Where to Eat

Where to eat in Dallas right now: 11 restaurants with the Impossible burger

The Impossible burger is no longer impossible to find.

Photo courtesy of Impossible Foods

The Impossible Burger is the most famous veggie burger in the world. It's the plant-based burger made from wheat protein, potato protein, blah blah, but the "talker" is the fact that it "bleeds." Thanks to a plant-based protein called heme, it has a convincing burger-like redness that makes it one of the most convincing imitations of ground beef — so convincing that it's pitched not to vegetarians but to die-hard meat eaters.

Originally doled out to just a few places, the Impossible burger is now available as a menu option at around 2,000 restaurants nationwide.

Here are some of the places you can find it in Dallas:

Bar Louie
Bar Louie, the casual/contemporary chain, is a new player in the Impossible world, having introduced the Impossible burger at all locations in June 2018. They serve it on a buttered brioche bun with lettuce, tomato, a slice of red onion, and garlic aioli, with a side of fries.

Buzz Brews
Small chain focused on breakfast has a number of veggie-friendly options on the menu including its own veggie burger, veggie sausage for breakfast, a steamed veggie plate, and a vegetarian soup of the day. For its Impossible burger entry, it services it on a wheat bun, with lettuce, tomato, a slice of red onion, mayo, and a speared pickle.

Hopdoddy Burger Bar
Austin-based better burger chain was one of the very first restaurants in the U.S., definitely the first in Texas, to land the Impossible burger on its menu in 2017. Their regular presentation serves it with topped with Tillamook cheddar, "sassy" sauce — thousand island dressing, maybe? — lettuce, tomato, and diced white onion on a poppyseed bun. They also do a vegan-style with vegan mayo and vegan smoked Gouda cheese by Follow Your Heart.

Houlihan's
The longtime national restaurant-bar chain already had its own veggie burger made from black beans and brown rice, but added the Impossible burger to its menu at all 68 locations in late May. They serve it topped with cheddar, special sauce — thousand island dressing, probably — shredded lettuce, and two thick slices of tomato on a brioche bun, with a side of fries, for $11.50.

Humperdinks
Ahead-of-its-time craft beer brewpub got the Impossible burger pretty early, in early May. It's served on a toasted, H-branded bun, with shredded Romaine, sliced tomato, and sliced red onion, then topped with American cheese and a pickled giardiniera mix. Humperdinks also has a portabella-based veggie burger which you can order vegan by removing the chipotle mayo.

Liberty Burger
Dallas-based better-burger chain already has a veggie burger that gets raves, but added the Impossible burger not only as an offering with the standard lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onion, but also as an alternative patty you can substitute for any of the standard burger options on their menu.

Pinstack Bowl and Bite
Bowling-restaurant concept got a jump on the Impossible burger when it began serving it in March. It's pretty basic, topped with smoked cheddar, iceberg lettuce, pickles and "Pinstack signature sauce" — thousand-island dressing, ya think? — on a brioche bun.

Pluckers Wing Bar
While Pluckers is obviously known for chicken, its menu is actually more expansive than one might expect, with chips and queso, stuffed jalapenos, and other bar-food specials. Their rendition of the Impossible burger comes with choice of cheese, lettuce, grilled onions, and Pluckers sauce, which seems like it could be thousand island dressing.

Rodeo Goat
Small Dallas-Fort Worth burger chain from Shannon Wynne has the Impossible burger on its menu as one of its "alternative" options to beef, along with chicken, turkey, veggie, or quinoa patty. For $2 extra, you can get it with any of the restaurant's 20 burger compositions, such as its signature chaca oaxaca, with avocado, fried egg, and Tabasco mayo.

Slater's 50/50
Southern California chain, which that takes its name from its burger made of 50 percent ground beef and 50 percent bacon, does a characteristically indulgent rendition of the Impossible burger, serving it with an avocado mash and topping it with a fried sunny-side egg.

Thirsty Lion Gastropub & Grill
Bar-restaurant at the Toyota Music Factory grills its Impossible burger and tops it with cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, dill pickles, and thousand-island dressing. Finally, a restaurant willing to call its "special sauce" thousand-island dressing! It's served on a toasted brioche bun and comes with fries for $14.95.

Uncle Uber's, the sandwich shop in Deep Ellum, and V-Eats, the vegan restaurant at Trinity Groves, also offer the Impossible burger as an alternative for their regular burgers.

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Asian Food News

Taste of Malaysia restaurant brings rare Asian cuisine to Dallas area

Taste of Malaysia

A new restaurant has debuted in Coppell with a cuisine that's relatively rare in Dallas. Called Taste of Malaysia, it's now open at 3001 Olympus Blvd #130, at the Sound at Cypress Waters, between an Ari's Italian market and a Kilwin's ice cream shop, where it's serving authentic Malaysian dishes and flavors — adding another option to Dallas' burgeoning Asian restaurant scene.

A neighbor to Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia, Malaysia has been described as having some of the best street food in Southeast Asia, boasting a mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and indigenous flavors. Signature dishes include satays — skewered meats — plus vividly spiced soups and rice dishes.

The country's national dish is nasi lemak, a beloved comfort food originally devised as a breakfast staple, featuring fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk with pandan leaves, sometimes enhanced with boiled egg and sliced cucumber and ikan bilis, i.e. anchovies.

Coming in at a close second is laksa, a spicy noodle soup made with rice noodles or egg noodles in a broth flavored with aromatic spices, shrimp paste, and coconut milk or tamarind.

These are the dishes that natives of Malaysia and fans of Malaysian food crave, says Shiva Nair, part of the team, along with his wife, Vsruti "Vish" Nair, that opened Taste of Malaysia.

Shiva has more than 20 years in the hospitality business including managing hotels and running other restaurants.

"There are a lot of Malaysians here in Dallas-Fort Worth but not many Malaysian restaurants," Shiva says. "That's what gave us the idea to open this."

Their menu features seven varieties of nasi lemak — including vegetable curry, chicken curry, slow cooked beef, slow-cooked chicken, fried chicken, fish, and spicy shrimp — all made with coconut rice, peanuts, boiled egg, and cucumber.

They also have fried rice, noodle dishes, satay chicken skewers, spring rolls, a samosa-style pastry with potatoes and vegetables called karipap, and a chicken "kutlet" — a breaded patty with minced chicken enclosed in a crunchy crust.

All of their meat is halal, meaning that the animals are raised and butchered in accordance with Islamic guidelines — a growing trend in Dallas-Fort Worth.

There's a full bar and the ultimate lure for timid diners: a lunchtime buffet, $18 on weekdays and $20 on weekends, with 15 to 20 dishes, with chicken, shrimp, fish, and vegetarian and vegan options, which are plentiful in Malaysian cuisine.

"We serve the buffet only at lunch, so that those who are unfamiliar with the cuisine can sample every dish," Shiva says.

"We saw an opportunity to bring Malaysian flavors to North Texas, a region hungry for authentic, halal-certified Asian food with real spicing and real heritage," he says.

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