listed as one of Observer food critic Brian Reinhart’s Top 100 restaurants in the city because they execute a takeout bag of food with diner elegance, as precision and customizable as a NASA mission.

It’s a few ingredients, handled with lunar landing accuracy. Sky Rocket’s menu is just this: A cheeseburger, add patties or three if you want, or a grilled cheese. Each one will cost you around eight bucks. There are french fries and tater tots, of course.

The grilled cheese is easy to overlook on your way to the cheeseburger. Try it once: Thick-sliced Texas toast surrounds American cheese and cheddar. They butter one side of the bread, bathe it in a grated Parmesan and parsley mixture, then sear it butter-Parmesan-parsley side down until everything melts, and there’s a crunchy, salty shell.

Wagner hasn’t changed much about the place — he’s added some cookies and an online store to his Deep Ellum location — since opening in the early months of 2018. The cheeseburger is a strike of lightning, a real mind ripper of sharp and singular flavors: Good griddled beef, fresh toppings and a soft and seeded bun. He grinds Angus beef, a mix of chuck and brisket, in-house.

Like so many like-minded restaurants and their staff, he’s hurting and plunging forward at the same time. Before opening his burger joint in Far North Dallas, he was in car sales in Southern California.

“We’ve had folks come in and give us tips without ordering food. It’s humbling,” Wagner says.

Have there been any changes to his food or his menu beyond what we see?

“Yeah, now we’re using a soy burger,” Wagner says and instantly laughs. “No, I’m kidding.”

Sky Rocket Burger, 111 S Hall St. (Deep Ellum). 469-372-6122. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.