Seventeen years is a long run for anything in Dallas dining, and DIFFA Dallas brings Burgers + Burgundy back on Thursday, October 1, on the Glen Lawn at The Village Dallas. John Tesar built the thing and still hosts it. The setup hasn’t changed much either. Chefs take stations on a lawn, each one builds a burger, the wine keeps coming, and the money goes to organizations doing HIV/AIDS work across North Texas.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Charles Kincaid opened a grocery store on Camp Bowie Boulevard in Fort Worth in 1946. Nobody involved that year had any reason to think they were starting a hamburger institution. It was a neighborhood market, the first in the area to run separate specialty departments, and its full-service meat counter was the part of the business that would eventually swallow everything else.
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Dallas has never needed an excuse to argue about burgers. The city has old-school drive-ins that haven’t changed a thing in decades, craft burger spots with rotating monthly specials, and a handful of proper restaurants where the beef program is serious enough to anchor an entire evening. What follows is a working list of the places worth knowing, organized roughly by part of town.
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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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In February 1940, a teenage girl from Houston named Josephine Powell appeared on the cover of Life magazine. She was wearing a drum majorette outfit with very short shorts, a plumed hat, and boots. She was holding a tray. She was a carhop at a drive-in restaurant called Sivils, and after that issue hit newsstands, Louise Sivils started receiving letters from young women all over the country asking for a job.
Four months later, J.D. and Louise Sivils brought their operation to Dallas.
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Dallas and Fort Worth have never had a shortage of great burgers. What they do have is a shortage of people writing about the ones that aren’t already on every list. Here are seven worth knowing about — five in Dallas, two in Fort Worth — that run the full range from a 1950s drive-in to a Choctaw-owned window in the Stockyards.
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American cheese sparks spirited debate among culinary purists, yet step into almost any serious burger kitchen and you’ll find it front and center. For chefs focused on building the perfect cheeseburger, the choice is less about nostalgia alone and more about performance, balance, and guest satisfaction.
A great burger is built around beef. American cheese delivers a mild, creamy profile that enhances the savory richness of the patty without overpowering it. While aged cheddars or blue cheeses can dominate, American cheese acts as a supporting player—rounding out salt and fat while letting the meat remain the star. The result is a balanced, cohesive bite.
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After more than 100 years as a cornerstone of American fast food, White Castle is finally coming to Texas. The iconic burger chain will open its first Texas location at Grandscape in The Colony, with an anticipated debut in summer 2026. For a brand that has inspired lifelong loyalty across the Midwest and East Coast, the move marks a significant expansion—and for Texans, a long-awaited chance to experience a true original.
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