Deep Ellum Dining

Deep Ellum restaurant incubator decides to make it a permanent thing

Korean duck leg is on the menu at Junction Craft Kitchen in Deep Ellum.

Photo by Kevin Marple

Dallas can say goodbye to the idea of the rotating restaurant. Kitchen LTO will now become Junction Craft Kitchen and will open on May 4 in the old Kitchen LTO space in Deep Ellum, at 2901 Elm St.

Casie Caldwell and chef Josh Harmon have partnered to open the new restaurant serving dinner and weekend brunch.

Kitchen LTO was in its seventh iteration with Caldwell's seasoned front-of-house team supporting chef Harmon. The collaboration worked so well that they decided to make it a permanent thing, Caldwell says.

"I knew in the first week of opening Deep Ellum that I wanted to find a way to help Josh have a permanent restaurant space when he left LTO," she says in a release. "We decided to keep this great location and bid farewell to LTO. Junction Craft Kitchen was then born."

Capturing Harmon's love of Southern and Asian cooking, Junction Craft Kitchen will serve many of the dishes that were served at Kitchen LTO. We are talking Brussels sprouts with fish sauce caramel, hot fried chicken, and Korean sticky duck leg.

New dishes include Korean braised beef, boudin po bao, and family-style miso pork belly with steamed buns. An arugula salad sounds good with radish, peanut butter Ritz, peas, and peri peri. There's a poached carrot dish with an elaborate retinue that includes whey and koji, carrot top kosho, and dehydrated okra.

Brunch features playful dishes such as Captain Crunch parfait, kimchi frittata, and fried green tomato Benedict. Desserts will come from Harmon's mother and sisters and includes five-flavor crumble cake, Texas sheet cake, and daily pies.

Former Komali bartender Leann Berry will lead the bar program.

Harmon was born in Tennessee, raised in Texas, and graduated high school in Los Angeles. When he returned to Texas in 2012, he worked at the Milk & Honey Co. and Grace in Fort Worth, Savor in Dallas, and Main Street Bistro & Bakery in Grapevine. Most importantly (to us), he was a finalist in the 2017 Tastemaker Awards for Rising Star Chef. It doesn't get any better than that.

deep-ellum openings

RIP Mico

Restaurateur Mico Rodriguez, 'Godfather of Dallas Tex-Mex,' dies at 68

Courtesy photo

Mico

A Dallas restaurant legend has died: Michael "Mico" Rodriguez, dubbed the "Godfather of Dallas Tex-Mex," died on October 1; he was 68. According to a friend of the family, Rodriguez exhibited symptoms of a heart attack and died late Thursday night.

Rodriguez co-founded a number of successful Tex-Mex restaurant chains, most famously Mi Cocina, which debuted in 1991 at Preston Forest Village. Its combination of gringo-friendly Tex-Mex, as well as its signature Mambo Taxi frozen margarita-sangria swirl, was an instant hit.

But it was the buzzy celebrity-packed location at Highland Park Village, which opened in 1993, that sent the concept into the stratosphere, launching an entire chain. Under the M Crowd umbrella name, he helped launched a number of other concepts, including the pioneering Taco Diner chain.

Rodriguez was born on October 30, 1957 and entered the restaurant industry not long thereafter: busing tables when he was only 6 years old at El Chico, where his parents worked, until he went to work at Mia's Tex-Mex, the restaurant his mother opened in 1980.

He also experienced personal challenges, and was eventually ousted from Mi Cocina due to alleged financial improprieties.

Driven and ambitious, he went on to found other similar concepts, beginning in 2011 with Mr. Mesero (later shortened to Mesero), which he opened at 4444 McKinney Ave.

Mr. Mesero served as a template for the Mesero chain, which currently has seven locations across DFW and two outside Texas.

But in 2018, Rodriguez and Mesero Restaurant Group parted ways. He kept the original Mr. Mesero, now named Doce Mesas, and opened more locations before being ousted in 2025.

Most recently, he became involved in the Maple Street Food Hall, a food hall launched by entrepreneur Ray Quintanilla in 2022.

Rodriguez can be seen sharing some of his memories on a podcast with Jeff Crilley. He's survived by his daughter, Bianca, and his ex-wife, Caroline. Services have not been announced.

deaths highland park village mi cocina obituary tex-mex

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RIP Mico

Restaurateur Mico Rodriguez, 'Godfather of Dallas Tex-Mex,' dies at 68