Spicy Food News

Asian restaurant with Lao and Thai food takes the spice to East Dallas

The restaurant has a big following in the foodie world.

Photo courtesy of Zaap Lao

A venerable East Dallas center is about to get a new buzzy Asian restaurant, opening its second location: Zaap Kitchen Lao & Thai Street Eats, a Greenville Avenue restaurant that serves food from Laos and Thailand, is opening a location at Casa Linda Plaza, at the corner of Buckner Boulevard and Garland Road.

Owner Tony Singharaj confirmed that he and his family are opening their second location and aim to have it open by the end of the year.

Construction is currently underway. A spokesperson for Edens, which owns Casa Linda Plaza, said that the restaurant will open on the northeast corner, in the same quadrant as Petco.

"The space is being renovated and getting a facelift by the landlord right now," Singharaj says. "And then once they are done, we can start building out the interior."

Zaap serves Laotian cuisine alongside Thai street food. Singharaj and his wife opened their first location in 2018 at 6107 Greenville Ave. to bring Laotian food to a new neighborhood.

Singharaj is a restaurant veteran whose brother Boi owns Sabaidee Lao & Thai Cuisine, which, like Zaap, offers both Laotian and Thai dishes. But its two locations — the original at 5200 Lemmon Ave. and a second that opened in Rowlett in early 2019 — are take-out only. (Sabaidee is also opening a location in Prosper, still under construction.)

Zaap was designed as a more spacious place where diners could sit down.

They make everything to order and with a higher level of spice than other Asian cuisines. "Laotian flavors are more bold," a Zaap spokesperson says.

There is sizzling Lao sausage, heavenly beef jerky, crispy wings, dancing garlic riblets, and juicy pork shoulder bites. Pineapple fried rice is a dish with ingredients that teeter between savory and sweet, with egg, cashews, pineapple, raisins, peas, carrots, onion, tomato, and garlic.

There's Laotian fried rice with egg, white onions, green onion, tomato, and garlic, which you can get as-is or with chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, or tofu.

Zaap follows a fast-casual service model, to make it faster for those who are on tight lunch hours, and its to-go business is brisk.

openings

Pizza News

Yonx Pizza seduces north Dallas suburbs with New York-style pies

Yonx

Yonx Pizza, by the slice.

A pizzeria with a dedicated following has debuted in Melissa: Yonx Pizza Bar & Co., an indie spot that does New York-style pizzas as well as pizza by the slice, has opened a location at 1521 McKinney St. #700 — an address that had pizza history as it was home for nearly a decade to a Palio's Pizza, which closed in 2025.

Yonx is from Robert Hede, a restaurant veteran who was previously involved with the Village Burger Bar chain, where he was a partner. He switched from burgers to pizza in 2022 when he connected with NY Pizza and Pints, a small local pizzeria chain, opening a location in Wylie at 1125 FM 544 #800. After two years, he broke off from the chain to found Yonx at the same address.

Yonx does the kind of New York-style thin-crust pizza that Dallas-Fort Worth loves, in a standard 14-inch, as well as a massive 24-inch "Kong" size. They also do slices, which can be ordered as a lunch with a Caesar salad for $9.99.

Varieties include familiar favorites like pepperoni, as well as slightly gourmet options with New York-inspired names such as:

Balsamic on Bleeker St., with garlic sauce, mushrooms, shaved ribeye, mozzarella cheese, arugula, and balsamic drizzle
Bronx Bomb, with Sicilian marinara, mozzarella, meatballs, mushrooms, and ricotta cheese
Brooklyn, basically a meat-lovers with Sicilian marinara, mozzarella, sliced ham, chopped meatball, beef, & pepperoni
Greenwich Garden, a vegetarian with Sicilian marinara, mozzarella, red & green bell peppers, white onions, mushrooms, spinach, & black olives

Prices range from $16 for a 14-inch cheese pizza to $46 for a NY Giant Supreme Soho with Sicilian marinara, mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage, beef, red & green bell peppers, white onions, sliced mushrooms, & black olives.

Yonx Pizza soup in a bread bowl.Photo courtesy of Yonx

There are also sandwiches on house-made toasted focaccia such as the Italian tower with melted provolone cheese, sliced ham, salami, lettuce, red onion, pepperoncinis, & sundried tomato aioli.

Appetizers include comforting soups served in a bread bowl including tomato basil and jalapeno cream soup with charred jalapenos. Plus wings, garlic knots, and "Brooklyn Ballers" — their signature meatballs in marinara, made in-house. topped with whipped ricotta and Parmesan, served with pesto and focaccia ends.

A full bar features frozen margaritas and frozen mojitos made with agave gold tequila. The best day to order those is "Frozen Fridays" from 11 am-10:30 pm when the blueberry mojitos are $6 and the margaritas are $5.

The Melissa location opened in January, with the same menu as the Wylie original, and has been met with an unprecedented wave of positive reviews on Facebook: one comment after another raving over how great the pizza is, and what a godsend it is — positive reviews that began to stack up even before the place had officially opened, the likes of which have been rarely seen.

This location boasts almost double the size of the original in Wylie, with a covered patio where they'll host live music on the weekends outside.

Hede, who has been hands-on at the Melissa location since it opened, says he's all-in on these northernmost suburbs of Dallas.

"I like this area — I feel like all the growth is heading out in this direction, there's just a lot of activity up here," he says.

pizza openings