Every August, Dallas hands you a reason to finally book the table you’ve been putting off. DFW Restaurant Week turns 30 this year, running from Preview Weekend on August 6 through the final stretch on September 7, and more than 150 restaurants across the Metroplex are offering prix fixe menus built specifically for the occasion. Two-course lunches run $29, three-course dinners land at $49 or $59, and a handful of restaurants are offering $99 Signature Experience dinners with an extra course thrown in. About 20 percent of what you spend goes to the North Texas Food Bank or, for restaurants in Tarrant County, Lena Pope.
The math makes this one of the easiest ways in Dallas to try a restaurant that’s normally out of your rotation. A dinner that might run $150 for two on a regular night suddenly costs closer to $100, and you’re eating the kitchen’s actual cooking, not a stripped-down version built to hit a price point. Here’s where that logic plays out well this year.
Nick & Sam’s is the steakhouse pick, and reservations are limited to the first two weeks of the campaign, so this is the one to book early if it’s on your list. The $59 dinner opens with a peach and prosciutto salad, roasted tomato bisque, or a shrimp tempura roll, then moves into an eight-ounce filet mignon, honey-mustard-glazed Scottish salmon, or wild mushroom rigatoni. It’s a real discount on a menu that regularly runs well past $100 a plate, which is exactly the kind of gap Restaurant Week exists to close. Nick & Sam’s is at 3008 Maple Ave.
Dean Fearing has been a fixture of Dallas dining for decades, and Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton runs one of the most flexible Restaurant Week lineups in the city, with brunch, lunch, and dinner menus available for the entire campaign. The $29 lunch includes Dr Pepper-braised Rosewood Ranch short ribs and apricot-glazed salmon, while dinner starts with tortilla soup or a Texas Caesar salad before moving into yellowtail aguachile and a choice of salmon, nilgai antelope, or cowboy-rubbed beef petite tender. The $99 Signature Experience adds a fourth course and Dean’s Margarita, and brunch brings chilaquiles rojo and chicken and waffles into the mix. Fearing’s is at 2121 McKinney Ave., inside the Ritz-Carlton, Dallas.
Monarch sits on the 49th floor of The National, and the view alone is most of the reason to go, but two-time Michelin-starred chef Danny Grant’s contemporary Italian menu holds its own against the skyline. Restaurant Week here runs as a $99 Signature Experience rather than a standard prix fixe, which fits a room built for wood-fired proteins and pasta made in-house. It’s available Preview Weekend through Week Two, so the window closes August 23. Monarch is at 1401 Elm St., on the 49th floor.
The Charles in the Design District is the pick for a date night that doesn’t feel like a compromise. The $59 dinner draws from the regular menu’s strongest dishes: a summer tomato panzanella, bluefin tuna crudo, or grilled oysters with piquillo pepper garlic butter to start, followed by Ora King salmon, grilled chicken, or a Wagyu short rib with baby kale and sticky shallots. It’s the kind of low-lit, cocktail-forward room that makes Restaurant Week feel like an occasion rather than a discount. The Charles is at 1632 Market Center Blvd., and the menu runs through Week Two, August 23.
El Carlos Elegante is the most distinctive menu in this year’s lineup, and it’s a good pick if you want a chef-driven meal rather than a traditional steakhouse dinner. The $59 dinner opens with a Tijuana Caesar salad with chorizo, salmon ceviche with coconut and pineapple aguachile, or refried lentils with hoja santa crème fraîche, then moves into guajillo chicken with mole madre, carne asada, or tamarind halibut with huitlacoche rice. Dessert is a buñuelo with salted vanilla and blueberry ice cream or a Mexican chocolate pot de crème. El Carlos Elegante is in the Dallas Design District at 1400 North Riverfront Blvd., and the menu is available August 10 through 23.
Reservations open earlier than most people expect and the best tables go fast, especially at restaurants running limited weeks like Nick & Sam’s, Monarch, The Charles, and El Carlos Elegante, all of which wrap by August 23. The full list of participants and menus is at dfwrestaurantweek.com, and it’s worth checking a restaurant’s specific dates before you book, since not everyone runs the full campaign. Worth noting for anyone hoping to add them to a list: Palladino’s Steak & Seafood and Mamani sat this one out. Both are absent from the official 2026 restaurant list, so neither is included here.
