Every neighborhood needs a place you can walk into on a Saturday without a plan. In Snider Plaza, that place is Ramble Room, and brunch is when it feels most like home.
Ramble Room sits on the south end of the plaza at 6565 Hillcrest Ave. It’s Jon Alexis’s restaurant, and if you know his story, it makes sense. He built his name selling fish at TJ’s Seafood, then had a hit with Tex-Mex at Escondido. When he opened Ramble Room in 2023, he went after something simpler: good American food in a room you’d happily visit on a night when you don’t really feel like going out.
Three years later, it has turned into exactly that. The space runs two stories, with a long horseshoe bar right in the middle and a patio for those Dallas mornings when the weather actually cooperates. It’s comfortable without trying too hard, and it’s easy to lose an afternoon there.
Order the monkey bread first, and order it for the table. It comes with candied pecans, orange zest and brown sugar, and it disappears fast. The ricotta and smoked salmon toast is where you can taste the Alexis connection, because the salmon is smoked in-house at TJ’s. It comes topped with red onion and capers, and it’s the kind of thing you’ll want again next week. If somebody at the table wants oysters before noon, let them.
The cacio e pepe oysters are charbroiled with parmesan and cracked black pepper, and they make a pretty good argument for brunch seafood.
On the sweet side, the Apple Pie French Toast is the one to beat. It’s brioche with maple syrup, whipped cream and candied pecans, and it tastes like a slice of apple pie that decided to become breakfast. The Avocado Prosciutto Benedict trades the English muffin for garlic and herb bread and finishes with a deviled hollandaise that has a little kick.
For those who treat brunch as an early lunch, the Brunch BLT piles thick-cut bacon, avocado, arugula, Campari tomato and scrambled egg onto sourdough with garlic aioli. The steak and eggs brings an 8-ounce steak with sunny eggs, chimichurri butter and breakfast potatoes. And if you just want breakfast the way you’d make it at home on a good day, the Plaza Breakfast has eggs, bacon, breakfast potatoes, fruit and sourdough toast.
The bar is worth a look, too. There’s a Bloody Mary, a blood orange mimosa and a mimosa carafe for the table, and Tito’s runs on tap for anyone who considers a martini a perfectly fine brunch drink. The house Filthy martini comes with bacon and bleu cheese olives. If you’re keeping it dry, the blackberry lemonade and blood orange limeade are both good choices for a slow afternoon on the patio.
Mostly, Ramble Room works because it feels like Jon’s other places. You come in for one thing, you see a few people you know, and somehow it’s two o’clock and you’ve ordered another round of monkey bread.
Ramble Room is at 6565 Hillcrest Ave., Suite 150, in Snider Plaza. It’s open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Call 972-803-6090 or book through the Ramble Room site, and take a look at the full brunch menu before you go.
