New Late-Night Eats

Oak Lawn's Scotch & Sausage will give Dallas night owls something meaty to chewon

Scotch & Sausage will serve about 20 kinds of sausage.

Photo by Catherine Downes
Fine Scotches will also be an essential part of the menu at Scotch & Sausage.

Photo via Taopic.com

If you're someone who craves sausage late at night, then you can soon fill those desires at Scotch & Sausage. Opening soon in the Cedar Springs area, the restaurant specializes in sausage sandwiches, along with Scotch and whiskey, served until the wee hours.

The restaurant is going into a prized location at 2808 Oak Lawn Ave., in what was previously an attorney's office. Owner Dylan Elchami, a young entrepreneur with experience in the construction business, spent nearly a year renovating the location. He hopes to open by June.

"I went way too crazy, but this building had my name on it," Elchami says. "I saw what kind of atmosphere it could have. And coming from construction background, I knew I was the only person who do it."

Influenced by traditional German biergartens, the menu will feature sausage sandwiches, Belgian fries with homemade dipping sauces, imported beer and "gourmet" sodas.

Elchami's family does construction of restaurants such as Texas de Brazil, so he knew what it meant to build a kitchen from scratch. He poured a new slab for the entire building and built bathrooms, dining rooms and a patio.

"The only reason we didn't just knock it all down is that the building was grandfathered on Oak Lawn," he says. "If you wipe down a building, you can’t put a new one up. So I took a beat-up diamond and made it shine again."

Scotch & Sausage will be a community beer garden and grill with Scotch and whiskey. Influenced by traditional German biergartens, the menu will feature sausage sandwiches, Belgian fries with homemade dipping sauces, imported beer and "gourmet" sodas.

"We'll do about 20 kinds of sausage, everything from bison to chicken with apple to vegetarian sausages," Elchami says. "Whatever we do will be of the highest quality, with prime cuts, from organic and local when we can. We're nailing all those cues."

Elchami was inspired by a similar concept he saw in Los Angeles called Wurstkuche, which has an identical menu of sausage sandwiches, Belgian fries with dipping sauces, imported beers on tap and gourmet sodas. "I thought the idea of a place doing sausage and beer made sense here," he says.

He hopes it will appeal to everyone, from the guy in the business suit to the family with kids. But he's paying particular attention to night owls like himself, who like to eat late but can't find anything open.

"I'm a late-night guy. I don't eat dinner until 8 pm, sometimes 10:30 pm," he says. "That's a big reason for me doing this. Everything shuts down. Velvet Taco, if you go there late at night, the line is out the door.

"Our city has more young people, especially around Uptown. I felt like there was a void that needed to be filled."

unspecified

Tex-Mex News

Get Tex-Mex and bargain margs at Alexander's Cantina in North Dallas

A Mexican restaurant with a killer happy hour has debuted in North Dallas: Alexander's Cantina & Cocina, a family-owned restaurant and bar, has opened at 4805 Frankford Rd. #105, a space most recently occupied by Casa Don Luis Tex-Mex and before that, a Corner Bakery.

Alexander's is a bigger-and-better spinoff of Alexander's Mex Cuisine, a restaurant opened in Plano in 2023 by Bernardo Garduño and his family, featuring Tex-Mex and street food from his hometown Mexico City.

Garduño worked for many years in the service industry before coming to Dallas in 2015. He crafted Alexander's menu by drawing on his restaurant experience, along with recipes from his mom.

Signature dishes include:

Pambazo — Mexican bread dipped in chili sauce, filled with potatoes, chorizo, and queso, then fried
Alambre — steak, ham, and bacon with onion, peppers, and cheese
Bistek a la Mexicana — steak tips, onion, and bell pepper simmered in a spicy tomato sauce until it turns into a stew

Other crowd-pleasers include chicken mole, brisket tacos, birria, fajitas, enchiladas, and more. They have a big selection of seafood including tacos with salmon and coconut shrimp, plus vegetarian options such as veggie fajitas and spinach enchiladas. One favorite extra: Their chips come not only with salsa but also black bean dip.

The new location has given them room to grow in a way they were unable to do in Plano, Garduño says.

"Plano is doing very well but that location is small, and there was no room to expand," he says. "We did extensive renovations at the Dallas location that included the addition of a bar, as well as room for parties and entertainment, like salsa on Fridays and Saturdays."

The menu at the two locations is basically the same but Dallas has a few new dishes such as mojarra frita, a whole tilapia fried and served with rice, plus carnitas, and a few more tacos, he says.

One item they recently dropped: soft-serve margaritas. Garduño was quick to jump on that early 2026 trend, and Alexander's made many a "soft-serve margarita" list, but the trend turned out to be short-lived.

"It did well for a month, but people went right back to regular margaritas," he says. "Those drinks are fun but they're very sweet. The mix has to be highly sugared in order to get the texture correct. The ingredients and equipment to make it were expensive, which meant we had to charge more for it — $16 as opposed to $10 for our regular margaritas."

Garduño has kept an eye on the trend. "We're not the only place no longer doing it," he says.

Besides, it was not a good fit with Alexander's generous happy hour, featuring $5.50 house margaritas, $6 flavored margaritas, and $4 beer, available from 11 am-6 pm every day at the Plano location, and Sunday-Thursday at Dallas.

"Our happy hour has become one of our trademarks," he says.

tex-mex openings