Bill Rossell found out last week that he needs dialysis and is facing a kidney transplant. He posted on social media about it, not really knowing what to expect. Dallas answered immediately. People who had been coming to Lakewood Landing for twenty years — who had never said out loud what the place meant to them — said it all at once. “I feel rejuvenated,” he said. “I keep saying that word. I’m overwhelmed with happiness.” For a man who has been through as much as he has, that response means everything.
To understand why Dallas showed up that way, you have to know the story.
Rossell spent eight years staring at Lakewood Landing from across the street. He was running the Tipperary Inn — four years on Greenville, then four more in the Lakewood neighborhood — and every day he looked over at that beat-up building on Live Oak and thought about what he’d do with it. He pestered the owner, Don Webb, for four years. Nothing doing.
Then Webb came into the Tipperary one Wednesday night with his wife and got hammered, same as always. Rossell caught him. “Damn it, when are you going to sell me that bar?” Webb said, “When are you going to give me what I want?” Rossell gave him what he wanted. He grabbed the bartender Jim, pulled him over, stuck out his hand. “Don Webb has agreed to sell me the Lakewood Landing for this amount of money. Isn’t that right, Don?” Webb said yes. 1998. No lawyers, no escrow. Just a handshake in a bar.
The building had been there since 1940 — started life as a Goff’s Hamburgers — and the years had not been kind. It stunk. The previous owner was doing $500 a day in sales and had drunks and racists for regulars. Rossell called two steam cleaning companies to tackle the kitchen. Both refused. There was no vent hood. The health department came after him almost immediately, not for anything he’d done but because of the previous owner’s reputation. A city inspector hit him with a ticket for a pressure lock on an outside spigot. Rossell took it to court.
The judge looked at the ticket, looked at Rossell. “What bar is this?” Rossell told him. The judge lowered his glasses. “How is Lucille?” Rossell’s whole body relaxed. He told the judge she was doing great. The judge asked if he played golf. Rossell said yes. “Get out of my courtroom. You’re a good guy.”
Lucille Matthews had worked behind that bar for decades — a bartender who once worked for Jack Ruby, whose roommate dated Lee Harvey Oswald, who was the soul of the Landing long before Rossell ever owned it. When she hit her 30th anniversary, he bought her a car with a bow on it. Her portrait still hangs in the room.
This was never a second career for Rossell. His first job was as a busboy at the Imperial Crown, a Michelin-recognized restaurant in Columbus, Indiana. He was in high school. A month in, they made him a tableside cook. He wheeled his cart out to the Harlem Globetrotters and watched them pick up everything on it and start whipping it around the table. He walked up to the cast of Hee Haw and told Roy Clark, “Grandpa, what’s for dinner?” They loved it. He moved through eight states, worked his way through the industry, and eventually trained at the Culinary Institute of America. That’s where the food came from.
Every recipe at Lakewood Landing is his. He redid the entire menu when he took over and over 200 awards followed — best bar food in Dallas, best burger five times over. But the dish people plan their nights around doesn’t appear until after 11 p.m. on weekdays or midnight on weekends, and it isn’t on the menu at all. It came to him in the shower.
He was thinking about late-night business. Standing there, it hit him: corndog. He went to work on a batter — jalapeño cornmeal, his own recipe, tested until it was right. The sausages come from Rudolph’s Meat Market in Deep Ellum, the hundred-year-old butcher shop, made specially for the Landing. People stay until midnight specifically to get one.
The dish he’s most proud of is the stuffed jalapeños. He roasts them first — that step is everything, he says — cleans out the seeds and membranes, stuffs them with three cheeses, then batters and fries them in a mixture he came up with himself. He walks up to new customers, offers them one, and gives them the same challenge every time: if you’ve ever had a better one, you have to tell him. Nobody has.
The burger is 80/20 beef and fat on a flat-top, best in Dallas five times over. The late-night corndog is off-menu, Rudolph’s sausage in jalapeño cornbread batter, after 11 p.m. weeknights and midnight on weekends. All of it his.
He pulled down the drop ceilings, extended the bar, built the patio using the city’s smoking ban as leverage with the landlord. He predicted business would jump 25 percent from non-smokers who’d been avoiding the place. It went up 23. He put the sign up himself: upscale dive. “When I unlock those doors every day,” he told his staff on day one, “I want you to think we’re hosting a cocktail party in East Dallas.”
The neighborhood held him up when it mattered. During COVID, regulars ordered takeout daily just to keep him afloat. During the 2021 ice storm, the Landing stayed open while everything around it closed. Esquire named it one of the 150 best bars in America in 2011. Thrillist called it the best dive bar in Texas.
He doesn’t drink anymore. That story starts about ten years ago when his liver failed and he needed a transplant to survive. He made it through, largely because of the people around him. His longtime general manager Roger Nelson — who passed away in 2023 and is still deeply missed at the Landing — was the one who showed up at Rossell’s door when the hospital called and Rossell refused to go, convinced it was another false alarm. Nelson didn’t argue. He picked him up, put him in his truck, and drove him to the hospital. That trip saved his life. “He saved my life,” Rossell has said simply.
The liver transplant came with a cost that didn’t show up until years later. The anti-rejection medication he was put on after surgery slowly damaged his kidneys — quietly, the way these things go. Last week the doctors told him the damage has progressed to the point where he needs dialysis and is facing a kidney transplant. He posted about it not knowing what to expect. Dallas answered. People who had never said out loud what Lakewood Landing meant to them said it all at once. “I feel rejuvenated,” he said. “I keep saying that word. I’m overwhelmed with happiness. It’s a wonderful feeling.” He is being treated at UT Southwestern, one of the leading transplant programs in the country.
His daughter gets married in nine days. The doctors said they’d rather he not travel. He’s going anyway.
Follow Lakewood Landing on Facebook and find them at 5818 Live Oak Street in East Dallas. Open daily 3 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Thank you Evelyn Goldstein for your help securing the interview and the photos of Bill. We appreciate all you do for CraveDFW.
