Season's Eatings
Eating in Season: 5 Dallas restaurants with new dishes for spring
Seasonal menus — centered on whatever's new in season — have been a regular thing at fancy restaurants like Fearing's and Bullion forever. But now the seasonality theme is being embraced by a wider array of restaurants, from sushi restaurants to burger joints.
Here are five new seasonal offerings found at restaurants around Dallas:
Blue Sushi Sake Grill has launched a limited-time menu available throughout the summer with seasonally-tied cocktails and menu items. The food lineup includes three specialty items: a sashimi dish using beet-cured salmon; a maki roll with pineapple and mango salsa; and a fortune-cookie ice cream sandwich with sugar cookies and vanilla ice cream. The cocktails are especially cool since they incorporate the chewy tapioca balls commonly found in the ever-popular boba tea. There's a tropical boba-tonic, like a gin and tonic, with mango boba and passion fruit puree; and a strawberry bona-rita, like a margarita, with tequila and strawberry boba.
Hopdoddy Burger Bar has a refreshed menu with a new selection of loaded fries; a new milkshake menu; and new cocktails. There are buffalo fries, topped with buffalo sauce, blue cheese crumbles, chives, and ranch; and hot honey and sage fries, featuring sweet potato fries topped with sweet-spicy honey and fried sage and rosemary. Five new shakes made with a thicker vanilla custard include S'mores with graham cracker crumbles, chocolate, and marshmallow; and strawberry shortbread with strawberry, vanilla buttercream, and shortbread crumble. New cocktails made with premium spirits and house-blended liqueurs include a pineapple daiquiri made with Plantation 3 Stars Rum, lime, Monin Pineapple-Chipotle, and Angostura bitters; and the 3 Whisky LIT with Jameson, Old Forester, Wild Turkey, Camarena Reposado, Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao, cola, and lime.
Ocean Prime has new spring dishes at lunch and dinner. They include a poke bowl with ahi tuna, salmon, avocado, and sriracha vinaigrette; and a surf & turf featuring an 8-ounce filet with poached lobster, gouda potato cake, chili seared spinach, cabernet truffle reduction, and béarnaise sauce. There's lobster bisque; and a lobster-avocado toast with sweet pea-avocado spread and preserved lemon, served with choice of fries, house salad, or French onion soup. A new chicken dish is served with a spinach bread salad, and there are crab cakes with Brussels sprouts, corn, tomatoes, and fingerling potatoes.
State & Allen Kitchen + Bar, the popular Uptown Dallas neighborhood spot, has a dozen new menu items that include pork belly tostadas, ahi tuna poke, jerk redfish with broccolini and sweet potatoes, and St. Louis ribs with peanut jicama slaw and sweet potato wedges. Lobster ravioli comes with corn, peas, caramelized leeks, manchego, smoked tomato cream, and garlic cheese bread. Sponge cake French toast is new at brunch with walnuts, berries, salted caramel mascarpone, maple syrup, and chicken apple sausage. They've updated their cocktail selection with 17 new offerings including a cucumber lemonade with Hendricks gin; a green prickly pear margarita; and a pomegranate bellini-tini with Grey Goose, Pama, grenadine, and champagne.
Sundown at Granada, the restaurant adjacent to the Sundown Theater, is heavily into the seasonal thing, and has a new lineup from chef Jason West. It includes vegetarian yellow beet pesto pasta, an amazing dish with roasted yellow beet pesto, and bucatini pasta — vegetable noodles made from squash, zucchini, and carrots — with sun dried tomatoes, Swiss chard from their backyard garden, arugula, basil, citrus chili oil, and shaved Parmesan. There's also salmon with mango jalapeño salsa, roasted carnival cauliflower, and soy ginger sauce. A new seasonal margarita contains watermelon-infused tequila, Cointreau, and fresh watermelon puree.