Tastemaker Awards

10 best ghost kitchens in Dallas take takeout to another level

Chicken is a major trend in the ghost kitchen world.

Courtesy of Guy Fieri

A key part of our annual CultureMap Tastemaker Awards, celebrating the best in Dallas food and drink, is a category we call the wild card, which changes from year to year, depending on what culinary trends have emerged.

Prior wild cards have included cuisines such as fried chicken, but for 2021, it's all about the ghost kitchen. Sometimes called a virtual kitchen, it's a new model of restaurant where there's an entire menu but no actual brick-and-mortar location. Instead, the food is all delivery or to-go.

Ghost kitchens arose directly from the pandemic, when dining-in became a challenge, but they show signs of lingering, well past that day in the future when we achieve herd immunity.

It's one chapter in our editorial series, where we spotlight nominees in categories such as best bars, best neighborhood restaurants, best rising star chefs, and best restaurants — voted on by a panel of judges consisting of former CultureMap Tastemaker Award winners and local F&B experts, who helped narrow down the final list to 10 finalists.

Who will win? Find out at the Tastemaker Awards party on August 19 at Fashion Industry Gallery, where we’ll dine on bites from nominated restaurants while emcee CJ Starr reveals the winners. Buy tickets here.

Here are the 10 nominees for Best Ghost Kitchen:

Fuku - David Chang
Celeb chef opened the first Fuku, starring his famous fried chicken sandwich, in New York in 2015. Now he has ghost kitchens in cities such as Baltimore, Miami, and Philadelphia. In Dallas, he has two locations: 501 N. Houston St. in downtown Dallas and 3100 Dallas Pkwy. in Plano. Four chicken fingers with sauce are $9.50; so is a sandwich with chicken fingers, pickles, fuku mayo, and butter on a Martins potato roll. Add waffle fries, pickles, two sauces, and a drink, and it's $14.50.

George Lopez Tacos
Well known comedian is doing street tacos with choice of chicken tinga or pork carnitas, in two varieties: one with diced onion & cilantro, salsa verde, pickled onions, and roasted jalapenos; and another with fire-roasted peppers & onions, fresh diced onion & cilantro, salsa verde, and avocado crema. An order of three tacos is $13-$14. They also have chips, guacamole, and churro bites.

Guy Fieri's Flavortown
Operating out of the Brio Italian Grille / Buca di Beppo family, Fieri's delivery-only restaurant features prototypical Guy food: bourbon brown sugar BBQ wings, a burger topped with mac & cheese, Buffalo wings, bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers, cheesesteak egg rolls, Cuban sandwich, queso dip, and a chicken "Parm-eroni" with chicken, mozzarella, provolone, pepperoni red sauce, crispy pepperoni hay, parmesan, and spaghetti.

MeMee's Wings
Family venture between three sisters specializes in a unique twist on Memphis-style chicken wings, tossed in honey and blended with tangy spices. They also offer chicken tenders, plus sides that include fried okra, crinkle-cut French fries with their own seasoning, and a "twice stuffed" potato, which is their spin on the "twice baked" potato.

Okaeri Cafe
Adored pop-up specializes in authentic Japanese dishes such as okonomiyaki pancakes, made with shredded cabbage; omurice, a fusion dish with a soft omelet draped over a dome of fried rice; and bento boxes, with Japanese curry and mounds of rice molded into adorable little bear-shapes. They don't have any pop-ups currently scheduled, but they are making plans to open a brick-and-mortar location in Richardson.

Provecho Pollos - Jose
Concept tucked inside José restaurant from chef Anastasia "AQ" Quinones specializes in chicken: a half or whole chicken that has been brined, marinated, and roasted, along with Mexican soup with potatoes, cabbage, carrots, corn and Mexican squash; charro beans, salsas, and Mexican rice. They also do two desserts, also very homey: churros or Mexican rice pudding.

Secret Sauce BBQ - City Works
Takeout-only concept operates out of City Works Eatery & Pour House in Frisco and Fort Worth, featuring queso dip, wings, tacos, mac & cheese, and country-fried chicken, plus BBQ options such as baby back ribs, hot links, and pulled pork, served with white bread, pickles, and sides such as grits, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, chipotle slaw, and maple bacon baked beans.

TLC Vegan Kitchen
Vegan chef Troy Gardner was one of the first to introduce a ghost kitchen concept when he debuted TLC in May 2020. He offers a lengthy selection of vegan items which you can get in family-style meals or boxed lunches. The menu features chili, chicken-fried steak, lasagna with house made ricotta, mozzarella, & parmesan, and desserts including chocolate lava cake and banana foster pudding.

Wow Bao - Revolving Kitchen
Chicago-based outfit specializes in fast Asian street food including bao, pan-seared potstickers, steamed dumplings, rice & noodle bowls, soups, salads, and specialty drinks such as fresh ginger ale. They've partnered with Reef Kitchens, a big player in the ghost-kitchen world, to launch locations across the U.S., including Austin and Dallas, where they're camped at Revolving Kitchen, the Garland home base for many Dallas-area ghost kitchen concepts.

World Pizza Party - Revolving Kitchen
This second virtual concept for vegan chef and ghost kitchen master Troy Gardner is Dallas' first all vegan pizzeria, operating out of Revolving Kitchen, with a menu that includes nine varieties, from sausage & mushroom to BBQ chicken to spicy Sicilian to "pig-less" pepperoni, all made with plant-based products, including Impossible beef and creamy mozzarella made from cashews.

bests awards tastemakers trends

Noodle News

YouTube critic Mike Chen ranks his favorite noodles in Dallas

Pho Pasteur

YouTube food critic Mike Chen, who travels the world spotlighting mostly Asian restaurants for his Strictly Dumpling YouTube channel, recently dropped into Dallas to rank his favorite noodles in town.

Titled "24 Hours Eating The Best NOODLES + DUMPLINGS Around DFW," the video follows Chen as he visits five restaurants, ordering noodles and dumplings at his favorite places as well as new discoveries.

The visit marked a return to DFW for Chen, who briefly resided in North Texas in 2021 and who has previously posted videos covering ramen, Vietnamese food, sushi, and barbecue.

Here's where he ate:

Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling
The video starts out with him noting that "there's a lot of new noodle places around the Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco area," before entering Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling, a Chinese Halal restaurant that makes its own noodles, with locations in Plano and McKinney (which CultureMap covered in May — do you think he saw our story?!).

He raves over the extensive menu, featuring not only noodles but "a bunch of dumplings" and many other options like walnut shrimp and mapo tofu.

He also raves over the price. "Wow — $10 for Biangbiang noodles" [a dish featuring flat noodles with minced garlic, green onion, chili powder] — "only in Texas," he says.

He orders the Big Plate chicken, like a chicken stew with flat noodles, chunks of soft potato, carrots, yellow onion, green onion, bell pepper, and cilantro; as well as a variety of dumplings, including beef, pork, chicken & corn, veggie, and soup dumplings, heaping praise on their light chewy wrapper.

"My philosophy is always, eat the worst first and save the best for last, so let's start with the veggie dumplings," he said.

Pho Pasteur
On Day 2, he goes to Pho Pasteur, a longtime highly acclaimed family-owned chain with locations in Richardson, Arlington, and Carrollton, the location he visits.

"I've been thinking about this place for a long long time," he says. "I remember when I was living here, this was one of my favorites."

He orders pho with fatty brisket — "because here in Texas, whenever you see brisket, you get the brisket," he says.

After taking a sip of the broth, he proclaims, "This is the stuff — I've always said that this place has one of the best, if not THE best broth in America, with such a concentrated beefy flavor, and it's got so much depth."

"This might be one of my most-missed food items after I left Dallas," he says.

z.TAO Marketplace
His next destination is the z.TAO Marketplace, an Asian grocery store and food court in Plano which oddly has not updated its social media presence since 2020. He oohs and aahs over the supermarket's bounty including the many different Asian flavors of Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Fanta, then orders a bowl of hulatang, a traditional thick Northern Chinese soup, hand-pulled dan dan noodles, and a sandwich with chopped pork.

Moriya Shokudo Ramen & Curry
He also visits Moriya Shokudo, which started out in a food court in Koreatown before opening a stand-alone restaurant in Richardson in 2024, and which has won local awards for its ramen and curry.

He orders the garlic ramen and marvels at its garlicky-ness, with a black garlic-flavored tonkotsu broth along with roasted whole garlic cloves.

"This is a really intensely garlicky bowl — to call it intense would be an understatement," he says. "I would say this is a must-try."

Pho Big Bowl
His last place is Pho Big Bowl, a Vietnamese restaurant which started out in Watauga before opening a location in Carrollton in 2022.

He likes the lightness and yet potent beefy flavor of the broth. "I feel like when I'm here in Texas, I don't add nearly as much sriracha as I would at places in New York or Seattle," he says.

"I am really jealous of all the good pho places you have here in the Dallas area," he says. "I feel like, of all the cities in Texas, this area has the best pho, hands down."

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