by | October 9, 2026 · 4:41 pm

Brunch at Mercat Bistro

Weekend brunch at Mercat Bistro feels a lot like a long Saturday in Paris, only with valet parking. It is a European-style bistro in the Harwood District, and Michelin recommended the place and brunch is one of the easiest ways to see why.

Before you order, know one thing that sets this kitchen apart. Mercat cooks only with beef tallow, rendered in-house from the Harwood District’s own premium beef program, and it uses no nut or seed oils at all. The restaurant calls it a whole-animal, zero-waste approach. It matters most with anything fried, so pay attention to the potato galette and the frites.

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by | October 9, 2026 · 2:25 pm

Pillar Closes in Bishop Arts After Less Than Two Years

Pillar, chef Peja Krstic’s bistro in the Bishop Arts District, is gone after less than two years. It closed on September 30, the same day its landlord locked the doors.

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by | October 9, 2026 · 12:18 pm

Tiffany Derry’s Roots Chicken Shak Is Coming to Irving

Tiffany Derry’s duck fat-fried chicken is headed to Las Colinas. Roots Chicken Shak will open this winter at Toyota Music Factory in Irving, giving the entertainment district one more reason to show up hungry before a concert.

Derry needs little introduction around here. The Beaumont native first caught national attention on Season 7 of Top Chef, and since 2025 she has sat at the judges’ table on MasterChef alongside Gordon Ramsay and Joe Bastianich. At home she runs T2D Concepts with business partner Tom Foley. The group is behind Roots Southern Table and Radici Wood Fired Grill in Farmers Branch, the Shef Food + Wine Festival and Roots Chicken Shak, which started as a counter inside Legacy Hall in Plano in 2017.

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by | October 9, 2026 · 11:54 am

Plan Your Dallas Dia de los Muertos

This time of year, marigolds start turning up everywhere. Orange petals in grocery store buckets, on gallery floors, in bakery windows. Día de los Muertos is close, and all over North Texas people are getting ready to remember the ones they have lost.

If you did not grow up with the holiday, you are welcome here. So is everyone else. A quick word on what it is, for anyone who wants it.

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by | October 9, 2026 · 11:14 am

The Best Chicken Fried Steak on Greenville Avenue Comes from an Italian Kitchen

Some of the best chicken fried steak in Dallas comes out of an Italian kitchen. That sounds like a setup for a joke, but anyone who has eaten at Prego Pasta House on Lower Greenville knows it is simply true.

Prego has been a Greenville Avenue fixture since September. The roots go back even further. In 1956, Joe Barraco Sr. opened a grocery store at 2919 Bryan St., part of the stretch of bakeries, markets and shops that once made up Dallas’ Little Italy. When the family moved into the restaurant business, Joe’s wife, Rose, brought her recipes with her, and many of them are still on the menu more than four decades later. It is a red-sauce house in the best sense, with garlic bread, crab claws, veal, steak pizzaiola and pastas served with a salad, the way they have been for generations.

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by | October 8, 2026 · 7:08 pm

India’s Haldiram’s Chooses Frisco for Its American Debut

If you have ever wandered the snack aisle at an Indian grocery store in Plano, Irving or Frisco, you already know the name. Haldiram’s bags of bhujia are about as familiar in Indian households as ketchup is in American ones. Now the company behind them is opening its first restaurant in the United States, and it chose Frisco.

Haldiram’s Frisco opens Sunday, October 11, at 7010 Preston Road, Suite 240. It is a full-service, casual restaurant of about 4,400 square feet with seating for 110, plus a retail area stocked with the brand’s packaged sweets and snacks. Dallas-Fort Worth is the starting point for the company’s restaurant expansion in the U.S.

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by | October 8, 2026 · 6:24 pm

What Actually Happened in the 2026 Michelin Guide for Dallas and Fort Worth

Fort Worth finally has its Michelin star, and it went to a barbecue joint on Dick Price Road. Anyone who has stood in that line on a Saturday morning will tell you it was only a matter of time.

The 2026 Michelin Guide Texas arrived this morning with no ceremony and no red carpet, just a list posted online. North Texas came away with a modest but meaningful update. Here is what actually happened, straight from Michelin’s own selections, and what we make of it.

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by | October 8, 2026 · 3:28 pm

Congratulations to Goldee’s on Their Michelin Star

On the southeast edge of Fort Worth, near Kennedale, on a stretch of Dick Price Road that most Dallasites could not find without a map, sits a small barbecue joint with a red wall, a few smokers and a line that starts forming well before the doors open. As of this week, it is also the first restaurant in Fort Worth history to earn a Michelin star.

Goldee’s Bar-B-Q had already been a two-time Bib Gourmand. On October 8 the inspectors bumped it up to one star, writing that it is absolutely worth the hours-long wait in the Texas sun.

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