This Week's Hot Headlines

New plans for Dallas mid-century hotel top this week's hottest headlines

Iconic mid-century Cabana Hotel, due to become apartments.

Preservation Dallas

Editor's note: A lot happened this week, so here's your chance to get caught up. Read on for the week's most popular headlines. Looking for the best things to do this weekend? Find that list here.

Cool Dallas mid-century hotel off I-35 gets funding to become apartments. Developers of the historic Cabana Hotel, the distinctive mid-century Dallas lodging where the Beatles once stayed, received a $41 million go-ahead from the Dallas City Council to turn the building into apartments. Cabana Sycamore Development Inc., a subsidiary of Sycamore Strategies, plans to transform it into a $116 million, 160-unit mixed-income apartment building.

Chicken Guy restaurant from Guy Fieri comes to Texas with Dallas debut. A new chicken concept is coming to Dallas, hatched by celebrity chef and food personality Guy Fieri: Called Chicken Guy!, it's a restaurant chain specializing in chicken tenders, and it's opening its first Texas location in Dallas, at Preston Hollow Village, the same center as Trader Joe's, at 7859 Walnut Hill Ln.

Reunion Tower in downtown Dallas initiates action to save birds from dying. Reunion Tower, the little ball on the western edge of downtown Dallas, famous for its sassy light shows illuminating the Dallas skyline is dimming its lights from October 1-October 21, to save lives of birds during the great fall migration through Texas.

Spectacular new drive-thru Light Park will electrify Frisco for 2023 holidays. A dazzling new holiday lights experience is coming to Frisco, and the lights are switching on very soon. The Light Park, an immersive drive-thru attraction that claims to have "the longest light tunnel in the world," will debut at Riders Field on November 3 and run through January 1, 2024.

Chicago-style faves now on menu at surprising Deep Ellum Dallas location. In the latest chapter in the Buzzbrews Dallas restaurant chain saga, the location in Deep Ellum has changed hands and is charting a new course in a totally unexpected direction. Chris Andrews, a Chicago chef and hospitality consultant, is giving it a major makeover that includes an entire menu of Chicago food favorites.

hot headlines

This Week's Hot Headlines

Guy Fieri visits 7 lucky Dallas restaurants in this week's top stories

Santo Spirits

Guy Fieri in Dallas on December 7.

Editor's note: Guy Fieri is back in this week's most popular stories. Plus: the latest Dallas restaurant openings and closings and a peek inside the glamorous 2024 Crystal Charity Ball. Here are the most-read Dallas stories of the week.

Find the best things to do in Dallas this weekend here.

1. Which 7 Dallas restaurants did Guy Fieri visit for Diners Drive-ins & Dives. Celebrity chef Guy Fieri came to Dallas on December 7 — officially on a meet-and-greet in support of Santo Spirits, a tequila brand he owns in partnership with rocker Sammy Hagar. But the visit was also an opportunity for Fieri to spotlight a new round of restaurants in Dallas on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, his massively popular long-running show on the Food Network.

2. 12 restaurants in Dallas that have either just opened or just closed. In the inevitable ebb and flow of Dallas restaurants, openings and closings are part of the deal — often coming at the end of the year, when restaurateurs, like the rest of us, take stock of the future. Here's a roundup of Dallas restaurant openings and closures.

3. Where to drink in Dallas: 7 holiday drink specials for December. Dallas in December is brimming with holiday festivities, and that includes cocktails: from over-the-top pop-up bars to extravagantly priced cocktails to drinks with a festive Christmas theme. This edition of Where to Drink covers all that and more.

4. Glimpse all the gowns and glamour of Dallas' Crystal Charity Ball 2024. Crystal Charity Ball 2024 whisked Dallas patrons away on an opulent "New York Holiday." In choosing to bring the Big Apple to Big D with her theme, ball chairman Cheryl Joyner had imagined “the beauty of fresh snow, peeking into the elaborately decorated windows on Fifth Avenue, and strolling through Central Park with a chill in the air." It was all of that, kicked up a notch with a spectacular Rockettes-style dance show, too.

Dallas Crystal Charity Ball 2024 Crystal Charity Ball 2024 chairman Cheryl Joyner and Richard Joyner. Photo by Ashley Gongora

5. Donatos Pizza totes its unique crust to new location in Flower Mound. A pizza chain with a quirky obsession on its crusts is coming to Flower Mound: Donatos Pizza, the franchise famous for spreading its toppings to the very edge of the pizza, will open a location at 1400 Long Prairie Rd. #160 on December 17.

guy fieri crystal charity ball where to drink openings closings popular stories