There’s a version of Dallas dining that mostly disappeared decades ago, the kind with a chandelier the size of a compact car, a curtained room for the tables that want privacy, and a bandleader who knows when to bring the room down to a whisper. That Dallas still exists. You just have to drive to Addison to find it.
Arthur’s Steakhouse opened in 1948 on McKinney Avenue, back when Uptown was still just a stretch of Dallas nobody had branded yet. Arthur Bates and his wife ran it there for years, building the kind of reputation that gets a restaurant called Dallas’ first real steakhouse. Bates sold it in 1988 to Mohsen Heidari, a restaurateur who’d already run Farmer’s Grill and worked his way up through Dallas kitchens since the early ’70s. Heidari moved Arthur’s twice more, first to Central Expressway, before landing it at 15175 Quorum Drive in Addison in 2001, where it’s been ever since. Seventy-seven years, three addresses, one name that never changed.
Walk in and the first thing that hits you is the chandelier, 600 pounds of Baccarat crystal hanging over the main dining room like something rescued from a hotel ballroom. Then you notice the aquariums, 1,200 gallons of them wrapping the room, full of fish that have seen more first dates and anniversaries than most people. Dark wood, oil paintings, a red velvet room in back that seats a small private party behind actual curtains. Later in the evening a band sets up and the dance floor fills in, because Arthur’s has never treated dinner and a night out as two separate things.
The menu reads like a steakhouse that’s had seventy-plus years to get comfortable with itself. Escargot comes sizzling in garlic butter, still on the menu because nobody’s ever asked them to take it off. The jumbo lump crab cake gets a Chardonnay sauce and a Southern slaw on the side. Oysters Rockefeller arrive under spinach and a Pernod-spiked Hollandaise. The seared bacon-wrapped scallops sit on creamy polenta with a mango jalapeño butter, an odd pairing on paper that works fine on the plate.
Steaks are the backbone, the way they’ve always been here. The prime bone-in ribeye, nicknamed the Cowboy on the menu, comes with Maître d’ butter melting into the crust. The filet mignon is available in an 8-ounce or 12-ounce cut, and the prime New York strip au poivre shows up with pomme frites and a peppercorn sauce that doesn’t hold back on the pepper. For anyone who can’t decide, the surf and turf pairs the filet with a cold-water Australian lobster tail.
The kitchen doesn’t stop at beef. Chicken fried lobster is Texas and extravagance colliding on one plate, cold-water lobster breaded and fried, served over mashed potatoes with a tarragon béchamel. The veal osso bucco gets slow braised until it falls off the bone, plated over parmesan risotto. Pan-seared Chilean sea bass comes crusted in five kinds of onion. The lobster and jumbo lump crab meat stuffed salmon is the dish regulars order when they want seafood to feel like an event. Even the bar menu carries weight, anchored by Arthur’s double meat bacon cheeseburger, a two-patty, brioche-bunned answer to anyone who doubts a steakhouse can also make a great burger.
Dessert closes things out unhurried, the way it should. The Grand Marnier crème brûlée and the Belgian chocolate mousse are the two regulars order without opening the menu, and the bread pudding à la mode comes with vanilla bean ice cream melting into rum caramel. There’s also a homemade soufflé, Godiva chocolate or Grand Marnier, made to order, which means the kitchen still asks people to wait for it.
What keeps Arthur’s full on a Tuesday isn’t nostalgia by itself. It’s regulars who’ve followed the restaurant through all three of its addresses, families marking anniversaries in the same booth every year, and a staff that treats a weeknight the same as a Saturday. Arthur’s hasn’t spent the last two decades trying to look like anywhere else in Dallas. It looks like Arthur’s, which is exactly why people keep coming back.
Arthur’s Steakhouse is open Monday through Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m. Closed Sunday. Find it at 15175 Quorum Drive in Addison, or call ahead at (972) 385-0800. Reservations are available through OpenTable.
