There is a moment at every good western swing show when the fiddle player leans into the microphone and lets loose an “ah-ha,” and the whole room grins at once. Greenville gets a full weekend of those moments this Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6 and 7, when the Bob Wills Fiddle Festival & Contest returns to downtown for its 12th year.
It’s an easy drive, about an hour northeast of Dallas up I-30, and much of it is free.
Continue readingFiled under Events, Steven Doyle
Somewhere around the first week of November, Texas finally exhales. The mornings turn crisp, the afternoons finally ease up, and the idea of sitting outside after dark stops sounding like punishment. It’s the season Texans wait all year for, and most of us spend it indoors.
It doesn’t have to go that way. Within a few hours of Dallas there are forests, cypress swamps, sandstone canyons and maple-lined creeks that look their best right now, and you don’t need a plane ticket or a week off to reach them. You don’t even need to sleep on the ground unless you want to.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle, Travel
Graham Elliot has spent the last four years helping shape other people’s restaurants in Fort Worth. Now he’s opening one of his own.
Commodore Tavern & Terrace is headed for 1101 W. Magnolia Ave. in the Fairmont District on the Near Southside, in the space that was home to The Magnolia wine bar. Elliot’s partner on the project is chef Charlie Rushton, the former corporate chef at Far Out Hospitality. Commodore is the first restaurant from Longshot Hospitality Group, the independent company the two are starting together.
Rushton is the less familiar name in Dallas-Fort Worth, and he brings serious miles. He was born and raised in England and cooked in Michelin-starred kitchens in London before working restaurants and resorts across Australia and the United States. He has called Texas home for years.
Continue readingFiled under Restaurants, Steven Doyle
Hallie Crawford was 19 when she took her first teaching job in Presidio, just as Pancho Villa’s raids were reaching into the Big Bend. Her father figured she was off on a wild goose chase. Her reply, “Then I’ll gather my geese,” became the title of the memoir she published in her nineties. According to the Handbook of Texas, she showed up for that first job with her teaching certificate in hand and her father’s gun strapped to her side.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Saturday morning on Hillcrest Avenue, the drive-thru line at Bubba’s Cooks Country starts stacking up before most of University Park has had its coffee. Inside, the cinnamon rolls are already out, the biscuits are coming off the sheet pans, and somebody at the counter is asking how long until the lunch menu kicks in.
The answer is 11 a.m., and the timing is worth knowing. Bubba’s runs its breakfast menu from 6:30 to 11 every day, then switches over to fried chicken, catfish and chicken fried steak. Show up around 10:30 on a Saturday or Sunday and you can eat both, which is about as close to a weekend brunch as Bubba’s has ever gotten.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Dallas threw the Statler Hilton a four-day party when it opened on Commerce Street in 1956. The city had not seen a major new hotel downtown in 30 years, and this one cost $16 million, ranked as the largest hotel in the Southwest and had a ballroom that held 2,200 people. It also turned out to be the last hotel the Statler chain ever built. Hilton had just bought the company.
The building was a show-off from day one. A cantilevered concrete slab let it climb higher than anyone expected, and the skin was glass and porcelain panels in that unmistakable midcentury teal. Historic Hotels of America credits it as the first building anywhere with elevator music and the first hotel with a 21-inch Westinghouse television in every room. There was a heliport on the roof, too, for guests who preferred to skip traffic from the airport.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Every city has its short list. These are the places locals take visiting relatives to, the reservations people set alarms for, and the lines that are still worth the wait years after the buzz should have faded.
This one covers all of Dallas-Fort Worth and every budget. There’s an omakase counter with only a handful of seats, a fried chicken house where the whole menu fits in one breath, a taqueria where the tacos are still a bargain, and a dining room at the Ritz-Carlton that has been part of the Dallas story for nearly two decades. Several of these places were honored again in the 2026 Michelin Guide Texas earlier this month. A few have never needed anybody’s guide.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Ask Toby Archibald to sum up Dallas dining in three words and he won’t make you wait. “Too much steak”. Then he went back to running one of the most personal restaurants in the city.
That restaurant is Quarter Acre, at 2023 Greenville Ave. on the lowest stretch of Lower Greenville, in the old Rapscallion space. Archibald opened it at the end of December 2022. It has since landed at No. 3 on Texas Monthly’s statewide list of best new restaurants and a spot in the Michelin Guide.
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