Somewhere around Sunday afternoon, Big Tex is going to say goodbye for another year, and the whole city will feel it a little. This is the last weekend of the State Fair, the first weekend that actually feels like fall, and one of those rare stretches on the North Texas calendar where every corner of the Metroplex has something worth leaving the house for. Here’s how to spend it, and where to eat and drink along the way.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
There are two kinds of brunch. One is fuel: eggs, coffee and the check before you’ve finished your second cup. The other is an occasion. You gather a table of people you like, order a round, then another, and look up to find it’s somehow 2:30 and nobody wants to leave.
This list is for the second kind. These are Dallas restaurants where the food is good enough to justify the reservation, the drinks are made with care, and nobody is in a hurry to turn your table.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Most operas are about people. Leoš Janáček wrote one about a fox, and then quietly made it about everything else: love, aging, freedom, and the way the forest keeps going long after any of us are gone.
The Dallas Opera brings The Cunning Little Vixen to the Winspear Opera House starting Oct. 30. It’s been a long wait. The company hasn’t staged this opera in 26 years and hasn’t presented anything by Janáček in 22. This time it arrives in director Barrie Kosky’s production, created for the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 2022 and making its North American premiere here in Dallas.
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Panda Fest is coming back to downtown Dallas, so go hungry and wear comfortable shoes.
The traveling Asian food and culture festival made its Dallas debut at Carpenter Park last November, and it returns to the same spot, 2201 Pacific Ave., Nov. 6 through 8. This year’s lineup has more than 60 food vendors serving upward of 150 dishes, plus more than 20 merchandise vendors and a schedule of live cultural performances that includes kung fu shows.
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If you want to understand how chicken fried steak became Dallas’ everyday dinner, start at the corner of Cedar Springs Road and Reagan Street.
In 1975, Gene Street and his partner Phil Cobb opened the first Black-eyed Pea there, in a brick building that dates to 1933. The food was what people’s mothers made, and in Street’s case that was literal. Many of the recipes came from his own mother in Salado. There were fried okra, squash casserole, warm rolls in a basket, and a chicken fried steak that covered most of the plate under a pour of cream gravy.
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Paul Ko was the head sushi chef at Uchi when he decided to leave. He’d been there since 2017, seven years in all, and he gave up that job to open a place with his name on it.
It took a while. Sushi Kozy ran into construction delays at 2000 Ross Ave. in the Arts District, and when it finally opened in the summer of 2025, there wasn’t much of an announcement. Four months later the Michelin Guide put it on the Texas list as a Recommended restaurant, which is a fast way to let people know you’re open.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
At almost any Korean restaurant in Dallas, the small dishes arrive (banchan) before you’ve finished reading the menu. There might be bean sprouts in sesame oil, pickled radish, and a little dish of fish cake. In the middle of the table, without fail, there’s a dish of kimchi.
Most Dallas diners have eaten it by now. It shows up on burgers, in fried rice, and on tacos. But kimchi is bigger than the red, spicy cabbage most of us picture. In Korea, it’s a whole category of food, a centuries-old way of preserving vegetables, and a seasonal ritual that families still plan their calendars around.
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Punk Noir is closed. The Design District tasting-menu restaurant lasted about four and a half months, and it ended with almost no warning.
Co-owner John McKeel has confirmed the closing. According to people who worked there, the staff was let go on Wednesday, Oct. 14. That was one day after the restaurant posted about a new fall menu on Instagram. Reservations are no longer available.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
