Where to Eat Now

Where to eat in Dallas right now: 10 hottest new restaurants for April

Flower Child restaurant Mother's Eart Bowl

Flower Child is a spin-off of True Food Kitchen.

Photo courtesy of Flower Child

The dining scene in Dallas is so dynamic right now that pretty much every month we see a slew of new restaurants. New is good, but diners in the know want to know where the hot ones are. They don't want to go to some new branch of a chain in Royse City (all props to Royse City), they want to know where the other diners in the know are eating.

Here's where they're eating. Here are the 10 hottest new restaurants in Dallas right now:

Chicken Moto
Fried chicken fans are flocking to this Korean-inspired fried chicken restaurant from husband and wife Sandy and Greg Bussey, Steve Shin, and Sam Osee (all of Bbbop Seoul Kitchen), who describe it as Texas Southern comfort meets South Korean Seoul food.There's Korean fried chicken offered as a full bird, half bird, or quarter, with choice of dark or light meat, and two glaze options: soy ginger or sweet and spicy chili. You can also get a fried chicken sandwich, or a panko-crusted chicken plate with curry fries.

Easy Slider
Dallas food truck Easy Slider, which specializes in basic little burgers, has graduated to the restaurant world with a newly opened brick-and-mortar location in Deep Ellum. There are burgers with cheese; with bacon and peanut butter; with goat cheese and strawberry jam; with blue cheese slaw; and with jalapeños, French-fried onions, and barbecue sauce. There's also a caprese-style portabella mushoom burger topped with mozzarella, tomato, and pesto. New menu items include tater tots, onion rings, a fried chicken sandwich, salads, and seasonal fruit soft-serve ice cream.

Flower Child
There's always a line at this bright and cheerful fast-casual healthy concept from Fox Restaurant Concepts, the Arizona-based group that also owns True Food Kitchen. The menu has lots of vegetarian and vegan options such as the Mother Earth bowl, combining ancient grains with sweet potato, portabella mushroom, avocado, cucumber, broccoli pesto, leafy greens, red pepper miso vinaigrette, and hemp seed. Salads include kale with grapefruit, apple, black currant, smoked almonds, white cheddar, and apple cider vinaigrette.

Lovers Seafood
It must be weird to be Rex's Seafood, and watch your old space at 5200 Lovers Ln. suddenly be mobbed, as it has since Lovers Seafood moved in.Owners Tracy Rathbun and Lynae Fearing, who also own Shinsei, have some pretty good mojo, not only with seafood but also with attracting the locals. They've also assembled a crack team of familiar faces, including chef Aaron Staudenmaier, formerly of Abacus. It's kind of a Rathbun family reunion — general manager is Max Heidenreich, who was at Abacus and opened the original Jasper's in Plano.

Mirador
Restaurant atop Forty Five Ten, across from The Joule hotel, features a chef team with Josh Sutcliff, in collaboration with Junior Borges, executive chef of The Joule, that's totally legit. But jeepers, with a deviled eggs here, and a chicken paillard there, the menu sure does seem to ~~rip off~~ take its cues from the grande dame department store restaurant The Zodiac Room. And Mirador doesn't have the popovers. Need the popovers!

Public School 972
Taking over the old Mi Piaci space, this is the second area branch of a California gastropub concept with a school theme; the first opened in Dallas' West Village in late 2014. Signature starters include bacon-cheddar tots, buffalo cauliflower, and fiery calamari. Entrées, salads, and sandwiches include a smoked turkey sandwich; beet salad with arugula; a bison burger; fish and chips; and the vegetarian-roasted poblano with quinoa, black beans, and squash on cilantro lime rice. Public School VP Phil Kastel is down with Addison, and so are we.

Q Tacos and Machos Cantina
Michael Martensen keeps expanding his role from cocktail specialist to restaurant creator, and his latest is this taco stand, taking over the space on Cedar Springs formerly occupied by Quesa, a Mexican restaurant that never got much attention. Martensen partnered up with the owners of Quesa to do a reset. In addition to tacos, the new concept has a walk-up window and a bar.

Revolver Taco Lounge
It's been called Fort Worth's hottest and most written-about taqueria, and it won Fort Worth Restaurant of the Year in CultureMap's 2016 Tastemaker Awards. Now it's in Deep Ellum. Dallas diners don't have to drive to FW to get their Revolver fix. In addition to tacos, the Dallas branch will serve prix-fixe dinners in a small space at the back of the restaurant, featuring chef-owner Regino Rojas' take on Michoacan cuisine.

Town Hearth
It's new and it's Nick Badovinus, which is pretty much all you need to lure in Dallas diners. The charismatic chef plies meat at this Design District steakhouse, taking a page out of the book of Knife with big big steaks such as a bone-in 48-ounce steak that's meant to be shared. Town Hearth also has a raw bar featuring a seafood cocktail and oysters, one of Badovinus' obsessions, and an over-the-top decorative scheme that includes 64 chandeliers.

Wheelhouse
One of a trio of eateries from Tim Headington (The Joule), Wheelhouse is inspired by the modern American gastropub, with an urban atmosphere. Open for lunch and dinner, its menu pays homage to bar culture, with distinctive takes on contemporary pub fare. That means pretzels, kettle corn, house-made sausages, oysters on the half shell, beef jerky, pork ribs with kimchi slaw, and smoked trout dip.

where-to-eat

Burger News

Family-owned Patty Lou's Smashburgers will open in old downtown Plano

Photo by Sara Aurora Cimminiello on Unsplash

Smashburger

A new restaurant starring a buzzy burger is coming to old downtown Plano: Called Patty Lou's Smashburgers, it will feature the namesake smashburger, and will open at 1004 E. 14th St. #105, in a historic location that was most recently home to a Starbucks.

Patty Lou's is a new concept from Urban Family Concepts, the hospitality company whose other restaurants include Urban Seafood Co., Urban Rio Cantina & Grill, and Italian restaurant Urban Crust, all located in the downtown Plano area.

Patty Lou's is their burger entry, a quick-service spot serving smashburgers, the flattened version of a burger with crisp edges that's been a hot trend for the past year.

According to Urban Family Concepts partner and spokesperson Dana Blaugrund, the restaurant will open in late spring.

Patty Lou's is also a sweet homage to a family member — named for Patty Lou Peters, of "Patty Lou and her Texas Sweethearts" fame, an all-female country & Western / Western swing group founded in the '40s, when female groups were a rarity.

Patty Lou was the mother of Bonnie Shea, who co-founded Urban Family Concepts with her husband Nathan Shea. Infusing the personal touch into everything they do is part of the company DNA, says Urban partner Michael Lee.

"Urban is generally driven by what we like," Lee says. "Urban Rio, our Mexican concept, came about because Bonnie loved that cuisine, and Urban Seafood Company, Nate loves seafood. Burgers are a favorite of their son-in-laws."

Their version of the smashburger will feature American cheese and onions that melt into the meat, Lee says. They'll be served on potato buns, and there'll be some toppings — but they won't go too crazy.

"It'll have onions, lettuce, and pickle, but we're going to stay minimal, with additional toppings on the side," he says. "Going overboard with ingredients can get complicated. Our goal is, very simple burgers that taste very good, at a value price, so that everyone can enjoy coming back and getting a burger."

The menu will also feature smashed chicken burgers, hand-cut French fries skin on, lightly battered onion rings, and milkshakes. They'll also serve alcohol, including bottled beers, wine by the glass, and a signature frozen cocktail. Eventually, they'll add specials like a burger of the month.

The location was originally home to the Ice House, built in 1917, an institution that provided ice products to Plano residents and businesses, says Urban partner Payton Hickey.

"You could pull up and get a block of ice from workers with tongs," Hickey says. "During remodeling, we could still see the raised floor where the freezer was, where they kept the ice."

They operated a licensed location of Starbucks in that space until 2024, when Starbucks opened a store nearby with a drive-thru in the former longtime Jack in the Box at 15th Street and US-75.

Decor at Patty Lou's will embrace a diner feel with counter seating, while incorporating elements from Patty Lou Peter's life, Blaugrund says. (It's a nice coincidence that her name syncs up with "hamburger patty.")

"We'll have her original guitar and some memorabilia in the restaurant — a cool mixture of country music and burger restaurant," Blaugrund says.

burgers openings