Ask a Dallas bartender where they eat after a shift and the answers get specific in a hurry. A corndog that only comes out after 11. A burger ground in-house. A bowl of pho served under a TV playing RoboCop.
The city’s best dive bars have always fed people well. Some of these kitchens have been working the same flat-tops for decades. Others are newer, run by longtime bartenders who know exactly what a late crowd wants to eat.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Pull into the lot at Ol’ South Pancake House at three in the morning and you’ll find more cars than you’d expect. TCU students, mostly, plus whoever else in Fort Worth is up at that hour and hungry. Inside, the coffee is on and somebody at a back booth is squeezing lemon over a pancake about the size of a hubcap.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Cedar Springs Road at 1:30 in the morning operates on its own set of rules. The bars are still going, the sidewalks are still busy, and at some point everyone on that strip remembers they’re hungry. Most of the kitchens in Oak Lawn have already called it. Zio Al’s hasn’t.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Downtown Dallas has never had much in the way of Indian food, and if you’ve noticed that too, you’re not imagining it. Most of the city’s best options sit out in Irving, Plano, Richardson, and Frisco, which makes sense given where a lot of Dallas’s Indian community has settled, but it’s always meant a drive if you wanted a proper curry after work. Gymkhana just changed that math.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
It’s 3:40 in the morning on West Davis Street, and the lights are on at Metro Diner the way they’ve been on every night since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. A cook flips something on the flattop. A waitress tops off a mug for a guy in scrubs who just got off a shift at Methodist. Nobody looks up when the door opens. In Oak Cliff, that’s just Tuesday.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
At the intersection of grit and indulgence in Dallas’s Deep Ellum neighborhood, Serious Pizza has carved out a name for itself—not through gimmicks, but by doubling down on what it does best: giant, unapologetic New York-style slices served with attitude. Located at 2807 Elm Street, the restaurant is as much a part of the Deep Ellum landscape as the street art and live music that surround it.
Originally opened in 2010 and now operated under the umbrella of the Milkshake Concepts group—known for places like Vidorra, Harper’s, and STIRR—Serious Pizza has maintained its fiercely independent spirit while evolving into a polished, high-volume machine.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Dallas has never had a shortage of dessert, just a shortage of dessert after ten o’clock. That gap is exactly what Dessert Lab was built to fill, and the little local operation has quietly grown to three shops without much fanfare, which is more than can be said for most of the trend-chasing sweet spots that come and go around here.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Since opening its first location in 2013, Shell Shack has quickly proved to be a hit with locals, supplying them with perfectly-seasoned crabs, shrimp, oysters and more. The original Uptown Dallas store has since been joined by others in Plano, Arlington and Mesquite, and now, the concept is expanding to Fort Worth.
Crews have already broken ground on Shell Shack’s new home, which will be located at Parkside at Alliance Town Center. The more than 5,000 square foot interior and 2,262 square foot patio is part of the 3.5-acre project in North Fort Worth’s most exciting development, bringing dining and nightlife destinations to a beautiful setting that looks onto Bluestem Park and includes a live music stage, outdoor seating and fun activities for the whole family, like bocce ball and cornhole. Continue reading
Filed under Crave, Steven Doyle
