Hudson House started as one restaurant in Highland Park. It’s about to open its twelfth, and this time it’s landing in Southlake, a city that says a lot about how far this brand has traveled from its first neighborhood spot.
The new location opens Friday, September 11, at 1131 E. Southlake Blvd., roughly 5,000 square feet of the same East Coast sensibility Hudson House built its name on, just with more room to stretch out. Hudson House comes from Vandelay Companies, the Dallas group founded by Hunter Pond, and Pond isn’t shy about why growth here has been slow and deliberate rather than fast. He picked Southlake for its energy and its appetite for real hospitality, and he’s said the goal was never just adding another location to a map. It was making sure every Hudson House feels like it’s always belonged to its block.
The food doesn’t try to be only one thing, which is probably why it works. The Avocado Dip, whipped avocado with green onion, herbs, and ranch chips, is the appetizer nobody at the table debates. The Cheeseburger, thin patties, American cheese, pickles, and Hudson’s own house sauce, sits on the same menu as Chicken Parm over creamy tomato pasta with Reggiano, and neither one apologizes for the other. The Hudson Salad, popcorn chicken, avocado, cherry tomato, bacon, sharp cheddar, and green goddess dressing, is the one that convinces people this isn’t just a seafood restaurant playing it safe.
Except the seafood is where it actually shows off. East Coast oysters come in daily for the raw bar, and the sushi menu goes further than most people expect walking in. The Sunset Roll stacks spicy tuna, cucumber, and avocado under salmon, lemon, and a ginger vinaigrette. The Signature Roll skips rice altogether, letting salmon, tuna, crab, avocado, tempura flake, and spicy ponzu carry the whole thing. The Pressed Ahi Tuna Roll layers tuna sashimi and spicy tuna with avocado, spicy mayo, eel sauce, and truffle oil, and the Spicy Tuna Crispy Rice rounds out the raw bar with chili mayo doing the heavy lifting.
Then there’s the drink that’s become the restaurant’s whole personality: the World’s Coldest Martini, Grey Goose poured straight from a tap chilled to 10 degrees, cold enough that the first sip genuinely surprises people who’ve ordered a hundred martinis before this one. The rest of the list holds its own too, The Classic, a Bleu & Gold with olive juice, bleu cheese salt, and housemade bleu cheese olives, a Lemon Drop finished with limoncello foam, and an Espresso martini built on vodka, espresso, Kahlúa, and Baileys. A Frozen Bellini, Strawberry Spritz, Spicy Mexican, and a straight Manhattan fill out the rest.
Southlake gets the full design treatment too, warm leather booths, a wraparound bar big enough to actually hold court at, a sit-down raw bar, and a patio for anyone who’d rather eat outside. It’s built to feel like a New England dining room that somehow also knows how to throw a good happy hour, which has more or less been the whole trick behind Hudson House since day one.
Hudson House Southlake opens Friday, September 11, at 1131 E. Southlake Blvd. in Southlake.
