There’s a version of Las Colinas dining that’s been running on autopilot for years — safe menus, familiar formats, nothing that asks much of you. InSo is not that. The restaurant opened at 3165 Regent Blvd. in Irving in February, took over the old Sickies Garage space, and has been doing something genuinely different ever since. Now it’s launching weekend brunch, Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Worth knowing about.
Executive chef Michael Morabito grew up around restaurant kitchens — his father was a hotel chef — and the résumé he built before landing here reads like a survey course in serious American dining. Caesars Palace’s Palace Court in Las Vegas. The Mansion on Turtle Creek. A run as executive chef at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. He’s a chef who knows classic technique cold and uses it as a foundation rather than a ceiling. At InSo, he’s working in a register that’s genuinely new for the area: Southeast Asian and Indus-region cuisine run through a Texas sensibility, with wood smoke and tandoor heat doing most of the heavy lifting.
The kitchen operates on two tracks. A multilevel smoker threads a low, persistent smoke through the menu without announcing itself. Tandoori ovens, woks, and open grills handle the rest, giving dishes the kind of char and depth that only sustained high heat produces. The result is a menu that reads like it was written by someone who understood where each technique was going before they started. Nothing on the plate feels like a compromise.
The Paneer Cheese Tikka Fundido is the right place to start — Kashmiri chile-marinated paneer blanketed in Monterrey Jack with a roasted jalapeño malai sauce, finished with Oaxaca cheese and served with crispy naan chips. It’s the kind of appetizer that recalibrates the table. The Chicken Tikka Boulevard Tacos work through a different register entirely: Texas chow-chow, cilantro yogurt, pomegranate, cotija, warm corn tortillas — the taco format applied to something that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be anything other than itself. For the mains, the beef sirloin cap picanha is slow-roasted and tandoor-finished, arriving with Royal Spinach, marble potato kebabs, and Kashmir chile onion rings. The cashew-and-sesame-crusted salmon runs alongside it — served over mustard green spoonbread with yuzu butter sauce and charred broccolini — delicate enough to hold its own next to bolder preparations without disappearing. Save room for the warm naan bread pudding, soaked in Ron Zacapa rum with Tahitian vanilla and a touch of cardamom. It’s the dessert that closes the argument.
Manager Greg Minella came up through some of the most demanding rooms in Dallas — Star Canyon, Aurora, Dragonfly at Hotel ZaZa, and Carte Blanche, where he helped earn the only Five-Star Forbes rating ever awarded to a freestanding restaurant in Texas. His Italian roots and years spent living in Turkey inform the way the front of house runs: attentive without hovering, informed without being performative. Sous chef Robert Pineda rounds out a kitchen team that punches well above what you’d expect from a restaurant that opened four months ago.
The room helps. The former Sickies Garage space has been completely reimagined — low lighting, a central bar that anchors the room, and a patio that pulls in the Las Colinas air on a good evening. The dress code is smart-elegant, which sets a tone without being precious about it. No athletic wear, no caps. It signals that this place takes itself seriously, and the food backs that up.
The brunch menu is built on the same philosophy as the dinner menu — elevated takes on familiar formats, with presentation that’s clearly thought through, and the same Indus-meets-Texas instinct running through everything. The weekend service also features live jazz, which tips the vibe toward something a little more expansive than a typical Saturday lunch. It’s a room that’s worth dressing up for.
At night, InSo shifts into a full lounge — open until 2 a.m., with live music, themed nights, and occasional fire dancing. The late-night menu runs from 8 p.m. and includes the Ramly Steak Burger, a Malaysian street classic done with steak wrapped in egg, seasoned with Maggi and Muenster cheese, served with hand-punched fries. InSo is a sibling concept to Goli Soda in McKinney, and additional locations are reportedly in development across North Texas and beyond.
ILas Colinaslounge until 2 a.m. Reservations available on OpenTable. Smart-elegant dress code. (945) 288-5100.
