Tastemaker Awards

These top 10 restaurants in Dallas are the city's tastemakers in 2022

Tasty.

Photo courtesy of Davio's

We've reached the summit of our 2022 CultureMap Dallas Tastemaker Awards, an annual celebration shining a light on the city's top culinary talent. And by summit, we're referring to Restaurant of the Year.

It's one in a series of categories honoring Dallas' best food & beverage professionals and institutions, nominated by a panel of judges consisting of former CultureMap Tastemaker Award winners and local F&B experts, alongside Neighborhood Restaurant of the Year, Bar of the Year, Best New Pizza, Best Wine Program, Bartender of the Year, Brewery of the Year, Pastry Chef, and Rising Star Chef.

Winners will be revealed at our Tastemaker Awards party on May 12 at Fashion Industry Gallery, emceed by comedian CJ Starr, when attendees get to dine on bites from nominated restaurants and find out what the buzz is all about. (Tickets are on sale here.)

Restaurant of the Year is about the restaurants that showed themselves at their very best in 2022. They include everything from national award winners to chef-driven gems, and represent Dallas 2022 at its finest.

Here are our nominees for 2022 Restaurant of the Year:

Roots Southern Table
Southern restaurant in Farmers Branch by Dallas celebrity chef Tiffany Derry has brought more attention in the past year to Dallas than any other restaurant, with lots of national nods and acclaim. The menu and theme are inspired by her upbringing on her family's Southern farm. The centerpiece is Duck Fat Fried Chicken served family-style with drop biscuits, watermelon rind preserves, and house-made sauces.

Petra & The Beast
Highly acclaimed restaurant in a former 1930s gas station is award-winning chef Misti Norris' ode to foraging, fermenting, and whole-animal cookery. Norris is doing smart, creative dishes with loads of heart and soul, such as fried chicken hearts wrapped in a pale-green garlic crepe. The restaurant is small and highly personal, with new creations being rolled out all the time.

Davio's Northern Italian Steakhouse
Northern Italian steakhouse from the Northeast has gifted The Colony with a bountiful menu featuring pasta, steak, seafood, cocktails and 300-plus bottles of wine. Handmade pasta such as potato gnocchi and tagliatelle Bolognese plays an integral role. Their schtick is spring rolls in a variety of options including their signature Philly Cheese Steak Spring Rolls.

Beverley's
Upscale bistro on transitioning Fitzhugh Avenue from longtime food & beverage professional Greg Katz is where all the cool guys go. Named after Katz' mother, Beverley's has a menu that crosses Jewish with Texas, Mexico, and beyond, with ceviche tacos side by side with chicken schnitzel and matzo ball soup. Service is smooth, and the atmosphere is glitzy, with black woods, brass accents, and a marble bar.

The Exchange/AT&T Discovery District
Downtown Dallas complex remains a consistently top-quality and fun dining experience with a variety of choices, from frozen drinks at Jaxon to avocado toast at Rise + Thyme to refreshing Dole Whip at Bobbers. More than a dozen restaurants are there to satisfy a variety of tastes, and there's also the Discovery District of which it's a part, a pleasant outdoor oasis in downtown with immersive exhibits and entertainment.

Monarch
Downtown restaurant at The National, a residences-plus-hotel in downtown Dallas, from gregarious Chicago chef Danny Grant, has become one of Dallas' top destination restaurants. It's pricey, with $55 lasagna and a $12 side of charred asparagus, but good, and its skytop perch with amazing views make it a popular special-occasion choice.

Homewood
Official cuisine at this restaurant from acclaimed chef Matt McCallister is upscale comfort food, with entrees such as half chicken, grass-fed sirloin, and Wagyu rib eye, and there's a raw bar with oysters, bluefin tuna, and dry-aged beef tartare. Dishes like the signature Parker House rolls, served with a dipping sauce made of parmesan mornay and chicken drippings, really hit the spot.

Sloane's Corner
American bistro from veteran restaurateur Tim McEneny is sweetly named for his daughter. It's a cosmopolitan spot located on a key downtown corner in the Trammell Crow Center near Nasher Sculpture Center, where it very accommodatingly serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus a daily Happy Hour from 2-6 pm, as well as a coffee bar and takeout corner with food and beverage to go.

Mike's Chicken
Family run fried-chicken restaurant in a laundromat is a phenomenon, earning raves from publications that include USA Today and Insider.com. They offer tenders as well as a half chicken, plus combos such as white meat with breast & wing, or dark meat with leg & thigh. The chicken has a distinctive spice blend that includes sage, turmeric, lemon, and ghost peppers. They make everything from scratch including cooking to order.

Meridian
Modern Brazilian cuisine from chef Junior Borges is the fine-dining spot that's part of an entire slate of restaurants rolled out at The Village, the massive residential apartment community in the middle of Dallas, which executed a mixed-use lifestyle project with food and entertainment in early 2021. The restaurant features Brazilian-inspired dishes, with snacks, cocktails, salads, brioche, or a family-style feast from a live-fire hearth.

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Plate Lunch News

Dallas Hawaiian foodie favorite Pine Isle expands to new DFW city

Pine Isle

A Hawaiian-inspired restaurant founded in Dallas is going west to Fort Worth: Pine Isle will be open in early fall at 3005 S. University Dr., near Texas Christian University.

Pine Isle is from Kevin Singharaj, who debuted the original Pine Isle in Dallas in 2025 as a takeout shop focused on Hawaiian dishes including poke, Spam, and the Hawaiian plate lunch — a comfort food dish featuring a protein like chicken paired with rice and macaroni salad, which has been a trendy item around DFW in recent years.

Singharaj, whose family owns the Zaap Kitchen chain, once lived in Hawaii and brings a personal and artisanal level to the genre, earning a following among foodies in the know.

"Hawaii was very special to me," he says. "Life was totally different there, and I want to provide an insight into my experiences in Hawaii to DFW residents."

The menu at Pine Isle features Hawaiian favorites like Spam musubi, the Spam version of sushi with a slab of Spam on top of rice; and loco moco, a plate with a beef patty and sunny side egg on top of steamed rice with brown gravy.

There's a big selection of lunch plates including Kalua pork with cabbage, teriyaki beef, garlic shrimp, miso chicken, chicken katsu, fried chicken, and kalbi Korean barbecued beef ribs. Other options include tuna poke bowls, poke nachos, hamachi, ahi tuna tataki, and garlic kimchi fries.

They recently added chicken teriyaki, which can be ordered a la carte or as a plate lunch; plus spicy Spam musubi; and spicy fried musubi.

Fort Worth will follow the same menu, quality, and overall experience as Dallas, but with a little extra.

"The biggest difference is that we’ll finally have indoor seating and an outdoor patio," Singharaj says. "Our Dallas location is only 950 square feet and was built around takeout, so this will give customers a different way to enjoy the food."

"We’re taking over the former Dutch’s Burrito Bar space, so we’ve had to get creative with the layout and operations to make sure we can maintain the same efficiency we’ve built in Dallas," he says. "I’m sure there will be some growing pains along the way, but our goal is simple: serve the same quality food and provide the same level of hospitality that got us here in the first place."

They weren't actively looking to open a second location, but Fort Worth turned out to be a perfect place for expansion.

"When Pine Isle started taking off, our first focus was investing back into the original store," he says. "We wanted to make sure we could handle the growth before chasing another lease. But this Fort Worth location just made sense. It’s right by TCU, and I also knew the area well since our Zaap Kitchen Fort Worth location is only a few minutes away."

"On top of that, customers have been asking us to come west for a while," he says. "Fort Worth has grown a lot over the years, and we’re excited to be a part of that growth."

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