Cedar Springs Road at 1:30 in the morning operates on its own set of rules. The bars are still going, the sidewalks are still busy, and at some point everyone on that strip remembers they’re hungry. Most of the kitchens in Oak Lawn have already called it. Zio Al’s hasn’t.
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We wrote about Jonny Butch back in May, before most people in Dallas-Fort Worth had heard his name. If you missed it, here’s the short version: Butch works the pits at Goldee’s Barbecue in Fort Worth, the place Texas Monthly has ranked number one in the state and that Food & Wine put among the best new chef programs in America in 2024. Before that, he cooked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York and staged at Noma in Copenhagen. His resume reads like two careers stitched together — fine dining at the highest level, then a deliberate turn toward the oldest, most honest version of Texas barbecue he could find.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Senegal is about as far west as you can go on the African continent before you hit the Atlantic. Dakar, the capital, is a port city — noisy, packed, ocean-salted, alive. People eat well there. They have for a long time. And the dish at the center of all of it has one of those names that stops people cold the first time they see it on a menu.
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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.
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Come November, the old Meyboom Brasserie spot on Greenville Avenue is going to look and feel like a completely different place. Fonda Toro moves in at 2100 Greenville Ave., and if you’ve been watching that corner since the Belgian beer hall closed last year, the wait is just about over.
The people behind it are Mauricio Gallegos and John Paul Valverde, both East Dallas residents, both with enough of a track record that this isn’t a gamble so much as a next move.
Continue readingFiled under Crave, Steven Doyle
There’s a reason people have been hauling their own food through the gates of the State Fair of Texas for as long as the gates have existed. The fair food is part of the deal — the corny dogs, the fried everything, the Big Tex Choice Award winners you’re going to stand in line for no matter what. But by mid-afternoon, when your feet hurt and the sun hasn’t moved and you’ve got three more hours before anyone’s ready to leave, having a real lunch spread waiting in your bag changes everything. It costs less, it gives you a moment to actually sit down, and it’s the oldest trick in the book at Fair Park.
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The keg tap swings down on the first ceremonial barrel at Addison Circle Park on September 17, and for four days after that, Addison sounds nothing like Addison. Polka horns replace traffic noise. Lederhosen and dirndls outnumber golf shirts. A crowd that regularly tops 45,000 people by the closing hour files through the gates at 4970 Addison Circle to drink Paulaner out of half-liter steins and watch grown adults hold a full one straight out at arm’s length until their shoulders give out.
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Fall lands on the calendar this week, even if the thermometer hasn’t gotten the memo. Between a wine festival taking over Grapevine, the Cowboys’ home opener, back-to-back J. Cole shows, a ballet company built around one of history’s more scandalous writers, and a full night of gallery openings across the city, there’s enough here to fill every night through Sunday. Here’s what’s worth building a week around.
This Calander has family friendly options, date night and even singles fun-filled activities available. Check it out.
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