Where to eat in Dallas right now: 10 best restaurants for October

For this chapter of Where to Eat, our monthly series telling you where it's hot to eat right now, there are new restaurants, new locations, and new menus, whether you want to try someplace you've never been or revisit a favorite restaurant that's putting something fresh on the table.

Here's where to eat for October:

Arepa TX
Restaurant serves Latin-American street food including the masa specialty called the arepa. The first location opened in Frisco, but now there's a closer location at 5940 Royal Lane, at the intersection of Preston, which may make it easier to visit. They're open for lunch, dinner, and brunch, and they also serve wine and beer, plus a new dessert line of frozen custard pops.

Asian Mint
Check out the newest location of this Dallas mini-chain, which expands from two locations to three with this new location in Inwood Village, in the former Café Istanbul space at 5450 West Lovers Lane. It features New Bangkok-style cuisine, sweet service, and tasteful interior design, just like its other two locations on Forest Lane and Oak Lawn Avenue. The menu includes classics such as pad Thai, tom yum soup, and pad kee maw, and also has a dessert program with signature sweets such as the green tea ice cream cake.

Blue Sushi Sake Grill
It's worth making a special trip to the Blue Sushi Sake Grill that's located at Preston Hollow Village, because they've unveiled a new menu specifically at that location, with items that include marinated and skewered chicken thighs, crispy bite-sized shrimp, crispy rice cake topped with spicy tuna, and a vegan tofu tempura. Go get that tofu tempura. A new "clay plate" section gives guests the option to choose a protein served with wild mushrooms, crispy Brussels sprouts, and asparagus.

Café Momentum
Downtown restaurant by chef Chad Houser is a unique fine-dining experience, and they change their menu with the seasons. But it's the buzz right now because just got a big voucher from Starbucks, which spotlights the restaurant in one of of 11 films in its original content series "Upstanders – Season 2." The film applauds Café Momentum for giving once-troubled youth an opportunity to learn how to cook, serve, and get a well-paying job in the food-service industry.

Cane Rosso
The most famous Neapolitan-style pizzeria in all of Dallas-Fort Worth, and really Texas, for that matter, if not the world, now has a location at The Star in Frisco. Do its gourmet pizzas, featuring profoundly flavorful crust, taste more winning on the grounds of the Dallas Cowboys' practice center? Surely they must. This is the only location that has a fancy star-shaped pizza with stuffed crust, and at the very least it's worth a pilgrimage to gaze upon the restaurant's Cowboys-themed, blue-and-silver oven in person. Photos just don't do it justice!

Gather Kitchen
Now open is this fast-casual concept inside Thanksgiving Tower specializing in bowls. Gather aims to serve quality food, quickly, with meals that are nutritious and affordable. It has bowls for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Customers choose a base, then toppings from a choice of vegetables, protein, and sauces, made daily without sugar or additives. Options include zucchini "noodles," cauliflower "rice," poached shrimp, grass-fed beef crumble, basil-cashew-pesto, and six-pepper Mexican sauce.

RJ Mexican Cuisine
Mexican restaurant in Dallas’ West End now has a "build-your-own Mexican bowl" with choice of steak, shrimp, chicken, beef, or vegetable; rice or beans; and an array of toppings. Normally $9, they're a dollar off on Wednesdays during lunch. It's part of their daily lunch-specials program featuring a different dish every day of the week. Mondays are tacos. Tuesdays are enchiladas, Thursdays it's beef or chicken chimichangas, and Fridays it's chicken or beef fajitas.

Stirr
If you like to eat big, now's the time to visit this Deep Ellum restaurant-bar with a new fall menu featuring lots of meat-and-potatoes items. They include a 20-ounce ribeye, Texas quail with rice pilaf, and four-cheese tortellini with truffled butternut squash and spiced pepitas. They also have a dry-aged ribeye burger, made entirely of trim removed from 21-day dry-aged ribeye, and topped with cheddar, caramelized onion, poblano pepper, mushroom, sunny-side egg, and shoestring potatoes. On the lighter side, a lunch special consisting of soup paired with a half-salad or half-sandwich is $12.

Stonedeck Pizza Pub
Deep Ellum pizzeria is bringing back its weekend late-night pizza buffet. For $9.99, you get pizza, pinwheels, pasta, mac-n-cheese, and more. In addition to the buffet, they'll also offer a special late-night menu with wings, gyros and pub grub. It's served Fridays and Saturdays from 10:30 pm-1:30 am through the end of October. They also recently debuted a menu of mac-n-cheeses, spiked with items such as bacon, blue cheese, Brussels sprouts, Sriracha, capicola, and tikka masala, available for dine-in or take-out, 5 pm to 1:30 am daily.

Texas Spice
Restaurant at the Omni Dallas hotel is doing a cool special menu, part of a nationwide Omni hotel annual culinary event, celebrating Spain. From now through December 31, there are bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with Manchego cheese; ham and cheese croquettes; charred chorizo; and a meat and cheese board. Wines from Rioja, in red, white, and rosé varietals will include such favorites as Campo Viejo, Ontañón Rioja, Cune Blanco, and will be available by the bottle or by 6- and 9-ounce pours.