The name throws people. Grocery Clearance Center sounds like a place with dented cans and questionable expiration dates, and that assumption keeps a lot of shoppers from ever pulling into the parking lot at Cockrell Hill and Kiest. Their loss, honestly.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Photos & Article by Joey Stewart
At Lulu Modern Chinese, the room hits you first. A long bar runs the length of the space, stacked floor to ceiling with bottles and softly backlit like a display case, with three large TVs above it. It feels polished without feeling stiff. You can sit there and not feel pushed out.
The dining room opens up from there with curved banquettes, marble tables, and a ceiling full of geometric panels and hanging lights that give the space some movement. Booths line the windows, while the center of the room carries a little more energy. It’s modern and clearly thought through, but not overdesigned.
Continue readingFiled under Joey Stewart
There is something unmistakably electric about stepping beneath the striped big top of Cirque du Soleil; playful clowns entertain before the show begins, then the lights go dark. Reality slips just slightly out of reach. With ECHO, the globally celebrated troupe—which originated in France—delivers a production that feels both intimate and expansive, grounded in emotion yet soaring in spectacle. The story follows a curious young woman named Future and her loyal dog as they encounter a mysterious cube. The massive cube showcases holographic images, twists, turns, and comes apart; it is an ever-shifting centerpiece that becomes the axis of the entire performance—a playground, a stage, a symbol. It rises, tilts, and transforms, reframing each act in ways that feel architectural, rather than merely theatrical. It is here that Cirque leans into something deeper: a meditation on connection between humans, animals, and the fragile world we all share.
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Dallas has quietly produced one of the most interesting careers in American barbecue, and now the rest of the country is about to find out. Tim McLaughlin, chef-pitmaster and founder of Crossbuck BBQ in Farmers Branch, will compete on Food Network’s BBQ Brawl when Season 7 premieres on May 11 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Episodes stream the following day on HBO Max.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Garland doesn’t always get the attention it deserves when people talk about DFW dining. That may be about to change.
Chef Burak Ozcan — the Turkish-born culinary force behind the Ferah family of restaurants — has opened his latest concept, Herb & Ember, inside Firewheel Town Center at 365 Coneflower Drive in Garland. If you know Ozcan’s work at Ferah Tex-Med Kitchen or Ferah Smokehouse & Cantina, you already have a sense of what he’s capable of. Herb & Ember feels like his most polished swing yet.
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Most people come up Grant Avenue. That’s the Chinatown tourists know — painted lanterns, souvenir shops, roast duck hanging in windows. Brandon Jew moved the entrance to his restaurant around the corner before he ever opened it, tucking the door into Waverly Place, a narrow alley that runs parallel to Grant and feels like a completely different city. Quieter. More lived in. The street where old men sit outside in folding chairs and the shops are for people who actually live here, not people passing through. You have to mean it a little to find Mister Jiu’s. That was the idea.
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If you grew up in Dallas, you know Desperados. The original Greenville Avenue location has been there since 1976 — founded by Vietnam War veteran Jorge Levy, who opened the doors with two partners and built something that outlasted trends, recessions, and the rise and fall of a hundred restaurants that came and went around it. A second location followed in Garland in 1994. And now, nearly fifty years after that first tortilla hit the comal on Greenville, Desperados is crossing into Collin County for the first time.
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Dallas has no shortage of brunch options, and most weekends the same names cycle through every list — the Uptown spots, the Knox-Henderson regulars, the places with two-hour waits and bottomless mimosa deals that keep you there until 3pm whether you planned to be or not. Nothing wrong with any of that. But if you want something quieter, more personal, and honestly more interesting, you have to drive east.
Found into the historic Junius Heights neighborhood of Old East Dallas, Garden Cafe has been doing farm-to-table brunch since 2002 — before that phrase became a marketing term — and it remains one of the most genuinely singular dining experiences in the city. Most people outside the neighborhood still haven’t found it. That’s their loss and your opportunity.
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