Tag Archives: Texas

Via Triozzi Just Added Sunday Brunch — and the Rooftop Above

Leigh Hutchinson opened Via Triozzi on Lower Greenville in August 2023 and it landed immediately — handmade pasta, a Sicilian-American grandmother’s recipes, flour imported from Italy, and a room that felt nothing like the chain Italian that had been filling the gap in Dallas for years. The lasagne al forno became the dish people drove for. The bistecca alla fiorentina gave it range. The all-Italian wine list, built around natural and low-intervention producers, gave it a point of view.

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Avra Introduces Elevated New Lunch Experience

Avra Estiatorio, the acclaimed Greek dining destination celebrated for its pristine seafood and refined Mediterranean cuisine, is pleased to announce the launch of its new lunch experience, now available Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Designed to offer guests an elevated yet approachable midday dining option, Avra’s expanded lunch service features a new three-course prix fixe menu for $39.50 alongside the restaurant’s full all-day menu, allowing diners to enjoy everything from light Mediterranean fare to premium seafood and signature specialties.

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A Perfect Weekend on McKinney Historic Square


McKinney’s historic square is about 30 miles north of Dallas and worth every one of them. The buildings date to the 1800s, the shops are locally owned, and on a good weekend the whole thing hums in a way that’s hard to manufacture and easy to enjoy. Two days here goes fast.

The historic downtown square is the whole point of the trip — more than 120 shops and two dozen-plus restaurants packed into a walkable stretch of 19th-century buildings. Come on a Friday. Stay through Sunday. You won’t run out of things to do.

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Five Dallas Restaurants That Deserve a Michelin Star and Don’t Have One

le Bilboquet

Dallas has two Michelin-starred restaurants right now — Tatsu in Deep Ellum and Mamani in Uptown. Both earned it. But the guide has been in Texas for two years and the inspectors have a lot of ground left to cover. These six restaurants are doing the kind of work that should have them on that list already.

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Crossroads Diner is Better Than Ever

Tom Fleming has been cooking professionally since 1990. He spent decades in fine dining — the kind of kitchens where you don’t leave until midnight and the pressure never really lets up. At some point he decided he wanted to tuck his daughters into bed at night. So, he opened a breakfast place.

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Alára Is the Quietest Opening in the Design District This Year

The Design District keeps stacking up new restaurants like it has something to prove, and at this point it basically does. Carbone, Delilah, Ospi, Maroma — the neighborhood has become its own dining destination in a way that would have been hard to predict five years ago. Alára, the new modern Mediterranean from Turkish-born chef Onur Akan, opened quietly into all of that noise about three weeks ago, and it may be the most personal restaurant in the bunch.

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Dinner, Brunch, and Everything In Between at Encina

Matt Balke grew up in Uvalde, a small ranching town near San Antonio where the Spanish name for the place was once Encina — holm oak. He left for Texas Tech, then changed course and enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America, graduating salutatorian in 2007. None of that is what shaped him most. That came later, working under James Beard Award winner Sharon Hage at York Street in Dallas — the woman Balke credits as his real culinary education. After York Street, his path ran through Bolsa, The Rustic, SMOKE, and back to Bolsa as executive chef until its closure in early 2020.

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A Food Hall Favorite Grows Up: Beren Meze & Grill House Opens

Charlie Unlu spent more than a decade managing expensive dining rooms — steakhouses, luxury hotels, the Dallas Cowboys organization. He understood restaurants from every angle. What none of those jobs let him do was put his wife Leman’s cooking in front of people.

Her family recipes go back generations in Turkey. They started selling her baklava at farmers markets, built a following, and in early 2025 opened a food hall stall at the Funky Town Food Hall under the name Beren — after their youngest daughter. Fort Worth Magazine called it one of the best new restaurants of the year. It had a waiting list on weekends.

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