• Home
  • popular
  • Events
  • Submit New Event
  • Subscribe
  • About
  • News
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Home + Design
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • Innovation
  • Sports
  • Charity Guide
  • children
  • education
  • health
  • veterans
  • SOCIAL SERVICES
  • ARTS + CULTURE
  • animals
  • lgbtq
  • New Charity
  • Series
  • Delivery Limited
  • DTX Giveaway 2012
  • DTX Ski Magic
  • dtx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Your Home in the Sky
  • DTX Best of 2013
  • DTX Trailblazers
  • Tastemakers Dallas 2017
  • Healthy Perspectives
  • Neighborhood Eats 2015
  • The Art of Making Whiskey
  • DTX International Film Festival
  • DTX Tatum Brown
  • Tastemaker Awards 2016 Dallas
  • DTX McCurley 2014
  • DTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • DTX Beyond presents Party Perfect
  • DTX Texas Health Resources
  • DART 2018
  • Alexan Central
  • State Fair 2018
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Zatar
  • CityLine
  • Vision Veritas
  • Okay to Say
  • Hearts on the Trinity
  • DFW Auto Show 2015
  • Northpark 50
  • Anteks Curated
  • Red Bull Cliff Diving
  • Maggie Louise Confections Dallas
  • Gaia
  • Red Bull Global Rally Cross
  • NorthPark Holiday 2015
  • Ethan's View Dallas
  • DTX City Centre 2013
  • Galleria Dallas
  • Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty Luxury Homes in Dallas Texas
  • DTX Island Time
  • Simpson Property Group SkyHouse
  • DIFFA
  • Lotus Shop
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Dallas
  • Clothes Circuit
  • DTX Tastemakers 2014
  • Elite Dental
  • Elan City Lights
  • Dallas Charity Guide
  • DTX Music Scene 2013
  • One Arts Party at the Plaza
  • J.R. Ewing
  • AMLI Design District Vibrant Living
  • Crest at Oak Park
  • Braun Enterprises Dallas
  • NorthPark
  • Victory Park
  • DTX Common Desk
  • DTX Osborne Advisors
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • DFW Showcase Tour of Homes
  • DTX Neighborhood Eats
  • DTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • DTX Auto Awards
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2017
  • Nasher Store
  • Guardian of The Glenlivet
  • Zyn22
  • Dallas Rx
  • Yellow Rose Gala
  • Opendoor
  • DTX Sun and Ski
  • Crow Collection
  • DTX Tastes of the Season
  • Skye of Turtle Creek Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival
  • DTX Charity Challenge
  • DTX Culture Motive
  • DTX Good Eats 2012
  • DTX_15Winks
  • St. Bernard Sports
  • Jose
  • DTX SMU 2014
  • DTX Up to Speed
  • st bernard
  • Ardan West Village
  • DTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Taste the Difference
  • Parktoberfest 2016
  • Bob's Steak and Chop House
  • DTX Smart Luxury
  • DTX Earth Day
  • DTX_Gaylord_Promoted_Series
  • IIDA Lavish
  • Huffhines Art Trails 2017
  • Red Bull Flying Bach Dallas
  • Y+A Real Estate
  • Beauty Basics
  • DTX Pet of the Week
  • Long Cove
  • Charity Challenge 2014
  • Legacy West
  • Wildflower
  • Stillwater Capital
  • Tulum
  • DTX Texas Traveler
  • Dallas DART
  • Soldiers' Angels
  • Alexan Riveredge
  • Ebby Halliday Realtors
  • Zephyr Gin
  • Sixty Five Hundred Scene
  • Christy Berry
  • Entertainment Destination
  • Dallas Art Fair 2015
  • St. Bernard Sports Duck Head
  • Jameson DTX
  • Alara Uptown Dallas
  • Cottonwood Art Festival fall 2017
  • DTX Tastemakers 2015
  • Cottonwood Arts Festival
  • The Taylor
  • Decks in the Park
  • Alexan Henderson
  • Gallery at Turtle Creek
  • Omni Hotel DTX
  • Red on the Runway
  • Whole Foods Dallas 2018
  • Artizone Essential Eats
  • Galleria Dallas Runway Revue
  • State Fair 2016 Promoted
  • Trigger's Toys Ultimate Cocktail Experience
  • Dean's Texas Cuisine
  • Real Weddings Dallas
  • Real Housewives of Dallas
  • Jan Barboglio
  • Wildflower Arts and Music Festival
  • Hearts for Hounds
  • Okay to Say Dallas
  • Indochino Dallas
  • Old Forester Dallas
  • Dallas Apartment Locators
  • Dallas Summer Musicals
  • PSW Real Estate Dallas
  • Paintzen
  • DTX Dave Perry-Miller
  • DTX Reliant
  • Get in the Spirit
  • Bachendorf's
  • Holiday Wonder
  • Village on the Parkway
  • City Lifestyle
  • opportunity knox villa-o restaurant
  • Nasher Summer Sale
  • Simpson Property Group
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2017 Dallas
  • Carlisle & Vine
  • DTX New Beginnings
  • Get in the Game
  • Red Bull Air Race
  • Dallas DanceFest
  • 2015 Dallas Stylemaker
  • Youth With Faces
  • Energy Ogre
  • DTX Renewable You
  • Galleria Dallas Decadence
  • Bella MD
  • Tractorbeam
  • Young Texans Against Cancer
  • Fresh Start Dallas
  • Dallas Farmers Market
  • Soldier's Angels Dallas
  • Shipt
  • Elite Dental
  • Texas Restaurant Association 2017
  • State Fair 2017
  • Scottish Rite
  • Brooklyn Brewery
  • DTX_Stylemakers
  • Alexan Crossings
  • Ascent Victory Park
  • Top Texans Under 30 Dallas
  • Discover Downtown Dallas
  • San Luis Resort Dallas
  • Greystar The Collection
  • FIG Finale
  • Greystar M Line Tower
  • Lincoln Motor Company
  • The Shelby
  • Jonathan Goldwater Events
  • Windrose Tower
  • Gift Guide 2016
  • State Fair of Texas 2016
  • Choctaw Dallas
  • TodayTix Dallas promoted
  • Whole Foods
  • Unbranded 2014
  • Frisco Square
  • Unbranded 2016
  • Circuit of the Americas 2018
  • The Katy
  • Snap Kitchen
  • Partners Card
  • Omni Hotels Dallas
  • Landmark on Lovers
  • Harwood Herd
  • Galveston.com Dallas
  • Holiday Happenings Dallas 2018
  • TenantBase
  • Cottonwood Art Festival 2018
  • Hawkins-Welwood Homes
  • The Inner Circle Dallas
  • Eating in Season Dallas
  • ATTPAC Behind the Curtain
  • TodayTix Dallas
  • The Alexan
  • Toyota Music Factory
  • Nosh Box Eatery
  • Wildflower 2018
  • Society Style Dallas 2018
  • Texas Scottish Rite Hospital 2018
  • 5 Mockingbird
  • 4110 Fairmount
  • Visit Taos
  • Allegro Addison
  • Dallas Tastemakers 2018
  • The Village apartments
  • City of Burleson Dallas

    The Farmer Diaries

    East Dallas restaurant Garden Cafe embodies farm-to-table movement

    Marshall Hinsley
    Apr 6, 2014 | 5:00 am

    The 17 cherry tomato plants growing in a row are not what make the backyard at 5310 Junius St. in East Dallas noteworthy. Neither its flourishing chives nor the king-size bed of cilantro are all that unusual. Even a robin nesting nearby in an evergreen tree, remarkable in her own right, is insufficient to put this well-mulched plot on the map.

    No, what makes this garden in Junius Heights unique is that the organic vegetables and herbs it produces travel no more than 50 feet to be cleaned, cooked and served onsite to diners at Garden Cafe.

    Chef Mark Wootton felt the quality of the ingredients used in the kitchen should be of utmost importance, which propelled the garden to the center of attention.

    Opened 12 years ago by retired Dallas lawyer Dale Wootton, the cafe is a casual, neighborhood eatery with a standard fare of breakfast and lunch items. With an affinity for gardening, Wootton deemed the large backyard behind the cafe the perfect setting for outdoor seating surrounded by a variety of garden crops.

    His son Mark took the lead for the cafe in 2010 after earning his food prep cred by working his way up from dishwasher to cook in several local restaurants. The younger Wootton felt the quality of the ingredients used in the kitchen should be of utmost importance, a sentiment that propelled the garden to the center of attention for the family business.

    The garden is a seedling itself of the growing farm-to-table movement that's firmly taken root on both coasts and is slowly vining into the middle states. "It's all about transparency," says Cody Hennigan, chief gardener for the cafe. "People want to know where their food comes from and what's in it; here, they can see it and how we grow it.

    "The objective is to grow food for the kitchen, but ultimately what we try do here with the garden is to invite people from the patio, from the restaurant and from the community and show what is possible."

    In season, the garden yields beets, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and plenty of herbs. In one section, a hardy showing of garlic thrives against an arbor covered in vines. On the opposite side, kale blooms with yellow flowers, intentionally allowed to bolt so the bees and butterflies have a little early spring nourishment.

    Hennigan says in his all-organic approach to maintaining the garden, worm castings are the soil amendment that most makes the crops thrive. "We're not adding fertilizers to the soil as much as we're feeding the myccorhizal fungi and the beneficial microbes and helping them turn the nutrients already in the soil into something the plants can use," he says.

    "People want to know where their food comes from and what's in it," says chief gardener Cody Hennigan. "Here, they can see how we grow it."

    Labor-saving drip irrigation pipes tap water right to the base of each plant. Cardboard topped with mulch covers the walkways, a low-cost method of retaining moisture, keeping weeds in check and saving the soil from compaction by foot traffic. Despite the tranquility of this outdoor attraction, Hennigan says it's a working garden tended by the kitchen staff who've all been assigned various plots to weed and protect from pests.

    "It's a very active kitchen, so we can't provide everything it needs, but everything we grow winds up in the kitchen," Hennigan says.

    Mark estimates that 5 percent of the kitchen's needs are met by the backyard garden. "We aren't buying any herbs from outside, except for cilantro when we don't have it in the garden. Right now, we can't grow cilantro year-round, so it's the only herb we ever have to buy.

    "When you look at what we buy on a weekly basis — 100 pounds of just red potatoes, and everything else we go through in a week in a total grocery list of over 250 items — to be getting about 5 percent of what we use from a garden that's just under a third of an acre is actually pretty impressive."

    The garden is quiet except for the pleasant calls of birds that frequently bathe wherever water has pooled here and there. For anyone who appreciates greenery with a spot of wildlife near the dinner table, the garden is a shelter from the noise and pollution of the city, open to anyone, diner or not, who'd enjoy a moment of respite.

    "There's an older gentleman who comes here often in a big floppy hat," Dale says. "The other day, he came up to me and said, 'I've been coming here for years, and I've got to tell you I've never bought a thing. But, coming to this place makes me so happy.'"

    Cody Hennigan is Garden Cafe's chief gardener.

      
    Photo by Marshall Hinsley
    Cody Hennigan is Garden Cafe's chief gardener.
    unspecified
    news/restaurants-bars

    Coffee News

    Pinkies brews up coffee and cocktails on Cedar Springs in Dallas

    Raven Jordan
    May 14, 2025 | 11:09 am
    Coffee at Pinkies
    Pinkies
    Coffee at Pinkies

    A gay bar in Dallas' Oak Lawn neighborhood has transformed into a coffee and cocktail lounge: Called Pinkies, it's now open at 3900 Cedar Springs Rd., in the space previously occupied by the Mr. Misster bar.

    Pinkies comes from Trey Stewart and Meghan Harris, who also owned Mr. Misster, which they opened in 2019.

    According to Stewart, they were looking to provide a more relaxed and cozy space, one that was less focused on nightlife. They figured others might also appreciate a coffee and cocktail concept along the Cedar Springs strip.

    "Myself and my husband, who I met at Mr. Misster four years ago, no longer find ourselves out on weekends as consistently as we used to," he says. "We enjoy a nice craft cocktail, a cappuccino after dinner, a comfortable setting, and a place where we can socialize with our group of friends."

    The menu features coffee and espresso drinks such as lattes, cappuccinos, and mochas, as well as teas including a popular matcha latte. A small selection of pastries includes doughnuts, coffee cake, blondies, and sweet breads including lemon-blueberry and white-chocolate-raspberry.

    Cocktails incorporate some of their morning ingredients such as their espresso martini and matcha martini; they also offer martini flights.

    They've updated the space, including painting the exterior a vivid pink, to make it easy to spot. Inside, there are magenta accents and it still feels a little clubby, with purple tile walls and touches of neon lighting. One wall is covered with floral wallpaper and a massive Pinkies Up neon sign. Furniture is a mix of modern white tables and big tufted banquettes.

    They hope it will still fit in with the lively night scene in Oak Lawn, since it’ll be a coffee shop by day and high-energy lounge by night.

    "Over the past six years, Meghan and I feel that we accomplished our goal of shaking things up on Cedar Springs, and some of the elements that once made Mr. Misster so special have slowly been replicated and duplicated down the block," Stewart says. "That was always our initial intention, to spark change and growth."

    "With Pinkies, we wanted to offer a place where you can plug in, sip something great, and get things done without feeling out of place," he says. "Unlike a grab-and-go coffee spot, we want you to sit and stay for a while."

    coffeeopenings
    news/restaurants-bars

    most read posts

    Dallas house for sale from the '50s is still in original condition

    Tom Cruise to make Dallas BBQ stop while on Mission Impossible tour

    Healthy dual restaurant serving smoothies and froyo to open in Prosper

    Loading...