Walk past Cock & Bull on Gaston Avenue and you might not stop. There’s no big sign pulling you in, no neon in the window doing its job. Just a door, and behind it one of the better neighborhood bars in East Dallas.
It’s small in there. One bar, a wall of booths, red walls with paintings of roosters and cattle, a jukebox somebody actually feeds money into. The wood is old. The lighting is low. When the place fills up on a weekend, and it does, you’re aware of everyone in the room. That’s not a complaint — that’s the whole point of a pub like this. People come here because they want to be somewhere, not just somewhere with a drink.
Most people know it as a burger place, and the burgers are solid. Half-pound Angus on Empire Baking Company buns, dressed the way you want it. The Red Bull Burger — roasted red bell pepper, smoked gouda, chipotle aioli — is the one worth ordering first. The Blue Bull goes gorgonzola and bacon. The Chili Bull piles on house-made chili and cheddar. The classic is $9. You’re not going to leave hungry.
What catches people off guard is everything else. The Chipotle Mussels in butter and white wine with rosemary focaccia are $17 and genuinely excellent — the kind of dish you don’t expect in a room this size, served with enough bread to take care of the broth properly. The Veal and Mushroom Meatloaf at $23 comes with truffle cheddar mac and cheese and haricot vert. The Comfort Bowl is mashed potatoes, roast beef, and mushroom brown gravy for $17 and it does exactly what the name says. The Shrimp Picatta — butter, wine, capers, artichoke hearts, pappardelle — runs $18. The Chipotle Pesto Pork Chop is a ten-ounce bone-in with jalapeño cheese grits for $22 and it’s the thing people order when they’ve been here enough times to know better than to just get the burger.
The cheese plates are worth knowing about too — three cheeses for $18, four for $22, with crackers, pickles, and fruit. The selection rotates, so if you’ve been coming long enough, you’ve seen it change a few times without it being announced.
Weekend brunch starts at 11 on Saturdays and Sundays. The chalkboard specials are real specials, not filler. Happy hour runs every day. The kitchen stays open until 11 most nights, midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. The bar runs until 2 a.m.
There’s a certain kind of bar that takes years to become what it is, and Cock & Bull is that bar. The staff knows who’s a regular. The regulars know to scoot over. The food is better than the room is pretending it is, and the room isn’t pretending to be much. That combination is harder to pull off than it looks.
Cock & Bull is at 6330 Gaston Ave., Dallas, TX 75214. Open Monday through Friday at 3 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. Reservations accepted. (214) 841-9111.
If a Lakewood neighborhood bar that takes its kitchen more seriously than it has to sounds like your thing, CraveDFW’s piece on Lakewood Landing’s food menu is worth reading alongside this one — same neighborhood, different personality, same idea.
