Review: Bowl And Barrel

by Steven Doyle

What an exciting time to enjoy to be living in Dallas. There are so many cultural advances and unique restaurants popping up across Dallas and Fort Worth. Bowl and Barrel is certainly one of the more unique restaurants to hit Dallas running. While the food is not exactly haute cuisine, it is fun, brave and unique due mainly to the chef who crafted the menu, Sharon Hage. We are fortunate to have her brilliant talent seeding these new restaurants with her very special touch.

Bowl and Barrel is the bowling alley with terrific food in a separate restaurant area and features the largest community dining table I have seen in Dallas. On a recent visit a guest explained that she was new to the Dallas area and came to Bowl and Barrel not knowing anyone, and left with a handful of friends that she met up with nights later. This is the power of dining with strangers. For those wanting a more private setting there are plenty of seats available in the more traditional sense.

I spoke with the owners of Bowl and Barrel, Josh Sepkowitz and Kyle Noonan, recently and they were both excited with the astounding success that the restaurant has received. This success has helped jolt more traffic throughout The Shops at Park Lane.

The food is the major star here, and recently I stopped in and filled up on an assortment of standards, plus a few unusual menu items that can stand on their own volition. The starters are worth the trip to Bowl and Barrel on their own with Ghost Pepper Peanuts and Rhumaki setting the stage for hand held tastes. But what you will definitely want to try are the Cornish Hand Pies. These babies are fist-sized ground beef pockets served with HP sauce, the gold standard of sauces in the UK that is served with most everything in that country.

Cornish Hand Pies With HP Sauce

Hot Fried Quail

Hot Fried Quail are Hage’s answer to the modern chicken wing at Bowl and Barrel. These kicked up tiny quail legs are dusted with cayenne and served with a house-made Ranch dressing delivered spicy and abundant.

Scotch Eggs have been popping in and out of menus in Dallas for the past year or so. This version will make you stand up and salute the queen mum. The traditional pub offering is probably the very best I have sampled to date. When the dish was brought to the table it was nestled in a bed of fresh greens. I peered into the egg’s soul and knew that it would be unique. As I sliced into the largish egg it happened: a slight snap of the cooked egg white relented its creaminess to expose an flowing ooze of yolk onto the salad portion of the dish. The outer shell of sausage and a Panko crust is ridiculously good. This is heavenly in its brilliance. If for no other reason, order the Scotch Egg to witness this pure and beautiful spectacle.

A loverly Scotch Egg

Another ethereal treat is the one and only dessert, the housemade Butterscotch Pie. This pie is good enough for Jehovah and cannot be overlooked.

The bar is superior to any bowling alley you will ever greet as well. High tone cocktails sold at an admirable price, focusing on speed as well as whimsey. The only trouble I would have with the entire operation is the lack of more taps. Perhaps there is a reason behind four taps and not selling some of our better local beers. Instead the bar takes a bolder move to carry four beers, from standard beer categories that are pretty excellent still sticking with a more European style. If you are in a proper English pub you often will only get one or two selections of beer. These are typically ‘tie houses’ that are tied to a single brewer, but often sell at least one ‘guest beer’.