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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READY TO ROLL

Trendy Dallas sushi bar exports its handrolls to San Antonio

Nori Handroll Bar/ Facebook

Nori Handroll Bar will make its San Antonio debut in spring 2027.

A hot Dallas sushi spot is rolling toward San Antonio: Nori Handroll Bar will open in spring 2027 in the city's historic Pearl district.

It's landing at the Coopers Row apartment complex at 1118 E. Elmira St., San Antonio.

Nori specializes in hand rolls, otherwise known as temaki, which are a less exacting version of maki — the tightly rolled cylinders most Americans associate with sushi. The seaweed sheets enclose the typical fillings of rice, fish, and vegetables, but are wrapped in a looser cone or tubular shape.

Although several San Antonio restaurants offer the dish, it doesn’t yet have a dedicated handroll bar. The Dallas restaurant is about to fix that.

Nori Handroll Bar first debuted in the Deep Ellum neighborhood in 2018. Entrepreneur Mark Lee partnered with Jimmy Park, a former Nobu chef known for Pōk the Raw Bar in Dallas’ West Village. Originally, the spot only offered 12 hand rolls.

Now under the ownership of chef Deukbok Cha, the restaurant has since extended the menu to several à la carte options stuffed with king salmon, unagi, soft-shelled crab, scallops, and other seafood. The rolls are also offered in sets, ranging from I Could Eat (three hand rolls) to Hangry (six).

Nori's other offerings include sashimi, indulgent chef’s specials like truffle caviar nigiri, and fun appetizers like poppers made with jalapeño, cream cheese, red crab, and spicy tuna. Cha has also introduced Korean flavors that reflect his heritage.

The Dallas location is modeled after the neighborhood alleyway bars found on the streets of Tokyo, offering only 24 seats. The San Antonio outpost has not yet released renderings of the space, but at 2,995 square feet, it might offer a little more stretching room than the original.

“Pearl has such an incredible food culture, and it’s exactly the kind of place we want to be a part of," says Deukbok Cha, chef and owner of Nori Handroll Bar, in a release. “We want to create a gathering place where people can stop in for fresh hand rolls and Japanese-Korean flavors that are simple, approachable, and genuinely delicious.”

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