Walk into Dive Coastal Cuisine on Rankin Street on a weekday around noon and you will usually find the same scene. There’s a line at the counter, light pouring through the big front windows, and a neon sign on the back wall telling everyone to dive in. Half the room looks like it came straight from a Pilates class and the other half looks like it came from a closing in Preston Center. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to leave.
Franchesca Nor opened Dive in Snider Plaza in 2010, and it has outlasted a long list of Park Cities restaurants that arrived with more noise and left with less. It is now in its sixteenth year, still chef-owned and still run by the woman whose name is on one of the plates.
Her story explains the menu. Nor was born and raised in Southern California, around surf culture and the kind of produce and seafood that Californians take for granted. Her father is from Brazil, which gave her an early taste for South American cooking. She has also lived in Colorado, Lake Tahoe, Italy and Florida, and it was Miami that finished the education. She graduated with honors from Johnson & Wales and then worked under some serious South Florida talent, including Allen Susser, one of the founders of the Mango Gang, David Bouley at Evolution, and Andrea Curto-Randazzo, a Food & Wine Best New Chef.
When she moved from Miami to Dallas, she brought that coastal sensibility with her and paired it with something she noticed while working in local restaurants. Diners, and women in particular, kept ordering salads. Lots of them. She figured Dallas needed a place that took healthy food seriously without making it joyless, and Dive was the answer.
Regulars call her “Artichoke Mama.” She calls her customers Divers.
The format is counter service with everything made to order, and the menu reads like a map of everywhere Nor has lived. The Market Grill is the backbone. You pick a fish (kampachi, salmon, halibut, swordfish, tuna steak or mahi-mahi, with carne asada for the holdouts), choose whether it’s seared, soy-seared, blackened or grilled, then add a sauce and two sides. It’s the most flexible plate in Snider Plaza and the one longtime customers tend to settle into.
Brazil shows up in the Dive Surf & Turf, churrasco steak and grilled shrimp over cilantro rice and black beans with a house-made chimichurri. Miami turns up in the South Beach Turkey Burger with sriracha aioli and smashed avocado. Southern California gets the Del Mar Taco Trio, where you choose three from crispy cod, spicy shrimp, grilled mahi and blackened salmon, finished with jicama slaw.
The wraps carry a cult following. The Seared Ahi Tuna Wrap comes with ginger slaw, cucumber, avocado and coconut rice, with sweet chili and ponzu, all rolled in a spinach tortilla, and it’s the item people mention first when they talk about Dive. The Mahi Crunch Wrap uses blackened mahi, basil-mint slaw and salsa roja in a chipotle tortilla, and the Curry Shrimp Wrap brings Granny Smith apple and a creamy curry dressing to the party.
There is comfort food here, too, done with a lighter hand. The Fish & Chips uses panko-crusted cod and swaps fries for plantain chips. The Tuna Melt gets a house-made horseradish pickle relish and broccoli sprouts on honey wheat. Franchesca’s Plate is tomatillo chicken breast with jack cheese and avocado over cilantro rice, and it’s exactly what you’d expect a chef to put her own name on.
The salads, the thing that started the whole idea, still hold their own. The Hearts of Palm salad, with avocado, grapefruit, Hawaiian sea salt and a garlic citrus vinaigrette, tastes like a vacation. If you can’t decide, the Farm Trio Salad Sampler gives you three at once.
What happens behind the counter matters as much as what lands on the plate. Seafood is responsibly sourced, produce is organic, non-GMO and local whenever possible, the beef is grass-fed and the chicken is hormone-free and free-range. The kitchen cooks with rice bran oil, coconut oil and ghee instead of the usual fryer oil.
Some of the greens on your plate were grown a few miles south. Nor partnered with 4DWN, a South Dallas skate park and community nonprofit, to build the DiveDWN Future Farm. It’s a container farm that grows lettuce and herbs without soil or pesticides, using a fraction of the water a conventional farm needs. Organic waste from the restaurant gets composted there and goes back into growing more food. The farm also supplies neighbors in need and hosts cooking classes and food education for families and kids. When the menu says DiveDWN greens, it means it.
Nor is quick to share credit with the team of women who help run the place, along with operations manager Victor Corral. Corral grew up in Garland, the son of Mexican immigrants, and learned to cook watching his family put together big traditional meals before he went on to formal culinary training. He manages the kitchen staff, keeps the recipes consistent, and spends a good part of his day getting to know the regulars.
The room itself is bright and easy, with aquamarine and navy accents, coastal touches, a counter where you order, and a dining room that fills with afternoon light. It’s casual enough for a solo lunch with a laptop and comfortable enough for a family dinner. The kids’ menu is a real one, with fish and chicken that parents don’t have to feel guilty about.
CraveDFW marked Dive’s 15th anniversary last summer. Sixteen years in, it’s still a chef from the coast cooking what she believes in, a few blocks from SMU, for a neighborhood that hasn’t stopped coming back.
Dive Coastal Cuisine is at 3404 Rankin St. in Snider Plaza. It’s open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and closed Sunday. Call 214-891-1700, or order pickup and catering through divecoastal.com.
