North Texas doesn’t do quiet weekends in late September, and this one might be the busiest of the fall. The State Fair opens Friday. There’s a German festival in McKinney, a Broadway legend at the Meyerson, a honky-tonk headliner at Billy Bob’s, a baseball team that dances between pitches and the Indigo Girls downtown on Sunday night. Here’s how to pace yourself, where to eat and a few tips that’ll save you money and aggravation.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Austin’s MML Hospitality spent years eyeing Dallas. Now it’s here, and it has a list.
The company is run by Larry McGuire, Tom Moorman and hotelier Liz Lambert. McGuire and Moorman opened their first Austin restaurant, Lamberts, in 2006. Today MML runs more than 25 properties in Austin, including the Michelin-recommended Jeffrey’s, plus hotels in New York and New Orleans and restaurants in Houston, Aspen and California.
McGuire has laid out the Dallas plan in order. Neighborhood Sushi comes first, then June’s All Day, then Clark’s Oyster Bar, then three Swedish Hill bakeries. That’s six restaurants in under 18 months, and he has said this could be the group’s last big expansion push.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Sam and Gabby Lopez had the résumés for a traditional path. Both trained at The Culinary Institute of America. Both put in time at The French Laundry and Bouchon Bakery. Then they left corporate kitchen jobs in Chicago in January 2022, moved to Sam’s hometown of Denton and opened a food trailer.
They called it Insurgent, and it’s finally getting walls. The husband-and-wife chefs are opening their first permanent restaurant at the Dallas Farmers Market in late October, in the space at 920 S. Harwood St. that last housed Caribbean Cabana.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Shady’s Burgers & Brewhaha started with five neighbors, a backyard fire pit and a few beers.
That was 2012, in the Canyon Creek neighborhood of Richardson. Greg Cooney, Don Bouvier, Anthony Bolner, Dave Swiney and Steve Gumbert were sitting around Bolner’s fire pit talking about what the neighborhood was missing. What they landed on was a place with good burgers, cold beer and a patio where families could hang out on a weeknight. None of them had ever run a restaurant.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The paddlewheel is turning again at Fair Park.
If you grew up going to the State Fair, you know the Old Mill Inn by sight. It’s the timber-and-stone building on Grand Avenue with the big water wheel out front. After the pandemic it went dark and stayed that way for years. This fair season it’s open again as a full-service restaurant and bar, and when the gates open on Friday, September 25, it will be feeding anyone who needs a break from the Midway.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
National Coffee Day lands on Tuesday, September 29, and the chains will spend it handing out free cups with an app download. Fine. Take the freebie if it’s on your way. Then spend the rest of the week somewhere that roasts its own beans, knows the regulars by their order, and has a story behind the counter.
Dallas and Fort Worth have plenty of those now, which was not always true. A few regulars have already had their own day on these pages, including Noble Coyote in Expo Park and Ascension. Here are six more shops worth a detour this week, split between both sides of the Metroplex.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Back in the early ’90s, the best thing at Mia’s Tex-Mex wasn’t on the menu. You had to know to ask for it, you had to come on a Wednesday, and you had to get there before it ran out.
Today it has a name, Butch’s Original Brisket Tacos, and it’s the dish Mia’s is known for all over Dallas.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Plenty of people who live in Frisco have never walked its Main Street. The city spread north and west so fast that the original townsite, the handful of blocks around the railroad tracks now known as the Frisco Rail District, can feel like something only the old-timers know about.
A lot of those old-timers eat at The Depot Cafe.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
