Fine Be That Way

Fort Worth takes a pass on 2 hip Dallas restaurant concepts

If this brunch sparks your appetite, you'll need to drive to Dallas to get it. So sorry.

Courtesy photo

Two Dallas restaurant concepts that were spun off with branches in Fort Worth — one serving Mexican food and the other, coffee — have closed.

TorTaco, the Mexican restaurant focused on tortas, tacos, bowls, and mezcal, opened a location in Fort Worth's West Seventh District in October 2016, and closed on January 22. TorTaco was a member of the Firebird Restaurant Group, which also owns El Fenix and Meso Maya.

A representative for the company released a statement saying that the business at that location just wasn't good enough.

"After nearly 17 months serving the Fort Worth community, we have made the difficult decision to close our TorTaco restaurant at 910 Currie St. effective January 22, 2018," the statement said. "Despite being voted the 'Best New Restaurant in Fort Worth' in 2017, among other accolades, the location has not met our expectations."

Judging by comments online, one of the restaurant's biggest problems was parking. West 7th recently clamped down on parking in the area and is proactively towing those who don't go to a designated business.

TorTaco was the 2017 winner in CultureMap's Tastemaker awards, in the "best new restaurant" category. You'd think that would be enough to keep any restaurant a-flourishing, so that parking situation must really be bad.

The original TorTaco in downtown Dallas remains open, where it will continue to serve its distinctive array of tortas, tacos, and mezcal. Meanwhile, they're seeking other sites around DFW for future TorTaco locations.

Further east, Mudsmith, located at 817 Matisse Dr. in the So7 development, closed on January 15. This was the second location of the original Mudsmith on Greenville Avenue, which bar/restaurant owner Brooke Humphries opened in August 2016. There is also a location of her Barcadia in the same complex.

Mudsmith took over the former Love Shack space, which would seem not to bode well for its prospects; if Tim Love can't make it happen in a location, maybe nobody can. Coffee might have seemed a good idea, with all of the apartments on-site needing morning coffee.

"There just wasn't enough business," said a staffer at the Dallas location — and yet the Starbucks across the street is almost always packed. Do residents of mixed-use developments grasp the idea that you should ideally support the business in your building? Maybe not so much.

The Dallas Mudsmith is "doing great," the staffer says, and Humphries is opening another Mudsmith in Dallas' Centrum Building in the spring.

closings

Dessert News

New Asian dessert shop in Dallas combines churros and soft-serve

Nathan Boun

IYKYK Mochi Churros

There's an exciting new dessert in town, thanks to a shop called IYKYK Mochi Churro, which just opened at 1499 Regal Row #106, in a ghost kitchen called Prep Dallas, west of Dallas Love Field.

The shop specializes in Korean-style mochi churros — a hybrid street food treat that combines the Mexican classic fried doughnut with mochi, the Japanese rice cake with the chewy texture.

To make the churros, IYKYK uses the same rice flour used for mochi, which makes the churros a little chewier on the inside with a fried-crisp shell. Beyond the delectable texture, there's a big fringe benefit in that they're also gluten-free.

In addition to mochi churros, they offer another irresistible treat: soft-serve ice cream in exotic and Asian-inspired flavors including ube, Earl Grey, matcha, and chocolate, for $4.50.

IYKYK — which is internet slang for the hipster phrase "If You Know, You Know" — is from Connor Park and Dean Kim, both from South Korea, who met while at school in Kansas and became close friends. Park has a degree in accounting, but has food & beverage experience after working at Asian restaurants in Korea and in Kansas while in college. He heads up the kitchen. Kim is a software engineer who manages their website and social media activity.

"Having a restaurant was my dream, and I saw a lot of opportunity in Dallas given its growing Asian community," Park says.

In May 2025, he and Kim opened Neko Yubu, their first restaurant at the Prep Dallas ghost kitchen, which focuses on yubu, a Korean dish similar to Japanese inari sushi, featuring tofu "pockets" filled with sushi rice and toppings.

"Neko became popular and our customers would ask about dessert, so we decided to expand with a dessert concept next door," Park says. "I don't have a background in baking, but I had seen mochi churro places in Korea, and found a good recipe that we could execute very well."

They offer churros in four flavors: original with cinnamon sugar, ube, chocolate, and matcha, which can be drizzled with caramel, chocolate, ube, or matcha sauce. Each churro is $4, and it's not uncommon to order a sampler with one of each for $14.

But the most popular order is a churro-soft serve combo for $6.95, with the churro poking out of the soft-serve cup.

They also have a savory item: a "churro dog" featuring a churro stuffed with sausage, regular or spicy, and mozzarella.

Prep Dallas does not have a seating area, so everything is to go. The IYKYK ordering system is in person at the store, where customers can order via a tablet, and wait for their orders to be delivered to them outside or at their cars. They're open four days only on Thursday-Sunday from 12-9 pm, and they're already the toast of Instagram.

Park acknowledges that they've been busy. "We knew we had to draw customers here with unique flavors and it’s been great so far," he says.

desserts openings