Tastemaker Awards

The 10 best restaurants in Dallas show that the city's still kicking

The 10 best Dallas restaurants for 2021 are a tasty bunch.

Photo courtesy of Haywire

We're 24 hours away from CultureMap's Tastemaker Awards, our annual celebration of the best in Dallas food and drink, and it's time to recognize the year's Best Restaurants.

These 10 restaurants range from revered classics to feisty upstarts, from fine-dining to BBQ, but all have one thing in common: Like many restaurants around Dallas-Fort Worth, they persevered during one of the hardest years in recent history, and hopefully emerged stronger.

This marks the final category in our editorial series, where we spotlighted nominees in categories such as best bars, best neighborhood restaurants, best rising star chefs, best pastry chefs, best bartenders, best ghost kitchens, and best chefs, determined by a panel of judges consisting of former CultureMap Tastemaker Award winners and local F&B experts.

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 best restaurants in Dallas for 2021:

Commons Club
Flagship restaurant at Virgin Hotels Dallas is open all day, with a bar, lounge, and adjacent coffee bar. Designed to feel like a members-only establishment, Commons Club has a fun ambience with a quirky-cool decor. The menu is trendy but approachable, ranging from a $15 burger to $44 steak frites to a seductive dish of house-made noodles in truffle butter.

Ellen's
Downtown Dallas restaurant has a great menu of Southern-style classics including meatloaf and chicken-fried steak, and is supremely accommodating, with open long hours and hot coffee at the ready, that give it a big-city sophistication. They've also been expanding, with an equally successful location in Allen and another one teed-up for East Dallas, both neighborhoods that are welcoming them with open arms. But the restaurant has also displayed leadership by boldly squaring off against the NRA, then taking a stance with masks, both of which earned them national attention.

Fearing's
Restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton starring legendary chef Dean Fearing could win this award every year. One of the most popular and acclaimed restaurants in Texas, it's a must-stop for celebrities, local diners, and business travelers, and the restaurant is geared for pandemic dining thanks to seven dining areas that include indoor and outdoor settings, ranging from casual to elegant. Nobody out there writes a sexier menu than Dean. Try this: Maple/Black Peppercorn Soaked Buffalo Tenderloin on Brazos Valley Jalapeno Grits, with a Tangle of Greens and Butternut Squash Taquito with Smoky Chili Sauce.

Haywire
Texas-themed restaurant from FrontBurner restaurants (Mexican Sugar, Whiskey Cake, Sixty Vines, Legacy Hall, etc.) started in Plano with an affirmation for local sourcing and craft cocktails that was ahead of its time when it opened in 2017. In June, they opened their second location in Uptown, bringing the same all-inclusive experience for everyone with a whiskey lounge, cozy wine room, butcher bar, and mimosa brunch on weekends.

Hudson House
The first Hudson House opened on Lovers Lane in 2017 with the goal of evoking neighborhood restaurants in New York's West Village, featuring a raw bar, oysters, cheeseburgers, martinis, and weekend brunch. The concept has since expanded to Addison, where it opened in 2018, and Lakewood, which opened in July 2020.

Jose
Park Cities hotspot features contemporary Mexican-inspired cuisine and a mixology program with artisanal spirits, highlighted by a collection of tequilas and mezcals. What was good became better when chef Anastacia "AQ" Quinones joined as chef. A firm believer in modern Mexican, this CIA graduate and 2018 Tastemaker Award winner has channeled her creativity to build and layer complex flavors into every bite at José. In the midst of the pandemic, they conjured up a ghost kitchen called Provecho Pollos with roast chicken and homey Mexican soup.

Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen
Truly authentic Vietnamese restaurant is from Carol Nguyen, who's drawing from her Ha Noi upbringing, inspired by food served by the street vendors in Vietnam. Nguyen and her family owned and opened the Cajun restaurant Crazee Crab in Grand Prairie, but this is the first restaurant to reflect her own heritage. Named after her mother, it's female-owned and female-run.

Nori Handroll Bar
Elegant sushi bar in Deep Ellum specializes in handrolls, aka temaki, a more forgiving version of sushi. Sheets of seaweed are wrapped in a cone or cylindrical shape, enclosing a filling of rice, fish, and vegetables — your basic sushi ingredients but assembled to order, so that the seaweed still has a little crackle of freshness and hasn't turned gummy. You don't want gummy. It's a highly personal experience with each roll you order delivered separately, as soon as it's been made. Handrolls have become a trend and Nori was one of the first in DFW.

Oishii
Sushi spot started out near Dallas' Medical District with great sushi and bargain prices that drew not only staffers from UT Southwestern nearby but also chowhounds from all around Dallas, who appreciated the doting attention from owner Thanh Nguyen. In recent years, he's been in expansion mode: First he opened a location near SMU in early 2020, a month before the pandemic hit, followed by another location in Plano, which just opened at the end of July.

Slow Bone BBQ
BBQ joint on the edge of the Dallas Design District serves award-winning smoked meats, noteworthy fried chicken, and creative veggie sides such as pea salad and sweet potato hash — better than what you ordinarily find at a BBQ joint. With Jeffery Hobbs at the helm, it's a chef's take on BBQ. You have your brisket, sausage, and ribs, but also innovative dishes like squash puppies - hush puppies infused with chopped squash. He's pivoted successfully through the pandemic with convenient meals to go like his Asian-BBQ fusion Freaky Friday Fried Rice, topped with pork ribs.

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Spring Arrival

West Dallas gets new Spanish-Peruvian restaurant with big-name chef

Photo courtesy of Ulloa's

Paella will be on the menu.

A new restaurant with a high-profile culinary director will bring Spanish and Peruvian flavors to West Dallas: Called Ulloa’s, it is coming to 727 Fort Worth Ave., with a projected opening in March 2027.

The concept is from philanthropists Susan and Woodrow Gandy, who were previously investors in the historic Belmont Hotel just around the corner. They've teamed up with Dallas celebrity chef Kent Rathbun as culinary director, along with Christopher Tunnell as general manager to lead the front of the house.

Rathbun is a name Dallas diners know well, with a resume that includes The Mansion on Turtle Creek, the Landmark Restaurant at the historic Melrose Hotel, Seventeen Seventeen at the Dallas Museum of Art, Abacus, Jasper's, Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen, and more. He's won numerous awards and made multiple appearances on Food Network. He was most recently behind the launch of On The Rocks, an Italian bistro in Burleson.

Chef Kent Rathbun will be the culinary director of Ulloa's. Photo courtesy of Kent Rathbun

Tunnell’s background spans both culinary direction and front-of-house operations. He worked at Los Angeles hot spots Ketchup, Geisha House, and Les Deux, as well as the Mandalay Bay and The Mirage in Las Vegas, before moving to Dallas to open The Mexican, the upscale restaurant in the Design District.

“I am truly excited to partner with Chef Kent Rathbun, whose reputation is amazing — not only in the DFW Metroplex, but in the culinary world,” Tunnell says. “He has been with this project since the beginning, helping develop it; this will be a very chef-driven, culinary-forward restaurant.”

The team's vision for Ulloa’s is both culinary and urban, with hopes of anchoring the corridor and attracting other businesses to Fort Worth Avenue — a stretch connecting downtown Dallas with Oak Cliff that remains somewhat underdeveloped despite its panoramic skyline views.

The restaurant is named for Spanish explorer, astronomer, and scientist Antonio de Ulloa, who spent extensive time in the Mexican peninsula before becoming Louisiana’s first governor. During his travels, Ulloa documented a fogbow — a circular rainbow formed when sunlight meets mist that causes silhouettes standing between the sun and fog to appear ringed in light, a phenomenon known today as “Ulloa’s Rings.”

That vibrant phenomenon inspired both the restaurant's identity and logo. The concept promises "bold, worldly flavors in a welcoming neighborhood setting inspired by exploration and discovery,” the owners say.

Ulloa's Rendering of Ulloa's.Rendering courtesy of Ulloa's

While the menu remains in development, Tunnell describes the culinary direction as “Spanish soul with a Peruvian heart.” The kitchen will merge the coastal flavors of both traditions — ranging from paellas and ceviches to crafted cocktails and signature adaptations by Rathbun.

The 200-seat, two-story space will feature a downstairs dining room, a large bar, and an outdoor patio. Upstairs, plans call for a secondary bar, a private dining room, a patio, and an expansive balcony patio, offering views of the city's skyline and of the Margaret Hunt Hill and Margaret McDermott bridges.

While the upstairs space will be available for private events, the owners intend for it to operate primarily as an organic extension of the main restaurant. The buildout will include a guest elevator along with ample parking, including both self-parking and valet options.

The team says the restaurant will have have an aesthetic that's “warm, theatrical, generous, elegant but alive, with the energy of a great Spanish tapas bar and the soul of Peruvian hospitality.”

Ulloa’s plans to launch with dinner service first, followed by lunch and weekend brunch.

restaurants bars peruvian flavors west dallas oak cliff kent rathbun