From the sidewalk on West 8th Street, the house at 240 still looks like what it is: a 1940s bungalow on a quiet block in Bishop Arts. Behind the porch, it is something else entirely now. The structure had to be rebuilt from the ground up, and because the lot sits inside a conservation district, the crew had to do it without changing the face the neighborhood has known for decades.
That house is about to become Trapèze, a French bar and restaurant from Peter Novotny and Dan Murry, the partners behind Ruins and Armoury D.E. in Deep Ellum. Their third project lands six miles southwest of the other two, and the reason has as much to do with history as real estate.
Oak Cliff has French roots. In 1855, a group of French, Belgian and Swiss settlers founded La Réunion, a utopian colony on land just west of the Trinity River. The experiment lasted only a few years, but many of its people stayed and helped build early Dallas, and the name lives on downtown in Reunion Tower. Bishop Arts still marks that heritage every July with its Bastille Day celebration. Novotny has said plainly that the neighborhood’s French thread is what made the concept feel like it belonged here.
The idea is a bohemian brasserie with a small-farmhouse feel and a streak of the cabaret and the circus, which is where the name comes from. Novotny has described the room as colorful and a little quirky. There is a small stage inside and a larger one on the back patio, so live music will be part of the evening, the same way it is at the Deep Ellum bars. Matt Battaglia, one of the people behind the Denton music festival Oaktopia, who also tour-manages Marc Rebillet, is part of the project, and that should tell you how seriously the music side is being taken.
The menu comes from Jeremy Spector, a New York chef with time at Balthazar and Gramercy Tavern. He owns The Brindle Room and Mister Paradise in Manhattan and is an owner and former chef of Employees Only, the Manhattan cocktail bar with a following well beyond New York. Spector is the consulting chef here, building the menu from New York, and he has talked about wanting food rooted in the brasserie’s working-class origins, the sort of thing a Parisian would have eaten in a neighborhood pub in the early 1900s.
Early menu talk has included roasted oysters with leeks, pork rillons, steak au poivre and duck confit poutine. That last one has a history. Duck confit poutine is also on the menu at The Brindle Room, where Spector’s burger earned a spot on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. A burger is coming to Trapèze, too, and Spector has promised to give it a French accent. Expect regional French classics alongside flavors from France’s former colonies, Moroccan cooking among them.
The bar is where Novotny and Murry have spent their careers, and the plans show it. The list leans on classic French cocktails and New Orleans-style drinks, with a deep bench of cognac, rhum agricole, absinthe and Chartreuse. Aperitifs and digestifs get real attention. The wine list is all French, and the beer and cider will come from France and its neighbors, Kronenbourg 1664 is one of the names already mentioned.
Trapèze has been a long time coming. It was first expected in the spring, then midyear, and the most recent word put the opening in October. As of this writing, no opening date has been announced, so watch the restaurant’s Instagram for the first night the porch light comes on.
Trapèze is at 240 W. 8th St. in the Bishop Arts District.
