Welcome to The Heat Check, CraveDFW’s weekly list of the places Dallas-Fort Worth can’t stop talking about. Every spot on it is open right now. The Dallas side is ranked from splurge to cheap thrills, and Fort Worth gets its own list at the bottom, because buzz doesn’t care what you spend or which side of the Metroplex you live on. It changes every Friday.
Continue readingFiled under Crave, Steven Doyle
If Sundown at Granada is one of your places, you have until Sunday.
Sundown, the restaurant next door to the Granada Theater on Lower Greenville, will serve its last day of regular restaurant service on Sunday, November 1. Owners Mike Schoder and Julia Garton announced on October 23 that they have sold both Sundown and the Granada Theater to Bathhouse, a New York-based wellness and spa brand. Sundown will keep hosting private events through December 31. The Granada will keep the music going a little longer, with shows and events through April 17, 2027.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
A good lunch in Dallas doesn’t have to come with a valet stand or a wine list. Some of the best midday meals in town still come off a charcoal grill, a flat-top or a smoker that’s been running for decades, and you can walk out full without wincing at the check.
These are the places we keep going back to when we want a real lunch at a fair price. They’re not new, and none of them are trying to be. That’s a big part of why they’re still here.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Hi everyone,
New stories go up on CraveDFW every day, and that isn’t changing. What’s changing is your inbox. Instead of an email every time we publish, you’ll now get one each Friday morning with the week’s best, so nothing good slips past you. Between Fridays, the newest stories are always waiting at cravedfw.com.
This week has a steakhouse founder back at the front door, Jon Alexis on what’s coming in for winter at TJ’s, and Javier’s closing in on 50 years.
Continue readingFiled under The Friday Edition
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.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Halloween lands on a Saturday this year, which means most of Dallas-Fort Worth is treating it as a two-night affair. Here’s where to eat, drink and show off a costume on Friday, October 30, and Saturday, October 31, plus a few places that keep the kids fed between trick-or-treat runs.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Walk into the original Bob’s Steak & Chop House on Lemmon Avenue on any night but Sunday, and there’s a good chance the man whose name is on the sign is the one holding the door.
Bob Sambol opened this place in 1993, and after a long detour he’s right back where he started, working the front of the house six nights a week and shaking hands like it’s opening night. In a city that trades in shiny new steakhouses, there’s something wonderful about a founder who simply missed the room and came home to it.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Ask anybody who grew up in Dallas before the 2000s about Prince of Hamburgers, and watch what happens to their face.
First comes the smile. Then the story. Maybe it was the back seat of a station wagon on a summer night, windows down, waiting for a carhop to come back across the lot with a tray. Maybe it was a first car and a first date, or a Saturday night with a car full of friends circling Lemmon Avenue just to see who else was out. Everybody seems to have one.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
