Tag Archives: beer

Checking In at Craft, You Should Too

Preston Center has been missing a rooftop bar for about twenty years. CRAFT Restaurant & Beer Market showed up on April 1 and fixed that, along with a few other things the neighborhood did not know it needed.

The concept started in Calgary in 2011, built by PJ L’Heureux into nine Canadian locations before he decided Dallas was where to make the American move. His partner here is Tom Gaglardi — owner of the Dallas Stars, the man who brought Moxie’s to Dallas years ago and knows how to read this market. The two of them landed at 5974 W. Northwest Highway in the old medical office space across from the Starbucks on Kate Street, gutted it, and built a 10,500-square-foot room with a 360-degree bar at the center and 5,250 square feet of rooftop patio on top. The rooftop is one of the first of that size in Preston Center. On a clear May evening it is the best outdoor seat in this part of Dallas.

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Kilmac’s Brought a Smoked Guinness Old Fashioned West Davis Street

The building at 814 West Davis Street in Oak Cliff started as an automotive garage. A man named Ron Patterson eventually bought it, spent years turning it into a private room — dark, personal, built around the things he liked — and lived in the house just behind it. When Patterson died in 2021, Feargal McKinney acquired the property. He walked in, looked around, and largely left it alone. McKinney said he figured Patterson would have found a favorite stool and never left. He named the bar after himself and opened it in March 2026. That is how Kilmac’s came to exist.

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Goodfriend Will Be Open Friday-Sunday for Lunch Starting May 15th

Matt Tobin and Josh Yingling were bartenders who didn’t want to become the kind of bartenders who are still pouring drinks at fifty, chain-smoking behind the stick until dawn. So, in 2011 they did what seemed like the logical alternative: they opened a bar. The difference was that this time it was theirs.

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Morning Coffee, Afternoon Beer, One Very Good Cuban Sandwich

Most places try to be one thing and do it well. Chad and Nellie Montgomery looked at that idea and went a different direction. Civil Pour at 8061 Walnut Hill Lane in Dallas is a specialty coffee shop and a 25-tap rotating craft beer bar in the same room, and the combination works better than it has any right to. It is the kind of place you go in for a morning pour-over and end up back at on a Thursday evening for a beer you have never heard of. Most regulars have done exactly that.

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The Meltdown Margarita Has Followed Eddie Cervantes to Every Restaurant He Has Ever Opened

Eddie Cervantes has been feeding Dallas Tex-Mex since 1981. He opened Primo’s Bar & Grill on McKinney Avenue in 1986 and built it into one of the most loved Tex-Mex cantinas the city has ever had — where locals, chefs, and the occasional celebrity would end up on a Tuesday night over meltdown margaritas and a bowl of queso that nobody wanted to stop eating. Primo’s ran for years. People still bring it up.

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Where to Get Fantastic Queso in DFW Tonight

Queso is not a side dish in North Texas. It is a belief system. Dallas and Fort Worth have been arguing about it for decades — what goes in it, what goes on top of it, whether it should be served in a bowl or rolled into a tortilla, whether Velveeta is a shortcut or a tradition worth defending. Both cities are right about different things, and both cities have places that the other side has never heard of. What follows is not a ranking of the obvious names. You already know Torchy’s. You already know what you think about El Fenix. This is the list you bring up when the table needs a real conversation — four Dallas bowls and four Fort Worth bowls that hold up under any scrutiny, from the ones that have been doing it since before you were born to the one that does it entirely without dairy and gets away with it.

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5 Fun Patios to Enjoy Spring in Dallas

Which patio might you enjoy this drink?

Patio season is a real thing in Dallas and it does not last long. By late May the sun starts to win, and by mid-June most of us are hiding indoors until October. That leaves a narrow window where eating outside is genuinely one of the better things you can do with your day, and the question is not really which patio has the best food. The food at a good patio is almost a footnote. What matters is whether the place matches what you are actually trying to do that afternoon or evening.

A first date needs one kind of space. A birthday with twelve people needs another. A long lunch with a friend who has news to tell you needs a third. Here are five patios I keep going back to, sorted by the thing you are actually there for.

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Shell Shack Cracks into Arlington with New Location

Shell Shack is opening a new Arlington location on April 27 at 4000 Five Points Blvd., Suite 101, with hours running daily from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. It’s the brand’s second location in Arlington, joining the existing spot at Lincoln Square.

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