News You Can Eat

Macarons and ice cream sweeten up Dallas restaurant news

Macarons are on the menu at Hospitality Sweet.
Photo by Jess Barfield Photography
Quesadillas are on the menu at Tin Star.
Tin Star Restaurants/Facebook
Pearl Cup is spreading its latte love all over Dallas and beyond.
Photo courtesy of Pearl Cup
Old Town Creamery in Plano has two new flavors.
Photo courtesy of Old Town Creamery
Stampede 66 is now open Sundays for "modern Texas-style family dinner."
Photo by Brandon Ramsey/Brilliant Pixel Photography

Dallas-Fort Worth's restaurant scene is brisk brisk brisk. Lots of exciting openings are happening, as well as some less exciting closings. When in doubt, there's always ice cream.

The Hospitality Sweet, a small bakery-sandwich shop, opened Monday in downtown Dallas, in a cool location: inside the historic post office at 400 N. Ervay St. Owner Meghan Adams already had a to-go operation at Timothy Oulton. Hospitality Sweet serves breakfast muffins and lunch sandwiches Monday-Friday, 7 am-3 pm.

Work Bar & Grill, whose generic name makes them hard to find online, opens this week at 2618 Elm St., in the old Sambuca location, which has sat vacant forever. The place comes from real estate guy Doug Pickering and bar guy Shea Comer, and it will serve brisket, ribs, potato skins and craft beer.

Richardson is booming. Two new burger joints opened, Haystack and Shady's, and so did a third branch of Pearl Cup Coffee. Pearl Cup will also open a cafe space in the AT&T Performing Arts Center's new Information Center, where it will serve coffee and tea, light fare and pastries to audiences, visitors, artists, students and workers in the Arts District.

The Information Center will house the box office and is scheduled to open next month. Pearl Cup will get the honor of being the only cafe inside the Dallas Arts District. It'll be open 7:30 am-5 pm weekdays.

Tin Star in West Plano has found a new home. After 10 years, they left their location at Park Boulevard and the Dallas North Tollway in January. Tin Star is now back in business a mile away, at 3216 Hebron Pkwy., next to Dunkin Donuts. New phone number is 972-403-1765.

Dallas pizza old-timer Campisi's opened a branch in Fort Worth at 6150 Camp Bowie Blvd., in the Ridglea Village shopping center.

Dallas burger old-timer Snuffer's closed its Greenville Avenue location after 35 years for a remodel.

Stampede 66 will now be open Sunday nights, 5-9 pm, for a "modern Texas-style family dinner" with specially created comfort-food items such as fried chicken and biscuits, shrimp and grits, and chicken and dumplings. The three-course dinners change weekly.

Old Town Creamery in Plano introduced two exotic new flavors: Sweet Cloud, which tastes like apple custard, and Aloe Vera and Green Apple, an unusual combination with a pert flavor that uses actual aloe vera. A manager said that it's become so popular, they can hardly keep in stock.

Pokey O's has devised a way to capitalize on the hot taco trend with an ice cream "taco." They form an ordinary waffle cone into a curved shell; fill it with your choice of ice cream; coat it with a crisp shell of your choosing from chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch or peanut butter; and top it with peanuts, M&Ms, Oreos, sprinkles or pretzels. Someone alert Taco Trail!

Chef comings and goings
Spoon chef-owner John Tesar heads to New York on May 10 to cook a special champagne dinner at the Beard House. Tesar will serve five courses featuring seafood such as pink snapper crudo and oyster po' boys.

Chef Jon Stevens left Nosh Euro Bistro to open his own Americana restaurant called Stock and Barrel. In the interim, he's helping restaurateur Mico Rodriguez open Mesero Miguel, a new sibling to Mr Mesero going in the old Cuba Libre space on Henderson Avenue. Menu will include pork belly tacos, duck tacos and brisket tacos. Sounds like a case for Taco Trail!

Thomas Gray joined Oak as chef de cuisine, replacing Brian Zenner, who will focus full-time on Belly & Trumpet. Gray was sous chef at the French Room, and he has worked at Michael Mina in San Francisco, La Folie in San Francisco, and Vidalia in Washington, D.C.

Maggie Huff joined FT33 as pastry chef, working with chef-owner Matt McCallister to create season-inspired desserts. She's a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City and most recently was a pastry sous chef at the Fairmont Dallas. The two worked together at Stephan Pyles.

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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