Cafe is a Dream
Uptown Dallas' original patio restaurant brings brunch to Lakewood crossroads
It's more brunch for Lakewood with an unusual expansion of famed Quadrangle restaurant Dream Cafe, opening in the Hillside Village Shopping Center at the northeast corner of Mockingbird Lane and Abrams Road, in fall 2015.
The Dream takes over the old Fuzzy's Taco, which departed suddenly in July. This will be the third Dream Cafe, joining the original and a second branch that opened in Addison in 2002.
What's different about this Dream Cafe is that it's a franchise. Mary O'Brien, who owns the chain with her brother Grady, extended a franchise to Christine Lott, a Lakewood resident who began working as a server for the Dream Cafe in the '90s.
"Christine is my partner in the Dream Cafe Addison, and she always hoped to open a cafe in Lakewood," O'Brien says. "We're excited about this opportunity."
The cafe will offer the same healthy menu, wine list, patio, and children's play area; Lott has already begun renovations on the Fuzzy's space.
O'Brien has also retained chef Kelly Hightower to devise a refreshed dinner menu for all locations. Hightower, who was most recently at Oso Food & Wine, has created dinner specials such as an Asian-accented salmon with a spring roll crust, bok choy, and edamame, in anticipation of a new dinner menu to be introduced in the fall.
One of the longest running restaurants in the city, the original Dream Cafe opened in 1986 on Knox Street, then relocated to the Quadrangle in 1988. The Dream has always been a vegetarian pick and was doing brunch way before brunch became the national obsession it is today. Over the decades, it has received every imaginable award for breakfast, brunch, patio, playground, kid-friendly, and more.
In recent years, the Quadrangle branch has become surrounded by major development, including the AMLI Quadrangle apartment building, which now occupies what was once a grassy greenspace that served as the Dream's unofficial extended patio.
