News You Can Eat

A cluster of openings and more fall happenings in Dallas restaurant news

For this roundup of Dallas-Fort Worth restaurant news, the usual openings and closings are eclipsed by menu announcements and pumpkin tales. Everyone's doing autumnal menus and pumpkin dishes. Many of these are available for a limited time only. Go get 'em.

The Original Pancake House is opening a branch in Irving, in the old Johnny Carino's space at 635 and MacArthur Boulevard. There are currently six OPHs in the Dallas area. If you've had their Dutch baby pancake, if you've had their mushroom omelet topped with mushroom sherry sauce, if you've had their cherry kijafa crepe, then you know that six branches is not enough. Good news outside of DFW: Their future plans include a branch in Houston in summer 2016 and a location in San Antonio later in the year.

East Hampton Sandwich Co. has opened its branch at 3888 Oak Lawn Ave., in Turtle Creek Village, in the old Good Eats space. EHSC specializes in sandwiches and salads, including its famed lobster roll. The first Dallas-area branch opened in Snider Plaza in October 2012, and a second branch opened in Plano at the Shops at Legacy in 2013.

Rockfish Seafood & Grill will open a location in Frisco, at 9179 Dallas Parkway. This will follow the new more accessible and contemporary design that debuted at the Lewisville store in 2014, and will be the company's design moving forward. Rockfish has 12 restaurants in Texas, 9 in Dallas/Fort Worth, two in Houston, and one lonely branch in Lubbock.

World of Beer is introducing a fall menu. Huh, how do you like that, a craft beer place getting all foodie. Dishes include Dogfish Head sliders, featuring pork and beef meatloaf with gravy made with Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale; skillet cornbread, cooked in a cast-iron skillet, topped with arugula and roasted corn; Colorado chili with steak, chorizo, and red bean chili; and a pimento cheese dip, served with celery and garlic toast.

Malai Kitchen is serving wine flights. Owners Braden and Yasmin Wages are passionate about debunking the myth that wine is difficult to pair with Southeast Asian food. The price is $22 for four red or white wines (3-ounce pours), and combines wines from Bordeaux, Spain, California, and Australia.

True Food Kitchen recently released its fall menu with dishes such as a seasonal vegetable board, kale crunch salad, bison short rib, and butternut squash pizza.

Pinstack has introduced a fall menu, with dishes such as a burger topped with gruyere and jalapeno bacon marmalade, chicken wrap, autumn wedge salad, and more.

The Mitchell has a new lunch menu that is tres French: French onion soup, country-style pork terrine, tuna Nicoise salad wraps, quiche Lorraine, ham-and-cheese croissant sandwich, grilled chicken paillard, $2 oysters. And for dessert, beignets, creme brulee, chocolate truffles. Do you have to wear a beret to eat there?

Madrina now offers lunch, Tuesday-Friday from 11:30 am-2:30 pm. The menu includes taco de chivo, duck confit enfrijoladas, pozole, and chicken paillard.

Paul Martin's American Grill is offering Sunday brunch, in a prix fixe mode, which is unusual for brunch. The $22 price includes blueberry bread, fruit, and entrée from these choices: French toast, eggs Benedict, and two omelets, one with bacon, the other made of egg whites, with spinach and mushroom.

Henry's Majestic is doing a special Halloween menu through October 31. Dishes include butternut squash fritters with pumpkin puree; beer-braised ribs with sweet potato and kale; and a blood orange tort. There are also some special cocktails, priced at $6.66, including one called Blood in the Water with mezcal, citrus, and beet tea reduction.

Kate Weiser Chocolates has chocolate Halloween monsters and stuffed pumpkins, plus bon bons and chocolate pears. A chocolate pumpkin filled with pumpkin truffles, chocolate-covered apricots and orange peels, espresso beans, and toffee bits is $24.

Society Bakery has iced sugar cookies and a cupcake. Pumpkin cookies include witch hats, ghosts, zombies, and bats, $3.25-$4. There are also orange and chocolate cupcakes for $3.50.

Joe the Baker has an intriguing lineup of new macaron flavors including caramel, maple, pumpkin pie, butternut squash, salted pecan, corn husk, butterscotch, bubble gum, and dark chocolate. Quick breads and Halloween "mac o'lanterns" are available via his website or via pickup at the Coppell Farmers Market, Saturdays from 8 am to noon.

Celebrity Café & Bakery has a new menu with gluten-free variations of its existing signature products and other delicious goodies. Working closely with a registered dietician and nutritionist, the bakery team spent months properly tweaking 15 of Celebrity’s signature items to add no gluten.

Del Frisco's Grille has a new butterscotch pudding dessert, served in a glass jar, big enough to share or not. Although, have you ever tried sharing a dessert in a glass jar? It's really kind of awkward.

Bruno Davaillon will leave the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek at the end of November. He's been their executive chef for six years. He told SideDish he could not divulge his future plans, but that he would do so in the coming weeks. Ooooh, intrigue.

East Hampton Sandwich Co. is open on Oak Lawn Avenue.

Photo courtesy of East Hampton Sandwich Co.

East Hampton Sandwich Co. is open on Oak Lawn Avenue.

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Bread News

Plano bakery and pizzeria Bread Street Boys has some amazing bread

Bread Street Boys

German rye-wheat bread at Bread Street Boys

There's a hot loaf in town for Dallas bread fanatics thanks to Bread Street Boys, a bakery on the east side of Plano at 2710 S. Rigsbee Dr. #A, that's doing amazing breads, pizzas, and sandwiches.

Bread Street is a mom & pop from husband-and-wife Yury and Tatiana Stark, who are bringing an old-world, authentic style of sourdough bread that harkens to what they grew up with in Eastern Europe.

Their menu includes sourdough bread, Italian white, German rye-wheat, ciabatta, and focaccia, along with sourdough pizzas, which they sell from their east Plano bakery.

German rye
Their signature and best-seller is the German rye-wheat, an epic bread with a crust that's crisp but not too thick, and a crumb that's moist and chewy — a perfect contrast of textures. The bread has enough artisanal style to please bread snobs but not so heavy that it will scare off those intimidated by a thick crust.

Rye bread generally has a darker color and dense texture, but Bread Boys mixes in wheat flour to create a softer texture yet still retaining rye's distinctive malty flavor.

"Our rye bread is especially popular among Eastern Europeans who grew up with it and miss it from their childhood," Tatiana says. "That's a big part of our story — we both moved here from Belarus where good natural bread is a part of almost every meal, and we couldn't find anything like that here. Yury and I would spend time with our grandparents during summer break, helping make bread from scratch, and we missed that quality and flavor."

How they met
The couple has a sweet story. They knew each other when they were young, but Tatiana's family moved to the U.S. in 2000 when she was 14. They kept in touch over the years and realized they were meant for each other.

"He moved here eight years ago, and we got married and had two kids," she says.

Yury has an entrepreneurial streak so they founded the bakery in 2022, with Tatiana leaving her corporate job to form the quintessential mom & pop.

They built the bakery in a former warehouse from scratch — it took them nearly a year — and then went door-to-door offering samples of their bread. It can now be found at gourmet grocery stores such as Jimmy's Food Store, European Delicatessen Too in Plano, Kuby's Sausage House in Snider Plaza, and Georgia's Farmers Market in Plano. (A full list of where to buy their bread is here.)

Bread Street Boys pizzaBread Street Boys

Pizza
The pizzas were a natural offshoot. They make their crust with sourdough, which adds a complexity and toasty quality, elevating it from your everyday pie, in varieties such as pepperoni, margherita, BBQ chicken, veggie, and capricciosa topped with ham, artichokes, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Prices range from $17 to $20.

"Like our breads, our pizza crust dough incorporates a sourdough starter," Tatiana says. "There's a common misconception that sourdough means it's sour, but it's really about natural fermentation, which not only creates a better flavor, it also makes it more digestible and nutritious."

The fact that sourdough is naturally leavened — with no preservatives or dough conditioners, nothing artificial — is important to them, and they also use unenriched flour.

"I care a lot about nutrition, especially for children, and we try to eat as healthy as possible," Tatiana says. "One of our dreams is to bring our bread to local schools."

The pizza can be ordered online, and Bread Street is partnered with delivery services, but Tatiana says that many customers like to drop in.

"A lot of our customers stop by and pick it up — it's kind of a glamorous hole in the wall — I guess they find it charming," she says.

Sandwiches
Their latest adventure is a line of sandwiches made on their house bread, which they sell at the Dallas Farmers Market.

"We're at the Dallas Farmers Market every weekend when the shed is open," Tatiana says. "We sell our bread there, and it's the only place where we've been selling the sandwiches. We do some unusual combinations like the Breadwinner, a sweet-and-savory sandwich with turkey, lettuce, bacon, a spread with grated cheese and pecans, and peach preserves which adds an interesting kick. People love them, so we're going to start selling them at our bakery."

The name
The name "Bread Street Boys" has a certain attitude but also weaves in a few elements, some personal.

"'Bread Street' nods to old European streets where bakeries were the heartbeat of the neighborhood — places where bread was made daily, by hand, with skill passed down through people," Tatiana says. "'Boys' reflects our energy behind the bakery: a fun, tight-knit, and hardworking crew of bakers."

Also, when they were teenagers, the Backstreet Boys were popular.

"We used to know those songs by heart, but without knowing a thing about what the words said," she says. "We liked the idea of giving the name a little pop-culture wink — kind of where old-world bread meets modern spirit."

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