Misti Norris made a list that only twenty chefs in the country land on this year, and anyone who’s eaten her food lately isn’t surprised.
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S&D Oyster Co. Celebrates 50-Year Anniversary
S&D Oyster Company turns 50 on September 16, and it’s throwing itself an anniversary week worth planning around. The Uptown seafood spot has been serving the same stretch of McKinney Avenue since 1976, and five decades in one location is rare enough on its own to be worth celebrating properly.
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Seven Dishes, Seven Dallas Restaurants, No Debate Necessary
Every serious Dallas eater has a running list like this one, dishes they’d order again without hesitation, the ones that make a whole reservation worth booking. Some of these plates come with decades of history attached. Others are newer, but they’ve already earned the loyalty regulars don’t hand out easily. What they share is simple: walk into any of these seven restaurants, order the dish below, and you’ll understand exactly why it made the cut. No second-guessing the menu required.
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Two Years Later, Docent Steak & Lounge Is Actually Opening This Fall
Two years is a long time for a restaurant to sit half-announced. Docent Steak & Lounge first surfaced in Dallas back in the spring of 2024, promising samurai armor, a Kobe beef program, and a “museum-like” dinner unlike anything else in the Harwood District. Then it went quiet. The website stalled on a summer 2024 opening date that never happened, the socials went dark, and for a while it looked like the whole thing had quietly stalled out. It hadn’t. Docent is finally opening this fall, and Harwood Hospitality Group held onto every bit of ambition from that original announcement.
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The Smashburger Spot in Plano That’s Secretly a Story About a 1940s Band
Bonnie Shea spent years just trying to make sure her mother’s story didn’t disappear. Patty Lou Peters fronted an all-female western swing band called Patty Lou and the Texas Sweethearts back in the 1940s and 50s, back when female touring groups almost never existed. They piled into a convertible and drove routes stretching from Chicago to California, playing gigs along the way. Shea wanted people to know who her mother was. So she built her a restaurant.
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What’s the Hot Music at this Year’s State Fair?
Most people show up to the State Fair of Texas thinking about corny dogs and butter sculptures, and forget there’s an entire free music festival built into the ticket price. The Chevrolet Main Stage has been doing this for almost 30 years, and this year’s lineup is one of the more genre-scrambled ones the fair has put together in a while. Country one night, classic rock the next, then a Pink Floyd laser show, then a Norteño act, then a tribute band. Nobody’s pretending it’s curated for one kind of fan. It’s built for everybody who walks through the gate.
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This Hidden Lovers Lane Taco Spot Is About to Get a Full Liquor License
Behind a gas station and an auto shop on Lovers Lane, there’s a taco spot with no real sign, just a black wall with gold mortar marking where to walk in. It’s called Mi Rey Restaurant Bar, and it’s exactly the kind of place Dallas is full of and never talks about enough: family-owned, unfussy, and quietly excellent.
Inside, it’s a sports-bar kind of room, pool tables, a couple of TVs, casual seating, the sort of space built for a long lazy meal rather than a quick bite. The menu runs on the classics done right rather than anything trying to reinvent itself.
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Cafe Brazil Has Been Getting Brunch Right Since 1991
There’s a restaurant style Dallas doesn’t make anymore, the kind with mismatched art on the walls, bottomless coffee that never seems to stop coming, and a crowd that ranges from college kids nursing a hangover to grandparents who’ve been coming since the place opened. Cafe Brazil is one of the last ones still doing it exactly right, and it’s been doing it since December 1991.
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