Jeannie Terilli opened her restaurant on Lower Greenville in 1985 after flipping a coin. Heads meant opening a restaurant. Tails meant continuing to dig 5-gallon holes in Texas summer heat running her landscape company. It came up heads. Forty-one years later, Terilli’s is still at 2815 Greenville Avenue, still running live music six nights a week, still pouring martinis with hand-stuffed blue cheese olives, and still serving dishes named after members of the family who built the place.
Her son Joey and her daughter Amanda Ahern now help run the room, and a second location — Terilli’s To Go, in the former Val’s Cheesecake space just down Greenville — bringing weekday lunch service back to the neighborhood for the first time since the pandemic. That last detail is the one that tells you what kind of restaurant this is.
Look at the menu long enough and the family starts to emerge. The 8oz filet with lobster and truffle butter is named “In Memory of Peter Terilli.” The shrimp and jumbo lump crabmeat in garlic white wine butter over angel hair pasta in parmesan cream is “For Vinny T.” The Chilean sea bass with lemon chive cream is “For Amanda.” The Atlantic salmon with citrus beurre blanc is “For Maggie.” Chef Franky’s weekly specials — the ones regulars come specifically for — don’t always have names attached, but they carry the same sensibility. This is not a corporate Italian chain menu. It is a family’s cooking, scaled for a restaurant, served by people who have often been there long enough to remember when the specials were different.
Start with the Italchos. Jeannie Terilli invented them and they appeared on Food Network’s Food Paradise, which is the kind of national exposure that Dallas restaurateurs rarely receive for something as genuinely original as this dish. House-made pizza dough rolled thin, cut into chips, lightly fried, then loaded with toppings — pepperoni, feta, mozzarella, depending on the version — in a format that has no real predecessor and no real competition. The spinach artichoke dip with melted provolone and mozzarella alongside garlic bread and the fried pizza chips is the table order that stalls the pace of the evening in the best possible way. The crab claws sautéed in white wine garlic butter are the appetizer for the table that came to eat rather than to socialize.
The pasta program is the center of the menu and it earns the attention. Angel hair is the house pasta and it appears throughout — not because the kitchen can’t make anything else, but because the lighter noodle suits the butter-based and cream-based sauces that define the cooking here. The Chicken Terilli — lightly breaded chicken layered with zucchini and provolone over angel hair in lemon caper butter — is the dish that regulars order on their second visit and every visit after. The veal version is the same preparation with the same layering, and the choice between them comes down to whether you want a lighter bite or something richer. The shrimp and crabmeat pasta for Vinny T — jumbo shrimp and jumbo lump crabmeat in garlic white wine butter with peas over angel hair in parmesan cream — is the seafood pasta that earns its $38 in every component.
The chicken penne with sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, sweet basil, and roasted garlic in spicy garlic olive oil is the one that surprises people who came in planning to order something else. Pasta choices run to angel hair, shell, fusilli, fettuccini, spinach fettuccini, whole wheat fettuccini, linguini, three cheese ravioli, cheese tortellini, penne, and gluten free — the kitchen will put any sauce on any pasta, which is either admirable flexibility or the reason first-time visitors spend ten minutes deciding.
The house specialties are where the menu gets more serious. The Peter Terilli — the 8oz CAB filet with lobster and truffle butter, named for the man in whose memory it was created — is the order when the evening calls for something that honors the occasion. The Chilean sea bass with lemon chive cream is the fish order that comes up in almost every positive review written about this restaurant, and has for years.
The Cioppino — the San Francisco seafood stew with enough spice to register and fresh seafood throughout — is the dish that people describe in terms that border on devotion. The house specialties come with a house salad with shallot vinaigrette and your choice of garlic mashed potatoes or Italian rice. No modifications between 7 and 9 p.m. — the menu says so plainly, and a kitchen serving a full dining room at peak hours has earned the right to hold that line.
The martini program is as much a part of the identity as the food. The ice-stacked martini — the house Bombay Sapphire dirty martini with blue cheese olives, served with the shaker alongside — has been a best martini winner in Dallas for years and the reason is not mysterious: they are made correctly, served cold, and come with a glass that stays that way. The happy hour martini runs $7 and has its own following among people who time their arrival accordingly. The bar also runs a Hendricks and St. Germain cucumber martini and enough signature cocktails to fill a lazy weeknight hour without making a decision about dinner.
The room is multi-level, warm-lit, exposed brick, with a mezzanine for private dining and a rooftop patio that looks north toward the downtown Dallas skyline. A fire in 2010 closed the restaurant temporarily and Jeannie Terilli rebuilt it. The fact that a restaurant survives a fire and comes back stronger than before is either luck or conviction, and in her case it was the second one. The live music ranges from solo piano through a three-piece band on weekends — jazz, standards, the occasional classic rock — and it runs six nights a week, Tuesday through Sunday. Complimentary valet is out front every night.
Open Tuesday through Saturday 4 to 10 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., closed Monday. Sunday brunch runs 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. terillis.com. (214) 827-3993.
