The building at 110 W. Bailey Street in Ponder has been standing since 1903, and for most of the past 78 years it has smelled like fried chicken and hot grease. That smell is back. Ranchman’s, the small-town steakhouse that once pulled Hollywood and literary royalty off the highway, reopened the first week of July under new ownership, and the people running it went out of their way not to mess with what made it famous in the first place.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Lounge Here hides behind an unmarked strip center on Garland Road, the kind of exterior that gives away nothing about what’s happening inside. Walk through the door and the room drops you into a retro cocktail lounge, all plush banquettes, moody lighting and a mural by Rainer Judd, daughter of artist Donald Judd. Owner Julie Doyle, known around Dallas for co-founding Tripping Daisy and The Polyphonic Spree and running Good Records next door, built the place to feel like a different decade entirely. The kitchen backs that ambition up with some of the more serious Southern cooking in East Dallas.
Continue readingFiled under Crave
The name suggests a border town, sun-bleached and dusty, somewhere along the Rio Grande. Cafe Del Rio is actually about as far from the border as Texas gets, sitting deep in the Piney Woods of Lufkin, closer to Louisiana than to Mexico. The name misleads you before you’ve even walked in.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The best chicken fried steak in Bell County is sold next to the beef jerky rack, behind a counter that also rings up gas and lottery tickets, at a family-run convenience store called Expo Quik Stop.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
There’s a Model T parked over the buffet line at Willhoite’s, and it’s not there for decoration. It’s sitting on the same hydraulic lift that used to raise real cars off the ground when this building was a working garage. You fill your plate with fried catfish and mashed potatoes underneath a car that once got serviced in that exact spot, and nobody who works there thinks that’s strange.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Most restaurants don’t make it to ten years. Norma’s Cafe opened in Oak Cliff in 1956 and has been at it ever since. That original location has never moved. The biscuits and gravy are still on the menu. The Mile-High Pies still require you to plan around them. On Wednesday, June 24, Norma’s turns 70 and all five traditional locations are marking it the way the restaurant always has — by feeding people and keeping the price where it belongs.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
There is a giant Angus steer on the roof. That’s the first thing you notice driving down Jefferson Boulevard, and it tells you everything you need to know about what Charco Broiler is before you walk through the door. This is a steakhouse built for the neighborhood, not for the city. It has been on W. Jefferson Boulevard between Bishop and Adams since 1963 — the same year the Texas Theater down the street became famous for reasons that had nothing to do with movies — and it has been family-owned and operated every single year since. The charcoal smoke hits you before you reach the door. That smell is sixty years of open-flame cooking and it belongs to the block.
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Some restaurants you find. Others find you. Jonathon’s Forestwood is the second kind. Somebody mentions it, you file it away, and then one morning you’re pulling into the parking lot at Forest Lane and the North Dallas Tollway wondering why you waited so long. The place has been drawing crowds since Jonathon and Christine Erdeljac opened the doors in September 2023. That opening came at the end of a two-year renovation that tested every bit of patience they had.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
