Where to Eat

Where to eat in Dallas right now: 10 best new restaurants for April

Jinya Ramen Bar salmon and avocado.

Photo courtesy of Jinya

As a diligent diner keeping up on Dallas' booming restaurant scene, your work is cut out for you. Just when you feel like you've caught up with all of the new openings, here come 10 more restaurants, waiting for you to try them out.

Luckily, you have 30 days in April. That gives you plenty of time to hit up all the restaurants on this list, all of which have opened within the past month or so. Let the dining begin.

Here's where to eat in April:

Flying Biscuit Cafe
Homey Atlanta restaurant chain with a sweet, slightly hippie vibe has been slaying all of Richardson and North Dallas with its crumbly sugar-sprinkled biscuits, and now downtown Dallas, as well. They specialize in biscuits and serve breakfast all day, with turkey hash, flatiron steak with eggs, oatmeal pancakes, omelets, a biscuit Benedict, and a tofu scramble. There's also shrimp and grits, biscuit pot pie, turkey pot roast, meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes, and oven-fried chicken. Sandwiches include pimiento cheese, fish tacos, and a fried-green tomato BLT.

Hot Off The Press
Yet another hopeful takes on the kiosk/food stand located at Main Street Garden, the downtown Dallas park in front of the Statler Dallas hotel. This spot has not had luck up until now, but perhaps this food stand — from the same team who owns another downtown spot called Spice In The City — is the one. The menu has sandwiches with aspirational ingredients such as Brie and Nutella, plus salads, snacks, sno-cones, and coffee drinks. They're newly opened very softly with a limited menu, but they're doing free beer until April 7.

Itso Vegan
Buzzy new restaurant in Grand Prairie specializes in vegan soul food, with a few Mexican and home-cooking touches. The menu includes burritos with taco-style crumbled "beef," rice, fries, and guacamole. There are "wonton nachos," with veggie taco crumbles and "cashew queso." Best sellers include chicken & waffles, with seitan chicken and banana-flaxseed waffle; and a convincing chicken-fried "chicken" with mushroom gravy. There's a creamy vegan mac and cheese, and even vegan cheesecake.

Jinya Ramen Bar
Tokyo-based ramen chain lands in Dallas with a location in Victory Park, where it is serving 13 signature bowls with 20-plus toppings in vegetarian, chicken, or pork/tonkatsu broth. Jinya serves an authentic rendition of ramen in a casual, trendy atmosphere. The menu also includes rice and curry bowls and a variety of Japanese-inspired small plates. Shareable items include caramelized cauliflower with toasted pine nuts, shrimp tempura tossed in spicy mayonnaise; and mini tacos with salmon poke, spicy tuna, or pork chashu & kimchee served in a wonton shell.

La La Land Kind Cafe
New restaurant in a cute house off Lower Greenville Avenue has a sweet mission: to serve as a training ground for aging out foster youth, teaching them job skills such as timeliness, cleanliness, customer relations, productivity, and teamwork. La La boasts an extensive menu of coffees and teas, along with pastries and toast, all organic. Offerings include pastries, house-made toasts, and breakfast empanadas with bacon, egg, and potato. A drink menu comprises more than 50 beverages.

La Popular Tamale House
This "new" restaurant/tamale shop revives a familiar name to fans who've bought tamales by the dozen at its original location off Munger & Columbia, and then at Peak & Elm. The Moreno family has now set up shop at 4823 Bryan St. They're across from Jimmy's Food Store in an area that's emerging as a hot foodie zone, where they're selling tamales, tacos, and other Mex faves, which you can nosh on site or take it to go.

Sauce Pizza & Wine
Phoenix-based fast-casual pizzeria chain has opened a location at The Hill off Walnut Hill Lane and I-75. Toppings run toward gourmet, such as artichoke and mushroom, or prosciutto and fig. A spicy chicken sausage pizza has Hatch green chiles and smoked mozzarella. There are also salads, such as kale with salmon, black currants, cashews, farro, and Romaine. This is the third DFW location, following branches in Irving and Prosper, but the first in Dallas proper.

SkinnyFats
Fun and sometimes-healthy Las Vegas restaurant chain enters Texas with a first location in Dallas' West Village. SkinnyFats offers both a "happy menu" of decadent items, and a "healthy menu" of dishes that are 600 calories or less. There are burgers, tacos, sandwiches, and soup, plus breakfast items such as chicken & waffles, burritos, country-fried steak on cornbread with eggs, and avocado toast. Sandwiches include a Philly-cheesesteak with NY strip steak, caramelized onions, portabella mushrooms, and pepper marmalade.

Son of a Butcher
New burger joint at Plano food hall Legacy Hall picks up in the space vacated by John Tesar's Knife Burger, with burgers, fries, and shakes. The burgers are 3-ounce patties, sourced from A Bar N Ranch Texas Wagyu beef. There's a classic cheeseburger, a "PB and J," with American cheese, peanut butter, bacon, blackberry jam, and caramelized onions; and a Reuben burger with Swiss cheese, corned beef, sauerkraut, pickles, and Thousand Island dressing. They also do waffle fries in "Buffalo wing" and nacho flavors.

TacoLingo
New concept from veteran restaurateur Rich Hicks debuts with gourmet tacos and craft cocktails at the glitzy The Union Dallas building, near Uptown. The menu features eight taco options including a "cheeseburger" taco with American cheese and pickles, plus regular entrees such as fajitas, New York strip steak, and mahi mahi. They're using Wagyu beef for their steak; chicken that's brined and marinated; and are hand-pressing their tortillas. The bar program is overseen by acclaimed bartender Andew Stofko and features an array of margaritas and mezcals.

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Closure News

The original Dick's Last Resort in Dallas closes after 40 years

Dick's Last Resort

A venerable destination in the downtown Dallas area has closed: Dick's Last Resort, the notoriously saucy restaurant and bar at 2211 Lamar St., has closed permanently, after 40 years.

According to a representative from the Nashville-based chain, the final day for the Dallas location was November 30.

"Business at that location had been declining, and they were facing an increase in rent, so they made a decision to close," the representative said.

Dick's Last Resort was founded right here in Dallas in 1985 as a winking, impudent good-time spot with good bar food and cold beer, at a time when leg warmers and mullets were the rage.

The concept was hatched by bon vivant "Buffalo George" Toomer and Richard "Dick" Chase, centered on a saga about a bad boy named Dick whose big-league plans had failed and who pivoted to open a laid-back bar full of attitude and dick jokes. The restaurant featured gruff staffers and a Southern-style menu in a rowdy roadhouse environment.

It became a huge success, with customers coming eagerly to be insulted, get pelted with napkins and straws, and wear paper hats with crude comments and insults written in a sharpie such as "I've nailed more wood than HGTV." That atmosphere made it a popular destination for bachelorette parties and other group events, and it was a big tourist draw at its then-location in the West End. (It relocated to its current location close to American Airlines Center in 2005.)

Although the food took a backseat to the atmosphere, the menu — written on the wall — featured ribs, chicken, wings, and burgers, served casually in paper and buckets. In its heyday and for many years, it remained lodged on the TABC Top 10 list for beer sales in Dallas.

Chase was ousted for embezzling by the financial backers, who went on to grow the concept into a national chain, with locations in Boston, Chicago, and London. Those are now closed, but there are currently a dozen Dick's across the southeast in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, as well as Las Vegas and a longtime location in San Antonio on the Riverwalk.

Dallas restaurateur Mike McRae, who currently owns restaurants such as Dodie's Cajun Diner in Rockwall, Stan's Blue Note, Table 13 in Addison, and McRae's Bistro in East Dallas, worked for Dick's for 23 years and owned the Dallas location for 12 years.

"I was hired as their general manager 18 months after it opened," McRae says. "Richard Chase was kind of a hothead. He would fire people on the drop of a pin. We had a pink plastic flamingo with a light inside behind the bar, and he was adamant that the light be on all the time. He once fired a GM because the light was off."

Dick's was owned by Steven Schiff, a Dallas entrepreneur who was in real estate and oil, but had no experience in the restaurant industry.

"Steve talked to Norman Brinker and said, 'I've got this place but I don't want to be in the restaurant business — how do I sell this?'" McRae says. "Norman said, 'You need to open two more locations in different cities.' So we opened the location in San Antonio and a third in downtown Chicago. Both were wildly successful — way more than Dallas. These places were netting over $1 million in yearly profits, which was a lot of money back then. We opened one in London, Boston, San Diego, Myrtle Beach, they were in major cities all over the U.S."

McRae eventually became director of operations and they kept it running until 2009 when they sold the company to its current ownership group based in Nashville. McRae bought the Dallas location in 2010, later joined by his partner Gabe Nicolella; they owned it for 12 years before selling it back to the corporate owners in 2021.

"We did some crazy things in those days, like creating a fake restroom with a pair of tennis shoes visible and a tape recording of farting sounds," McRae says. "We only hired people who had been class clowns, who couldn't get jobs anywhere else. We served food in buckets and the placemats were torn-off butcher paper — things you couldn't get away with now."

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