Shady’s Burgers & Brewhaha started with five neighbors, a backyard fire pit and a few beers.
That was 2012, in the Canyon Creek neighborhood of Richardson. Greg Cooney, Don Bouvier, Anthony Bolner, Dave Swiney and Steve Gumbert were sitting around Bolner’s fire pit talking about what the neighborhood was missing. What they landed on was a place with good burgers, cold beer and a patio where families could hang out on a weeknight. None of them had ever run a restaurant.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The paddlewheel is turning again at Fair Park.
If you grew up going to the State Fair, you know the Old Mill Inn by sight. It’s the timber-and-stone building on Grand Avenue with the big water wheel out front. After the pandemic it went dark and stayed that way for years. This fair season it’s open again as a full-service restaurant and bar, and when the gates open on Friday, September 25, it will be feeding anyone who needs a break from the Midway.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Back in the early ’90s, the best thing at Mia’s Tex-Mex wasn’t on the menu. You had to know to ask for it, you had to come on a Wednesday, and you had to get there before it ran out.
Today it has a name, Butch’s Original Brisket Tacos, and it’s the dish Mia’s is known for all over Dallas.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Plenty of people who live in Frisco have never walked its Main Street. The city spread north and west so fast that the original townsite, the handful of blocks around the railroad tracks now known as the Frisco Rail District, can feel like something only the old-timers know about.
A lot of those old-timers eat at The Depot Cafe.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Somewhere between the second mimosa and the whole grilled fish, Uptown Dallas starts to feel a long way off. Sunlight fills the glass walls of Avra’s Conservatory, plants hang overhead, and at the next table somebody is working through a tower of oysters at 12:30 on a Sunday without a trace of guilt.
Welcome to weekend brunch at Avra Estiatorio.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
The old brick building at 2912 McKinney Ave., near Howell, was Theory Nightclub for a while. Today it opens as Marlowe, a lounge that would like to handle your entire night, from a 6 o’clock martini to closing time at 2 a.m.
It isn’t quite a restaurant and it isn’t quite a club. Come early for drinks and a few plates, swing by after dinner somewhere else, or settle into a banquette and stay while the lights come down and the music comes up.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Sunday in Bishop Arts moves at its own speed. Dogs outnumber cars on some blocks, every patio seems to have a spritz on it, and around 2 o’clock you can hear a brass band before you can see it. Nobody is in a hurry, and that is exactly the right way to do it.
Here is how to spend an easy Sunday in the neighborhood, with a few places to eat at different price points, a couple of stops for shopping, and the best spots for a drink. Wear comfortable shoes. Everything here is walkable, which is the whole reason Oak Cliff folks guard this place like a family recipe.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
Ask a room full of Dallas people where they ate as kids and you will hear the same dozen names. Some of those places are gone. A surprising number are not.
Your grandparents may have ordered these plates on a first date. Your parents probably bribed you with them after a dentist appointment. The dining rooms have been repainted and a few have changed hands, but the food would still look familiar to anyone who sat down there in 1965.
Continue readingFiled under Steven Doyle
