This installment of restaurant news is very timely, as Dallas saw some openings occur this weekend, including a pizzeria and a growler bar. Here's the hottest, freshest news in dining:
October 16 was the day that more pizza arrived. Social Pie, the new pizzeria from the owners of State & Allen Lounge and Nodding Donkey, opened at 5855 Maple Ave., in the former Southland Feed Store, where it is doing pizza, salads, and sandwiches, as well as growlers, bottles, and cans to-go. Co-owner Jonathan Calabrese describes the pizza as "not the thinnest crust, but it's not a heavy Chicago-style pizza by any means, and we're using the best ingredients we can get."
Craft Beer Cellar, a growler bar in Lakewood, opened on October 15. This bottle shop with a growler bar on the side is a unique craft beer concept from Boston that is breaking into the Dallas market. Owners are Stanley Nauman and James Waskow, high school buddies who nabbed the former Papa John's space on Gaston Avenue.
Mesa Grapevine will open November 7. This second location will have the award-winning authentic Mexican cuisine of the original on Jefferson Avenue in Oak Cliff, plus a few new dishes and signature drinks. At 6,000 square feet, it will be three times larger than Oak Cliff's 2,000 square feet, but like Oak Cliff, it will feature the handiwork of chef-owner Raul Reyes, who did everything from interior construction to fixtures to a welded metal wall sculpture.
Jettison, the new cocktail bar at Houndstooth Coffee at Sylvan | Thirty, opens October 21. It offers a darker, more intimate retreat to the coffee shop, a place for cocktails and conversation. Meanwhile, Houndstooth just launched some specialty fall drinks, available now until December at both the original Henderson Avenue location and the Sylvan | Thirty cafe. One is inspired by tiki cocktails, with cold brew, pineapple juice, tiki bitters, pink peppercorn simple syrup, and club soda. The other is a sparkling cold brew limeade with Fever Tree tonic.
Ramen Hakata will open a second DFW location in Lewisville in a former Einstein Bros., at 500 E. Hwy. 3040, possibly in late October. The original opened in Addison in 2014.
Los Rancheros Mexican Cafe, a Tex-Mex longtimer in Casa View from owner Arturo Lopez, has moved to new digs. The new address is 2240 Gus Thomasson Rd., at the corner of Ferguson.
All of the Sweet Tomatoes restaurants around DFW closed in early October. The San Diego owner, which also owns Souplantation, filed for bankruptcy protection and closed nearly 30 of its 124 locations. Four locations in the Houston area still open.
Salum from chef Abraham Salum has a new menu for fall. New entrees include duck with butternut squash, grouper with sunchoke, herb, and goat cheese Sauté, lobster tail with risotto, house-made pappardelle with sausage, charred rainbow chard, and white pea beans. There are sandwiches and sides such as zucchini fritter and chickpea cauliflower mash.
Empire Baking Co, Dallas' top artisan bakery, has new items for fall including pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and ginger molasses cookies. Their October bread of the month is sesame wheat.
Max's Wine Dive has new seasonal menu items including bone marrow with apple-bacon jam and pretzel crostini; fried lobster risotto; pot roast with white-cheddar scallop potatoes; and pork chop with mashed potatoes and bacon broccolini.
Street's Fine Chicken, the Southern chicken house located on Cedar Springs Road, has expanded its menu beyond chicken dishes, with items such as pork chop, meatloaf, shrimp and grits, chicken pot pie, and a burger.
Ivy Kitchen, the sophisticated restaurant next to Look Cinemas on Belt Line Road, brings in two seasonal dishes for a limited time: pumpkin bread pudding, made with toasted brioche bread, pumpkin puree, chocolate, and rum caramel sauce; and a sweet potato crisp, with whipped sweet potatoes and a pecan-crisp topping.
Piada Italian Street Food, the fast-casual Italian chain that serves sandwiches on a thin pizza-like bread, has new seasonal menu items. There is a harvest grain and apple salad with chicken, field greens, feta, Granny Smith apples, pepitas, dried cranberries, spiced pecans, and butternut squash; a steak avocado piada with steak, arugula, pancetta, avocado, mozzarella, pepitas, and butternut squash; pesto pomodoro meatball pasta; and a farm club Tasca, a layered sandwich with piada dough, fried chicken, avocado, arugula, tomatoes, pancetta, and pickles.
Lakewood Brewing is releasing the first of three beers in a miniseries that will span more than a year's period. Three wood-aged beers will be released six months apart, each reflecting their own characteristics. The first is an American barleywine aged in bourbon barrels from Witherspoon Distillery in Lewisville. A wine barrel-aged wheat wine is slated for a spring 2017 release, and a barrel-aged rye wine will follow in fall.
Pork chop is one of the new menu Ivy Kitchen has for the fall.
