Crawfish season is here, and Cocodrie’s Bayou Kitchen in North Richland Hills is doing something about it. Starting today, April 20, the restaurant is running a 4/20 crawfish special — four pounds for $20 — plus buckets of beer for $17. That’s a hard combination to pass up on a Sunday.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
That corner of McKinney and Lemmon in Uptown has been a dead zone for almost a decade. The old Albertsons closed in 2016, and the building has sat dark ever since — a big, empty box in one of the most walkable, food-obsessed neighborhoods in Dallas. Central Market has held the property lease the entire time. Getting something built there has just taken a lot longer than anyone expected.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The cinnamon roll as we know it is a Scandinavian invention — Sweden’s kanelbulle has been around since the 1920s, and October 4th is still celebrated there as Cinnamon Roll Day. The version that took over American bakeries came later, built on enriched yeasted dough, softened with butter, rolled tight with cinnamon and brown sugar, and finished with enough cream cheese frosting to qualify as a public health concern. Cinnabon turned it into a fast-food category. Home bakers turned it into a weekend ritual. At some point, serious pastry chefs got involved, and that’s when things got interesting.
Dallas has a genuinely good cinnamon roll scene right now, spread across bakeries that range from a decades-old neighborhood institution in Oak Cliff to a brand-new Michelin-adjacent spot in Uptown that opened this past March. The best versions in this city tend to care more about the dough than the frosting. A couple on this list bend the definition of “cinnamon roll” just enough that we felt obligated to say so. We included them anyway.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
For a long time, Dallas got a little too much credit for its steakhouses and not nearly enough for its bars. That’s changed. The James Beard Foundation has taken notice. So has Michelin. Heavy-hitter bartenders who built careers in New York and LA have been quietly landing here, opening rooms that can hold their own against anything in those cities. The cocktail scene isn’t up-and-coming anymore — it’s arrived. These five bars are proof.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Burger Schmurger started as a backyard pop-up. A year later, it’s one of the more legitimate smashburger destinations in East Dallas, and the crew at 718 N. Buckner is throwing a block party to mark the occasion.
The celebration is Thursday, April 30, starting at 3 p.m., with the main action running 5 to 8. Live music from Downtown Doug, a dunk tank with the founders in it, balloon artists, face painters, dirty sodas from Dilly Dally Soda Co., and a raffle with gift cards, merch, and a Blackstone flat top up for grabs.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Bishop Arts gets the press. It gets the food tourists, the Instagram posts, the out-of-town write-ups that call it charming and walkable and full of independent spirit. All of that is true. But a few blocks away, running parallel and older and considerably less interested in your approval, is Jefferson Boulevard — and it has been feeding Oak Cliff longer than most of those Bishop Arts restaurants have been alive.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
There is a moment in the first act of Bizet’s Carmen when the title character walks onto the stage, tosses a flower at a soldier she has barely glanced at, and walks away. No grand entrance. No trembling aria. Just that. And the soldier — and the audience — is already lost.
That soldier is Don José. He is decent, dutiful, engaged to a good woman back home. Within the hour he will have helped Carmen escape from custody, thrown away his career, and started down a road that ends with a knife outside a bullring. Carmen did not chase him. She never chases anyone. That is the whole point.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Dallas is losing one of its best.
Kate Weiser Chocolate announced yesterday that it is closing after 12 years, citing the seasonal nature of the business, rising labor costs, and the financial weight of keeping an artisan operation running in an increasingly difficult economy. Today, April 15, is the last day to place an online order. The Trinity Groves and NorthPark Center locations will stay open until the last chocolate is sold.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
