Pastry News

Acclaimed Dallas sweet shop decamps after decimating Range Rover crash

You can still get their perfect pastries.

Photo by J McClure Photography

An acclaimed Oak Cliff bakery has been uprooted: Rush Patisserie which has been baking impeccable croissants, tarts, cakes, and pastries in the Bishop Arts neighborhood since 2009, has closed its operation at 120 Eldorado Ave., in the same building as Spiral Diner.

The closure was prompted by a freak accident in early May that decimated the shop. A woman behind the wheel of a Range Rover drove right into the building, punching a massive car-sized hole through the shop's western-facing brick wall.

Luckily, owner Samantha Rush was not in the building at the time, but it wreaked utter havoc, not only on the building but on all of her fixtures and furniture.

"I had left about 45 minutes beforehand," Rush says. "The driver took out everything: our sales area, our tables and chairs — she went through a double brick wall, so it created structural damage."

Rush is a native of New York and former accountant who graduated from the Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and founded her bakery-cafe in Deep Ellum in 2007, before relocating to Oak Cliff in 2009.

She's earned countless "best" awards for her beautiful desserts, from croissants to macarons to elaborate wedding cakes.

Although the accident put her retail operation on hold, it hasn't shut Rush Patisserie down. Her pastries are still sold at both locations of Drip Coffee, and also available via custom order, a practice that she, like many businesses, ramped up during the pandemic.

"I have always had a commissary kitchen, and we're still baking every day," she says. "People can call and place an order, and we've been making deliveries and meeting customers. It put a damper on the retail side, but we've still been selling baked goods every day."

Oddly, this was the second pastry shop to be breached by a big dumb SUV: In November 2020, an SUV crashed into kitchen of Dallas bakery Haute Sweets Patisserie. Owner Tida Pichakron and her coworkers survived although they suffered contusions, bruising, second-degree burns, and other injuries.

Joe McElroy, who owns the building where Rush was located, says that it also happened recently to another one of his properties in Oak Cliff. He was able to salvage the Rush space, although he says the mural that was painted on the wall has not been restored.

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Wings News

New chicken wing joint sells 'em by the pound in Dallas' Deep Ellum

Wings By the Pound

A no-nonsense wing spot has debuted in Dallas' Deep Ellum: Called Wings By the Pound, it sells exactly that, at a shop at 2707 Main St., in the former home of the Slutty Vegan burger joint, which closed in 2024.

Wings by the Pound states proudly that it "isn't a combo joint" but is instead "a counter built on one idea — call your weight, watch it hit the scale, and take it off the scale." Then presumably you take it home, you eat it, end of story.

It presents itself as an alternative to typical wing spots which sell wings by the number. Numbers are complicated.

"We sell you weight. Pick wings or tenders, call your poundage from a half-pound to four, and we weigh it up in front of you," they say.

From there it's the standard wing-joint set of choices: wings or tenders, level of heat, sauces, and sides. "No combos, no guessing," they brag, although is there a lot of guessing with wings?

Here's some very specific numbers:

One pound of wings, which they approximate at 12 pieces, is $15.05. Two pounds, or 24 pieces, is $27.11.
One pound of tenders, which they approximate at 8 pieces, is $17.02. Two pounds, or 16 pieces, is $25.06.

They also sell french fries — crinkle cut — in choice of plain, cheese sauce, or "pound sauce" for $8 to $15. Pound sauce is their version of the prototypical secret sauce, which generally boils down to Russian-ish dressing, i.e., mayonnaise and ketchup with various add-ins, spicy and otherwise; the version at Wings By the Pound incorporates hot sauce.

There are wet sauces, including Thai, chipotle, hot honey, and garlic Parm; dry rubs, including suya (peanut) and jalapeño-lemon; and five dips: cheese sauce, ranch, bleu cheese, honey mustard, and pound sauce.

Some might recall that there was a Wings By the Pound concept that first debuted in 2020 at Trinity Groves, the restaurant incubator in West Dallas, but that closed in 2022.

This Wings By the Pound is a new concept from ArkDal Hospitality Group, headed by Cary Thompson, Royce Colley, and Mo Wells, which also operates Velour Restaurant in Victory Park.

The location in Deep Ellum has no seating on premise and functions as a take-out spot only. A spokesperson said that the location opened in mid-June.

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