Tastemaker Awards

These 10 restaurants have the best biscuits in Dallas

Biscuits are a big thing in Dallas.

Photo courtesy of Overeasy

As part of CultureMap's 2018 Tastemaker Awards, our annual celebration of local food and drink, we're celebrating the best restaurants, bars, and chefs, along with this one wild card that represents a looming local trend: delicious fluffy biscuits.

Dallas has always had biscuits, thanks to its niche as a city in the South and its history with home-cooking. But there's been a surge in the past year with new biscuits arriving and more on the way.

It could be said that there is almost no bad biscuit, but for this story, we assembled 10 top nominees for 2018. One will emerge as the best biscuit of all, which we'll announce, along with all of our other winners, at our Tastemaker Awards party April 19 at Sixty Five Hundred, with food tastings from chefs, and cocktails made with bourbon from sponsor Woodford Reserve. Tickets are on sale now for $55, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Bonton Farms.

These are the 10 top biscuits of 2018:

Barbec's
Longtime breakfast spot in East Dallas is justifiably famous for its biscuits, which have beer in the batter, resulting in a sweet malt flavor you can really taste. They bake them on giant sheet pans, with the biscuits scored, then separated and broken off one by one when you order. They're about as big as your hand; a pale tan color; moist, dense, and crumbly.

Café Momentum
Charitable downtown Dallas restaurant led by chef Chad Houser does a biscuit based loosely on the famed recipe from Randall Copeland, who passed away in 2013. It's a round biscuit with lots of baking powder and it bakes up tall — sometimes so tall, it tips off to the side — with a crusty browned top, and a texture that's crumbly and a little flaky.

Crossroads Diner
At this breakfast-and-lunch spot from chef Tom Fleming, people rave about the sticky bun, but Fleming does a bang-up job on the biscuits, too. His recipe is a simple one with both all-purpose and cake flour, baking powder, buttermilk, and cold butter. They're rolled out and cut into tall cylinders, which retain their statuesque height while baking. They emerge from the oven with golden-brown tops and a texture that's sturdy, yet also buttery and moist inside.

The Flying Biscuit Cafe
Atlanta-based chain busts a move with its worthy biscuits, vaguely round in shape, nearly taller than they are wide, with appealing ragged edges on the bottom and a nice glaze on top. Firm, substantial, yet crumbly, they have a subtle peppery undertone in the taste, with a dusting of sugar on top to add complexity. Served with a cinnamony cranberry jam that's tart and sweet.

Jonathon's Oak Cliff
Informal restaurant in Oak Cliff does a ragtag sort of biscuit: amorphous blobs, with an exterior that can be craggy or smooth, depending possibly on who's making them that day. They tend to be slightly on the dry side — all the better to crumble, my dear — and boast a strong peppery flavor thanks to a good dose of cracked black pepper mixed into the dough.

Norma's Cafe
Small local home-cooking chain knows its way around baking, with great pies and signature biscuits. Their biscuits are big, generous squares with shaggy edges and a golden brown cap with little bumps and valleys. They look almost like dinner rolls. The inside is a little flaky and crumbly, yet still moist. It makes sense they'd be good; they've been baking them since 1956.

Overeasy
Lobby restaurant at the Statler Dallas hotel is a little biscuit-crazy. There's biscuits and gravy in two versions, sausage or mushroom; a biscuit with ham and egg; and another with bacon and a chicken tender. The recipe includes heavy cream and eggs, resulting in biscuits that are round pucks with flat glazed tops, neat and discreet, with a delicate buttermilk flavor, subtle crust, and fluffy crumb. They're served with preserves made by chef Graham Dodd's "mum."

Rapscallion
Greenville Avenue restaurant does a square biscuit, about 3 inches by 3 inches. The exterior is dark brown and almost impenetrably crisp, while the inside is rather chewy. It's almost as if they've been deep-fried. They seem more like doughnuts than biscuits, with that same greasy-fried taste being the dominant flavor, but their resiliency makes them a proper vessel for the restaurant's sandwiches such as the chicken biscuit.

Tupelo Honey
This restaurant from Carolina prides itself on its "ginormous" biscuits, and they are certainly honkers, that's a fact. They're a large oval shape, almost two inches high, with a rough-hewn surface, a thick exterior, and a bready interior. The dominant flavor is the black pepper you can see in each biscuit. You get three to an order with what is the best thing of all: blueberry preserves.

Whistle Britches
Chef-driven restaurant in North Dallas (with another on the way) does square biscuits, perfectly trimmed, and big ones, measuring 3 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches and nearly 2 inches high. The outside has a fragile shell, while the interior is as fabulously flaky and layered as a croissant, with lovely air gaps that let the biscuit break nicely into segments. The flavor has a good strong hit of salt, against a backdrop of baking powder and sweet buttermilk.

tastemakers

Spring Arrival

West Dallas gets new Spanish-Peruvian restaurant with big-name chef

Photo courtesy of Ulloa's

Paella will be on the menu.

A new restaurant with a high-profile culinary director will bring Spanish and Peruvian flavors to West Dallas: Called Ulloa’s, it is coming to 727 Fort Worth Ave., with a projected opening in March 2027.

The concept is from philanthropists Susan and Woodrow Gandy, who were previously investors in the historic Belmont Hotel just around the corner. They've teamed up with Dallas celebrity chef Kent Rathbun as culinary director, along with Christopher Tunnell as general manager to lead the front of the house.

Rathbun is a name Dallas diners know well, with a resume that includes The Mansion on Turtle Creek, the Landmark Restaurant at the historic Melrose Hotel, Seventeen Seventeen at the Dallas Museum of Art, Abacus, Jasper's, Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen, and more. He's won numerous awards and made multiple appearances on Food Network. He was most recently behind the launch of On The Rocks, an Italian bistro in Burleson.

Chef Kent Rathbun will be the culinary director of Ulloa's. Photo courtesy of Kent Rathbun

Tunnell’s background spans both culinary direction and front-of-house operations. He worked at Los Angeles hot spots Ketchup, Geisha House, and Les Deux, as well as the Mandalay Bay and The Mirage in Las Vegas, before moving to Dallas to open The Mexican, the upscale restaurant in the Design District.

“I am truly excited to partner with Chef Kent Rathbun, whose reputation is amazing — not only in the DFW Metroplex, but in the culinary world,” Tunnell says. “He has been with this project since the beginning, helping develop it; this will be a very chef-driven, culinary-forward restaurant.”

The team's vision for Ulloa’s is both culinary and urban, with hopes of anchoring the corridor and attracting other businesses to Fort Worth Avenue — a stretch connecting downtown Dallas with Oak Cliff that remains somewhat underdeveloped despite its panoramic skyline views.

The restaurant is named for Spanish explorer, astronomer, and scientist Antonio de Ulloa, who spent extensive time in the Mexican peninsula before becoming Louisiana’s first governor. During his travels, Ulloa documented a fogbow — a circular rainbow formed when sunlight meets mist that causes silhouettes standing between the sun and fog to appear ringed in light, a phenomenon known today as “Ulloa’s Rings.”

That vibrant phenomenon inspired both the restaurant's identity and logo. The concept promises "bold, worldly flavors in a welcoming neighborhood setting inspired by exploration and discovery,” the owners say.

Ulloa's Rendering of Ulloa's.Rendering courtesy of Ulloa's

While the menu remains in development, Tunnell describes the culinary direction as “Spanish soul with a Peruvian heart.” The kitchen will merge the coastal flavors of both traditions — ranging from paellas and ceviches to crafted cocktails and signature adaptations by Rathbun.

The 200-seat, two-story space will feature a downstairs dining room, a large bar, and an outdoor patio. Upstairs, plans call for a secondary bar, a private dining room, a patio, and an expansive balcony patio, offering views of the city's skyline and of the Margaret Hunt Hill and Margaret McDermott bridges.

While the upstairs space will be available for private events, the owners intend for it to operate primarily as an organic extension of the main restaurant. The buildout will include a guest elevator along with ample parking, including both self-parking and valet options.

The team says the restaurant will have have an aesthetic that's “warm, theatrical, generous, elegant but alive, with the energy of a great Spanish tapas bar and the soul of Peruvian hospitality.”

Ulloa’s plans to launch with dinner service first, followed by lunch and weekend brunch.

restaurants bars peruvian flavors west dallas oak cliff kent rathbun