How to Do the State Fair of Texas the Old-Fashioned Way: Bring Your Own

There’s a reason people have been hauling their own food through the gates of the State Fair of Texas for as long as the gates have existed. The fair food is part of the deal — the corny dogs, the fried everything, the Big Tex Choice Award winners you’re going to stand in line for no matter what. But by mid-afternoon, when your feet hurt and the sun hasn’t moved and you’ve got three more hours before anyone’s ready to leave, having a real lunch spread waiting in your bag changes everything. It costs less, it gives you a moment to actually sit down, and it’s the oldest trick in the book at Fair Park.

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Addison Oktoberfest 2026: Everything to Know Before You Go

The keg tap swings down on the first ceremonial barrel at Addison Circle Park on September 17, and for four days after that, Addison sounds nothing like Addison. Polka horns replace traffic noise. Lederhosen and dirndls outnumber golf shirts. A crowd that regularly tops 45,000 people by the closing hour files through the gates at 4970 Addison Circle to drink Paulaner out of half-liter steins and watch grown adults hold a full one straight out at arm’s length until their shoulders give out.

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What to Do in Dallas September 14–20: Wine, Football, and a Full Calendar Through Sunday

Jimmie Vaughan

Fall lands on the calendar this week, even if the thermometer hasn’t gotten the memo. Between a wine festival taking over Grapevine, the Cowboys’ home opener, back-to-back J. Cole shows, a ballet company built around one of history’s more scandalous writers, and a full night of gallery openings across the city, there’s enough here to fill every night through Sunday. Here’s what’s worth building a week around.

This Calander has family friendly options, date night and even singles fun-filled activities available. Check it out.

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Bluebonnet & Thyme Opens, and Brunch Is the Meal to Book

Kendall Williams cooked her first Thanksgiving dinner by herself when she was thirteen. Whole meal, whole family, no help. That detail tells you more about the restaurant she just opened than anything on the menu does.

Bluebonnet & Thyme Southern Bistro & Bar is open at 2610 N. Houston St. in Victory Park, in the space that used to be Dirty Bones, right across from the arena. It’s her first brick-and-mortar after a decade of building a name in this city, and she calls the food a Cajun and Texas explosion, which is a fair description of what happens when Louisiana heritage runs into Lone Star cooking in the same kitchen.

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The Old Monk for a Bite and a Bit of Ale

The patio at the Old Monk is the best argument in Dallas for showing up somewhere with no plan. Wood benches, trees overhead, a smattering of people who each found their own reason to be out there, and a server who has seen every version of your evening and isn’t worried about it.

You sit down for one and stand up at closing. Everybody does it. Nobody minds.

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Dallas Iconic Dish: Tupinamba’s Cheese Enchilada

The cheese enchilada is the plate nobody brags about. Two corn tortillas, cheese, chili gravy. Nowhere to hide. You either have it or you don’t.

Tupinamba has it, and has had it longer than almost anybody in Dallas.

The cheese enchiladas come out on a plate hot enough that the cheese is still moving. The gravy is dark and beefy with none of the flat canned taste that ruins this dish all over town, and the tortillas hold instead of dissolving. That’s the test, and most kitchens fail it.

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Retro Movie Review: The Producers (2005)

Go watch it. That’s the verdict, and I’ll spend the rest of this telling you why, but I don’t want you sitting through eight paragraphs wondering whether I’m going to recommend a musical comedy about Hitler.

The Producers (2005) is a movie about two men scheming to produce the biggest flop in Broadway history. It cost forty-five million dollars and took in thirty-eight. Mel Brooks could not have written that ending himself, and God knows he tried everything else.

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Naples, Florida Has the Vacation You Need

Naples in January is the reason people put up with Naples in August. Mid-seventies, no humidity, the Gulf flat and green, and a sunset every evening that empties the restaurants onto the sand for ten minutes.

That’s when the biggest resort on that stretch of beach reopens under a new name.

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