The Best $10 Happy Hour Burgers in Dallas Right Now

Happy hour burgers have a bad reputation, and most of them earn it. A restaurant slaps a discount on a sad, dry patty for two hours a day and calls it a deal. You end up paying half price for something you wouldn’t order at full price either.

That’s not what’s happening at the five places below. There’s a difference between a bar burger going cheap and a real restaurant discounting the same burger it serves all night, made the same way, by the same kitchen, just priced lower for a stretch of the afternoon. These are the second kind. And sometimes only a great burger will hit the spot.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Crave, Steven Doyle

A New Vendor Brings Pierogies to the State Fair, and a Century of Pennsylvania History

The State Fair of Texas picks up a new vendor most years, and this year one of them is making a case for a dish Fair Park has mostly ignored. Tanya Rose runs Pierogizilla LLC, and her booth on the Funway is serving fried pierogies built around her Pennsylvania and Polish background, a food that has fed families in this country for more than a century without ever quite making it onto a State Fair menu before.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Crave

On the Rocks Is Open, and Kent Rathbun’s Lobster Shooter Already Has a Trophy

Kent Rathbun has been one of the defining names in Dallas dining for the better part of three decades. He opened Abacus in 1999, followed it with Jasper’s in 2003, cooked for Queen Elizabeth and the Bush inaugural ball, beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America in 2008, and built a reputation that still carries weight in a city that moves on fast. These days he runs a catering operation and a barbecue venture with his wife Tracy, consults for a growing list of clients, and just helped open a restaurant in Burleson that carries his fingerprints all over it.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Mercado369 and the Restaurants That Surround It Are Oak Cliff’s Real Hispanic Heritage Month

Hispanic Heritage Month began yesterday, and today, September 16, is Mexican Independence Day. Dallas will mark it with parades and festival stages across the city. Oak Cliff has been marking it every day for years, in a building most of Dallas drives past without a second look.

Juan Gabriel is the first thing you see. Life-size, unmoving, standing guard just inside the door on West Jefferson Boulevard. Past him, nine rooms hold sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, textiles and paintings pulled from more than ten countries, Mexico down through Argentina, each piece chosen by hand rather than ordered by the crate. This is Mercado369, and a city forgets it has a place like this until someone walks them through the door.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Highland Park Cafeteria: The Full Story of America’s Cafeteria, 1925–2020

For 95 years, a good many Dallas family meals started with picking up a tray. You slid it along the rail, read your way past a wall of American presidents, and tried to make up your mind before you reached the squash casserole. Highland Park Cafeteria fed this city from 1925 until the spring of 2020, and anyone who ate there can still tell you what they ordered.

Plenty of Dallas diners never stood in one of those lines, so a word about what this place was. Say cafeteria today and most people picture a school lunchroom. The old Southern cafeteria ran on its own rules. You picked up a tray and worked your way down a long counter of salads, entrées, vegetables, breads, and desserts, pointing at what you wanted while the staff behind the glass filled your plates. Everything came from scratch out of the kitchen behind the line, and you paid at the far end. At Highland Park Cafeteria, a staffer would help carry your tray to the table.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Crave, Steven Doyle

The Bar That Died in the Pandemic Just Came Back Stronger

Gabe Sanchez saved up for years to open the Black Swan Saloon. When he finally did, in 2010, he put it in Deep Ellum on West Elm Street and built it around a simple idea: artisan cocktails at working-man prices, served by someone who actually knew what he was doing. There was no menu. There was a velvet painting of Clint Eastwood behind the bar. The shelves were lined with house-infused liquors Gabe made himself — cold-brewed with farmers market fruit, nuts, coffee, whatever was right that week. You told him your spirit and your mood and he made something. People drove across town for it. Then they drove across town again.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Tim Love’s 20th Restaurant Is His Most Ambitious. It’s Also Full of Hummus

Tim Love has opened 20 restaurants across Fort Worth. Steakhouses, barbecue, Mexican, Italian, burgers, a music hall, a hotel. At some point you run out of cuisines to tackle, and Love apparently landed on that point sometime last year. His answer was hummus.

Meraki opened March 17 at 1615 Rogers Road in the TCU corridor, a few blocks west of Woodshed Smokehouse, inside the space that used to house Courtside Kitchen at the Courtside Pickleball complex. Love says he looked around the near west side of Fort Worth and realized there wasn’t a real dedicated Mediterranean restaurant in the neighborhood. So he built one.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle

Zio Al’s Cedar Springs: Pizza Until 3 a.m.

Cedar Springs Road at 1:30 in the morning operates on its own set of rules. The bars are still going, the sidewalks are still busy, and at some point everyone on that strip remembers they’re hungry. Most of the kitchens in Oak Lawn have already called it. Zio Al’s hasn’t.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Steven Doyle