Twenty years of covering this city and the one thing that hasn’t changed is that Dallas keeps surprising people who think they already know it. What follows is every dining guide CraveDFW has published, organized by neighborhood and cuisine. Click through for the full picture on anything that interests you. We update this page as new guides go live. Check out the Master Dallas Dining Guide.
Please note, these are suggested restaurants and not every restaurant is represented. If you have a favorite missing, let us know and we can add.
DALLAS — BY NEIGHBORHOOD
Downtown Dallas — Most World Cup visitors will be staying here, and the neighborhood is better than most of them will expect. The Omni, the Thompson, the Adolphus, and the Westin all anchor within walking distance of each other, and the AT&T Discovery District along Commerce and Main has become the city’s most active public gathering space. Downtown Dallas is not what it was ten years ago. The restaurant density has grown, the quality has followed, and for anyone without a car it’s entirely possible to eat well for an entire week without leaving the neighborhood on foot. Our guide covers every corridor — the Arts District, the West End, the Main Street strip, and the Discovery District — with DART and trolley connections noted throughout.
Knox-Henderson — Three miles north of downtown and arguably the most concentrated stretch of good food and drink in Texas. Knox Street began transforming in the late 1990s when independent restaurants started taking root between the Katy Trail and Travis Street. Henderson Avenue followed, its blocks filling in with the kind of restaurants that attract local regulars who care where they eat. Today Knox Street is a fully planned dining corridor anchored by The Knox development while Henderson has kept its more organic, block-by-block character. The full range is here — from a dive bar that’s been there since 1987 to a Michelin-recognized steakhouse, all within comfortable walking distance of each other. Park once. Stay all night. The McKinney Avenue Trolley connects the southern end of the corridor to Uptown and downtown at no charge.
Uptown — The most densely restaurant-packed corridor in the city. Uptown runs north from downtown along McKinney Avenue and Cedar Springs Road, and for visitors who want to stay in one neighborhood and eat well for three days without repeating themselves, it is the answer. It has everything from a Gulf Coast seafood institution that opened the year Gerald Ford was president to a Michelin-starred French bistro that earned its recognition 48 days after opening. The McKinney Avenue Trolley runs free through the middle of it. Most of the major World Cup hotels sit on its southern edge. The West Village anchors the northern end and the Crescent complex anchors the other. Our guide covers the full corridor with transit directions from the major hotel addresses.
Oak Lawn & Cedar Springs — Cedar Springs Road has been Dallas’s LGBTQ+ district since the 1970s, the first neighborhood in Texas to receive official state recognition as an LGBT community in 2018. The half-mile stretch known as The Strip packs more bars, restaurants, and community institutions into a walkable corridor than any comparable neighborhood in the American South. During the World Cup, when visitors arrive from countries where LGBTQ+ life ranges from restricted to illegal, Cedar Springs is the kind of neighborhood that reminds people what a city can choose to be. Everyone is welcome here — that is not a slogan but the operating condition of the place. Two miles northwest of downtown, connected to Uptown by the McKinney Avenue Trolley. Our guide covers the dining scene alongside the bar corridor and notes everything worth knowing before you go.
Bishop Arts District — About four miles southwest of downtown in North Oak Cliff, Bishop Arts is one of the most walkable and rewarding 49 blocks in Dallas. The district runs along N. Bishop Avenue and W. Davis Street, with restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and independent retail packed tight enough that you can spend an entire day on foot without covering the same ground twice. No chains. Everything locally owned. For World Cup visitors staying downtown it is a 10-minute rideshare. For anyone serious about Dallas food culture it is a required stop — this is the neighborhood where Lucia operates, where some of the most interesting independent kitchens in the city have chosen to open, and where the food scene has been building steadily for fifteen years without losing the character that made it worth building in the first place.
North Dallas & Addison — Addison has more restaurants per capita than any city in Texas and consistently ranks among the highest restaurant-dense cities in the entire country — a statistic that surprises people who think of it as a suburb on the way to somewhere else. The Belt Line Road corridor alone packs more serious food into a walkable strip than most full cities manage: steakhouses, Italian, Southern, Japanese, Mediterranean, Pan-Asian. North Dallas runs alongside it with its own deep roster of neighborhood restaurants that have been feeding Preston Hollow, Park Cities, and the Preston Forest corridor for decades. Most of the World Cup team hotels are in this zone. Our guide covers both corridors in full, from the restaurants that have been there for thirty years to the ones that just opened.
DALLAS — BY CUISINE
Steakhouses — Dallas has always taken its steakhouses seriously, and the city’s relationship with beef runs deeper than any trend cycle. Our guide covers 18 of the best steakhouses in the city — from the old-guard rooms that have been doing this for decades and built their reputations one regulars table at a time, to the new arrivals bringing different ingredients and ambitions to the form. If you eat steak in Dallas and want to know where to go, this is the guide.
Burgers — Dallas has never needed an excuse to argue about burgers. The city has old-school drive-ins that haven’t changed a thing in decades, craft burger operations with rotating monthly specials, and a handful of proper restaurants where the beef program is serious enough to anchor an entire evening around a single patty. Our guide covers 21 restaurants organized by part of town — the full range from a counter where you order at the window to a dining room where the burger costs as much as a steak and earns every dollar.
French Restaurants — Dallas doesn’t have a great many French restaurants, which is part of what makes the ones it has worth paying attention to. When a French kitchen works in this city it works because someone decided the cuisine was worth doing correctly rather than approximately. Our guide covers the kitchens that are doing it correctly — from Pascal Cayet’s Provençal room on Preston Road, where he has been cooking since 1996, to the Michelin-recognized bistros on Knox Street that earn their recognition every service.
Pizza — The list of pizzas includes local favorite scattered across the city by category.
DALLAS — BARS
Bar Guide: Where to Drink in Every Neighborhood — Dallas has always been a drinking city. The bars here range from underground mezcalerÃas hidden behind bridal boutiques to century-old hotel lounges where the bartenders know the difference between a proper Negroni and a lazy one. Our guide covers the best bars neighborhood by neighborhood — not a directory but a genuine recommendation list built for the World Cup and useful long after it’s over.
Where to Watch the World Cup in Dallas — Dallas is hosting nine World Cup matches — more than any other city in the tournament. Most people watching those matches won’t be inside AT&T Stadium. Tickets are expensive, parking in Arlington is a commitment, and some of the best World Cup viewing in North Texas happens nowhere near the stadium. Our guide covers every option: watch parties, fan zones, sports bars, free outdoor screens, and pub setups organized by neighborhood and type so you can find your spot before the first match kicks off.
