by | May 7, 2026 · 5:34 pm

Experience Santa Fe for a Week or Just a Few Days

Santa Fe is eight hours by car from Dallas — I-40 west through Amarillo, then north on I-25 past Albuquerque and up into the high desert until the city appears in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at 7,000 feet. You can also fly into Albuquerque and rent a car for the one-hour drive north, or fly direct into Santa Fe’s small airport. Either way, this is one of the most rewarding food and travel weekends available to anyone living in North Texas, and it has been hiding in plain sight for years.

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by | May 7, 2026 · 4:20 pm

A Dallas Drive-In That Made National Headlines

In February 1940, a teenage girl from Houston named Josephine Powell appeared on the cover of Life magazine. She was wearing a drum majorette outfit with very short shorts, a plumed hat, and boots. She was holding a tray. She was a carhop at a drive-in restaurant called Sivils, and after that issue hit newsstands, Louise Sivils started receiving letters from young women all over the country asking for a job.

Four months later, J.D. and Louise Sivils brought their operation to Dallas.

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by | May 7, 2026 · 3:37 pm

This East Dallas Restaurant is Better Than It Has Ever Been

Urbano Cafe should not still be open. Mitch and Kristen Kauffman founded it in 2009 in the century-old building on Fitzhugh that also houses Jimmy’s Food Store, ran it for 15 years, and decided they were done. The announcement went out, the regulars grieved, and that should have been the end of it.

Then Sina and Pasha Heidari made one phone call and one demand. The demand was non-negotiable: every employee stays. Chef Oseas Lopez, in that kitchen since 2011. General manager Kevan LaTorre, there since 2011. The whole staff. We covered the sale when it happened in early 2024. What we did not know then was how good the next chapter was going to be.

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by | May 7, 2026 · 3:13 pm

Morning Coffee, Afternoon Beer, One Very Good Cuban Sandwich

Most places try to be one thing and do it well. Chad and Nellie Montgomery looked at that idea and went a different direction. Civil Pour at 8061 Walnut Hill Lane in Dallas is a specialty coffee shop and a 25-tap rotating craft beer bar in the same room, and the combination works better than it has any right to. It is the kind of place you go in for a morning pour-over and end up back at on a Thursday evening for a beer you have never heard of. Most regulars have done exactly that.

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by | May 6, 2026 · 4:12 pm

A Living Legend: Burger House Since 1951

A Greek immigrant named Prometheus “Jack” Koustabardis opened the first Burger House at 6913 Hillcrest Avenue in 1951. Dallas looked nothing like it does now — Central Expressway had just opened, “I Love Lucy” was the hot new show on television, and a cheeseburger, fries, and a drink cost less than a dollar. Jack cooked his burgers with a seasoning blend he developed himself, put that same seasoning on the fries, and built a neighborhood burger stand that people drove across the city for. He did not change the recipe. He did not need to.

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by | May 6, 2026 · 3:16 pm

Retro Movie Review: Patton (1970)

There is a moment early in Patton when George C. Scott stands alone on a North African battlefield the morning after the fighting has ended. The dead are everywhere. He surveys the carnage with something that is not quite horror and not quite satisfaction but something uncomfortably close to joy. He quotes Plutarch. He is, in that moment, exactly what the film has been telling us he is — a man who was born in the wrong century and knows it, and has never fully forgiven the world for that fact.

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by | May 6, 2026 · 2:35 pm

The Meltdown Margarita Has Followed Eddie Cervantes to Every Restaurant He Has Ever Opened

Eddie Cervantes has been feeding Dallas Tex-Mex since 1981. He opened Primo’s Bar & Grill on McKinney Avenue in 1986 and built it into one of the most loved Tex-Mex cantinas the city has ever had — where locals, chefs, and the occasional celebrity would end up on a Tuesday night over meltdown margaritas and a bowl of queso that nobody wanted to stop eating. Primo’s ran for years. People still bring it up.

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by | May 6, 2026 · 2:02 pm

The Best Summer Day Trip from Dallas Opens This Month

Forty-five minutes east of Dallas, train conductors stop their trains to get a scoop of peach ice cream. That tells you most of what you need to know about Ham Orchards.

It started with a firefighter and a hunch. Dale Ham had spent 32 years with the Richardson Fire Department when something came over him in 1979 — he wanted to grow peaches. He bought 23 acres just east of Terrell, planted 50 trees, and waited. Every tree survived. When the peaches came in, Dale and his daughter Sharien set up a card table on the side of the highway and started selling out of the back of a pickup truck. The railroad told them they were too close to the tracks. They moved above the tracks. The line of customers followed them up.

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