East Dallas News

Hunky chef invades East Dallas with gourmet food and late-night hours

Chef Airric Heidelberg loves his lemons.

Photo courtesy of Invasion

An East Dallas address that has seen a hopeful restaurant come and go has a promising new contender: Called Invasion, it's an indie restaurant that will specialize in wholesome, fast, gourmet-quality food, with late-night hours especially on the weekends.

Owner is Airric Heidelberg, an entrepreneurial and engaging chef who's worked at restaurants and also has a business called Kingdom Kitchen doing catering, personal chef services, and menu development.

Heidelberg has a degree in nutrition and has competed in bodybuilding competitions, and is passionate about eating good, healthy food. He began cooking at an early age, learning from his grandparents while helping prepare and eat family meals. He's also studied under four-star chefs, and has worked at restaurants such as Auntie Pasta's in East Texas.

Invasion is his first solo venture, which he's opening in partnership with the owners of Gallo Nero, the Italian restaurant on Greenville Avenue. They plan to be open in the next few weeks.

"The name of the restaurant refers to an invasion of your taste buds," he says. "It's gourmet food delivered fast, fresh, and healthy with quality ingredients."

His menu includes everything from wings to vegan bowls to entrees such as shrimp. A signature item is the buttermilk fried chicken sandwich with spicy mayo and coleslaw.

He also does a variety of fusion fried rice bowls, including one with black beans, and another with veggies and fresh basil.

Other dishes include

5-cheese mac and cheese
bruschetta
elotes-style corn in a cup
wings with a choice of sauces made in-house, including their two signature sauces, the bomb sauce and the invasion sauce

Invasion will also have beer and wine.

They've executed an eye-catching makeover of the space, previously home to a family restaurant called Sykamore Vegan House. They've painted it all white with black lettering spelling out "Invasion." It's a highly visible but odd little building, angled on a street corner at the corner of Haskell Avenue and Crutcher Street.

Liabilities in the past have included limited parking and its relative isolation in a neighborhood overshadowed by Baylor University Medical Center.

But Heidelberg says there's parking in the back of the building, and is encouraged by openings nearby such as Loro, the restaurant collaboration from chefs Aaron Franklin and Tyson Cole.

One of his priorities is to be open late at night.

"On Fridays and Saturdays, we'll stay open until 3 am," he says. "It seems like the only restaurants open late in Dallas serve pizza and tacos. It's hard to find good quality food and we want to fill that need."

chefs openings

Noodle News

YouTube critic Mike Chen ranks his favorite noodles in Dallas

Pho Pasteur

YouTube food critic Mike Chen, who travels the world spotlighting mostly Asian restaurants for his Strictly Dumpling YouTube channel, recently dropped into Dallas to rank his favorite noodles in town.

Titled "24 Hours Eating The Best NOODLES + DUMPLINGS Around DFW," the video follows Chen as he visits five restaurants, ordering noodles and dumplings at his favorite places as well as new discoveries.

The visit marked a return to DFW for Chen, who briefly resided in North Texas in 2021 and who has previously posted videos covering ramen, Vietnamese food, sushi, and barbecue.

Here's where he ate:

Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling
The video starts out with him noting that "there's a lot of new noodle places around the Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco area," before entering Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling, a Chinese Halal restaurant that makes its own noodles, with locations in Plano and McKinney (which CultureMap covered in May — do you think he saw our story?!).

He raves over the extensive menu, featuring not only noodles but "a bunch of dumplings" and many other options like walnut shrimp and mapo tofu.

He also raves over the price. "Wow — $10 for Biangbiang noodles" [a dish featuring flat noodles with minced garlic, green onion, chili powder] — "only in Texas," he says.

He orders the Big Plate chicken, like a chicken stew with flat noodles, chunks of soft potato, carrots, yellow onion, green onion, bell pepper, and cilantro; as well as a variety of dumplings, including beef, pork, chicken & corn, veggie, and soup dumplings, heaping praise on their light chewy wrapper.

"My philosophy is always, eat the worst first and save the best for last, so let's start with the veggie dumplings," he said.

Pho Pasteur
On Day 2, he goes to Pho Pasteur, a longtime highly acclaimed family-owned chain with locations in Richardson, Arlington, and Carrollton, the location he visits.

"I've been thinking about this place for a long long time," he says. "I remember when I was living here, this was one of my favorites."

He orders pho with fatty brisket — "because here in Texas, whenever you see brisket, you get the brisket," he says.

After taking a sip of the broth, he proclaims, "This is the stuff — I've always said that this place has one of the best, if not THE best broth in America, with such a concentrated beefy flavor, and it's got so much depth."

"This might be one of my most-missed food items after I left Dallas," he says.

z.TAO Marketplace
His next destination is the z.TAO Marketplace, an Asian grocery store and food court in Plano which oddly has not updated its social media presence since 2020. He oohs and aahs over the supermarket's bounty including the many different Asian flavors of Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Fanta, then orders a bowl of hulatang, a traditional thick Northern Chinese soup, hand-pulled dan dan noodles, and a sandwich with chopped pork.

Moriya Shokudo Ramen & Curry
He also visits Moriya Shokudo, which started out in a food court in Koreatown before opening a stand-alone restaurant in Richardson in 2024, and which has won local awards for its ramen and curry.

He orders the garlic ramen and marvels at its garlicky-ness, with a black garlic-flavored tonkotsu broth along with roasted whole garlic cloves.

"This is a really intensely garlicky bowl — to call it intense would be an understatement," he says. "I would say this is a must-try."

Pho Big Bowl
His last place is Pho Big Bowl, a Vietnamese restaurant which started out in Watauga before opening a location in Carrollton in 2022.

He likes the lightness and yet potent beefy flavor of the broth. "I feel like when I'm here in Texas, I don't add nearly as much sriracha as I would at places in New York or Seattle," he says.

"I am really jealous of all the good pho places you have here in the Dallas area," he says. "I feel like, of all the cities in Texas, this area has the best pho, hands down."

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