Author Archives: Steven Doyle

Val Jean-Bart Turned Grief Into a Dallas Cheesecake Institution

Every cheesecake that’s ever left Val’s Cheesecakes traces back to a Sunday ritual in a home kitchen. Valery “Val” Jean-Bart spent four years caring for his mother, Marie Jose Labossiere, through terminal breast cancer, and the two of them baked together every week, more than 200 sweet and savory creations over that stretch, cheesecake being her favorite. When she passed in 2012, Jean-Bart, a licensed civil engineer with no formal culinary background, had to decide what came next.

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The Expansion Program: A New DMA

Peaceable Kingdom

The Dallas Museum of Art is in the middle of the biggest transition it’s had in years, a new director, a massive expansion campaign, and a full slate of exhibitions running right now, all happening at once. Here’s where things actually stand.

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Zalat Pizza Keeps Its Weird, Wonderful Personality Intact at Store 31

Khanh Nguyen started Zalat Pizza in Dallas back in 2015, and eleven years later the company is opening its 31st Texas location, this time in McKinney’s Heritage Village at 1720 N. Central Expressway, Suite 210, just south of Highway 380 on U.S. 75. For a brand that’s grown this far this fast, Zalat has held onto the same personality it launched with, which says something about how deliberately Nguyen has grown it.

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Terra and Sugar & Sage Team Up for a Five-Week Brunch Collaboration

Terra, the restaurant inside Eataly Dallas at NorthPark Center, is bringing back its Terra Takeover series, and this round pairs the Italian marketplace’s kitchen with one of Dallas’s most respected pastry programs. From July 25 through August 23, weekends only, Terra will host a limited-time brunch collaboration with Sugar & Sage Bakery, the University Park bakery that’s built a genuine following since opening in 2023.

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Victor Hugo Is Back Behind His Own Kitchen, This Time in a Rescued 1899 Bank

The building at 600 S. Harwood St. has been saved from the wrecking ball once already, and that alone makes Bucket & Rope worth knowing the backstory of before ever getting to the food. The structure started life in 1899 as the original Liberty Bank on Cesar Chavez Boulevard, one of downtown Dallas’s oldest surviving commercial buildings. When the city moved to widen the road decades later, the bank was slated for demolition.

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Hot Pancakes Does Exactly What the Name Promises, and Then Some

Hot Pancakes is one of those restaurants that names itself exactly what it does and then somehow still manages to under promise. Yes, there are pancakes, hot ones, and they’re the reason the place has built a genuine following on North Jupiter Road in Richardson. But the menu goes well past the griddle, and that’s what turns a quick breakfast stop into a full-on regular’s diner.

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Forty-Three Years In, Paula Lambert Is Still Making Cheese by Hand

Long before Dallas had a Michelin star or a James Beard semifinalist list to argue about, it had Paula Lambert making mozzarella by hand in a small Deep Ellum storefront, and most of the food world thought she was out of her mind for trying.

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The State of DFW Dining at the Midyear Mark

Halfway through 2026, the honest read on Dallas-Fort Worth dining is that it’s been a year of real losses sitting right next to real momentum. Rent, insurance, and food costs have pushed several genuinely loved restaurants out the door, while new openings keep proving the appetite for going out hasn’t slowed down at all. Here’s where things actually stand.

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