Nick News

Dallas' busiest chef races in with Baja-style restaurant on Greenville Ave

Details on menu are scant but will surely include chips.

Photo by Robert Bertholf

There's an exciting new tenant taking over the storied location at 1520 Greenville Ave., from one of Dallas' best known and most prolific restaurateurs.

This is the space that was most recently Haymaker, the Austin gastropub. Now it's in the hands of beloved chef Nick Badovinus, who will open a casual cantina there called Desert Racer.

Badovinus surely has his hands full, what with his Neighborhood Services concept, as well as his Design District steakhouse Town Hearth, his seafood restaurant Montlake Cut, his burger joint Off Site Kitchen, and his recently opened pizzeria Perfect Union Pizza.

But he still has yet to dabble in Mexican food.

With Desert Racer, the inspiration comes from the Baja 1000, the rogue desert racing event held on Mexico's Baja California peninsula since 1967. A "desert racer" is a rough-and-ready off-road vehicle.

This fits in with Badovinus' pattern of applying an automotive component to his restaurant creations. Town Hearth, his swanky Design District restaurant, opened with a 1961 MG and a Ducati sport bike as part of the decor. Perfect Union Pizza boasts a Ducati mountaineer vintage motorcycle.

Dubbed the "continent's last untamed desert race," the Baja 1000 is an unpredictable, even dangerous event that attracts adventurers and unruly spectators, with partying and all-day drinking built-in components, along with nightly visits to the local cantina for beer, seafood, and margaritas.

Too soon for details on the menu at Desert Racer, but fear not, Badovinus has a vision.

"Southwestern U.S. and Baja-inspired cantina is the game," he says. "And it'll feature a live-fire/smoke method of cooking."

It'll be a casual concept with a big indoor-outdoor space — one that capitalizes on the patio Haymaker left behind. Haymaker invested more than a year into prepping the location, which was previously a Flying Saucer, and way before that, the legendary Flip's Wine Bar.

The space where the patio is was once upon a time a Mexican restaurant called La Jaivita, and way back in the day, a location of Sammy's Drive-In.

Dallas generally likes things from Austin, making Haymaker's closure a surprise, especially since it opened with of-the-moment trends such as poutine and craft beer. But the block of Greenville that's below Ross Avenue has not had the same draw as above. For example, Pints & Quarts, the fun hot dog place from Brooke Humphries, left its prime spot at Greenville and Ross and decamped for the Centrum Building in Oak Lawn.

But none of those had a Nick Badovinus, who is also creating two restaurants in downtown Dallas, in the cool, triangular Magnolia Oil building: National Anthem and PMA All Day.

Desert Racer will open before those, and construction has been ongoing since early summer, but Badovinus doesn't an opening date yet.

"No official timetable," he says. "It opens when it's ready."

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Tex-Mex News

Get Tex-Mex and bargain margs at Alexander's Cantina in North Dallas

A Mexican restaurant with a killer happy hour has debuted in North Dallas: Alexander's Cantina & Cocina, a family-owned restaurant and bar, has opened at 4805 Frankford Rd. #105, a space most recently occupied by Casa Don Luis Tex-Mex and before that, a Corner Bakery.

Alexander's is a bigger-and-better spinoff of Alexander's Mex Cuisine, a restaurant opened in Plano in 2023 by Bernardo Garduño and his family, featuring Tex-Mex and street food from his hometown Mexico City.

Garduño worked for many years in the service industry before coming to Dallas in 2015. He crafted Alexander's menu by drawing on his restaurant experience, along with recipes from his mom.

Signature dishes include:

Pambazo — Mexican bread dipped in chili sauce, filled with potatoes, chorizo, and queso, then fried
Alambre — steak, ham, and bacon with onion, peppers, and cheese
Bistek a la Mexicana — steak tips, onion, and bell pepper simmered in a spicy tomato sauce until it turns into a stew

Other crowd-pleasers include chicken mole, brisket tacos, birria, fajitas, enchiladas, and more. They have a big selection of seafood including tacos with salmon and coconut shrimp, plus vegetarian options such as veggie fajitas and spinach enchiladas. One favorite extra: Their chips come not only with salsa but also black bean dip.

The new location has given them room to grow in a way they were unable to do in Plano, Garduño says.

"Plano is doing very well but that location is small, and there was no room to expand," he says. "We did extensive renovations at the Dallas location that included the addition of a bar, as well as room for parties and entertainment, like salsa on Fridays and Saturdays."

The menu at the two locations is basically the same but Dallas has a few new dishes such as mojarra frita, a whole tilapia fried and served with rice, plus carnitas, and a few more tacos, he says.

One item they recently dropped: soft-serve margaritas. Garduño was quick to jump on that early 2026 trend, and Alexander's made many a "soft-serve margarita" list, but the trend turned out to be short-lived.

"It did well for a month, but people went right back to regular margaritas," he says. "Those drinks are fun but they're very sweet. The mix has to be highly sugared in order to get the texture correct. The ingredients and equipment to make it were expensive, which meant we had to charge more for it — $16 as opposed to $10 for our regular margaritas."

Garduño has kept an eye on the trend. "We're not the only place no longer doing it," he says.

Besides, it was not a good fit with Alexander's generous happy hour, featuring $5.50 house margaritas, $6 flavored margaritas, and $4 beer, available from 11 am-6 pm every day at the Plano location, and Sunday-Thursday at Dallas.

"Our happy hour has become one of our trademarks," he says.

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