New Eats

5 new high-profile Dallas restaurant openings happening right now

Meet Dallas' Best New Restaurant, Georgie by Curtis Stone.

Photo courtesy of Georgie by Curtis Stone

Stories about restaurant openings are our bread and butter at CultureMap. We post them all the time.

But sometimes a restaurant emerges as something more bold-faced than the usual debut. When five emerge simultaneously, that can only mean one thing: roundup.

For a variety of reasons, these restaurants all seem destined to blaze brightly as 2019 comes to a close, and give our local dining scene a little pop.

If you like to keep up with buzzy eateries, then this is your list:

The Biscuit Bar
This is the third location of this local biscuit chain, and in any other circumstance, a third location of anything would not make a vaunted list like this. However, the address makes this Biscuit Bar list-worthy: It's opening in Deep Ellum at 2550 Pacific Ave., part of The Epic, the mixed-use project combining office, residential, and boutique hotel. (Which will also, as of now anyway, serve as regional headquarters for Uber.)

All Biscuit Bars serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night, but the Deep Ellum location will have even later late-night hours. Another good reason this is on the list is timeliness: They're hosting a Grand Opening party on Thursday, November 21 from 8-11 pm. Go for the biscuits and tots, stay for the special-event discounted $3 cocktails.

Commons Club
The date draws near for the opening of this new restaurant at the Virgin Hotels Dallas. It's the hotel's "all-day" eatery, open for breakfast-lunch-and-dinner, with a concept/menu/what-have-you called The Kitchen by Matt McCallister.

It has a French-meets-Texan theme, with large-format dishes cooked via live fire in a charcoal-burning oven or wood-fired rotisserie. Dishes include grouper, rotisserie chicken, scallops, tuna & beet crudo, and A Bar N Ranch black pepper-crusted Wagyu ribeye roast, served family-style with pumpernickel rolls.

The opening date is currently targeted as December 15, and with McCallister on board, it'll only be a matter of weeks after that before the predictably gushing review from the Dallas Morning News comes along.

Desert Racer
Chef Nick Badovinus likes to keep things close to the vest and on the down-low, but it's pretty much any day now for this casual cantina, opening in the former Haymaker space on Lower Greenville.

Badovinus, whose other restaurants include Neighborhood Services, Town Hearth, Montlake Cut, Off Site Kitchen, and Perfect Union Pizza, draws his inspiration for Desert Racer from the Baja 1000, the rogue desert racing event held on Mexico's Baja California peninsula since 1967. Think beer, seafood, margaritas, Southwestern- and Baja-inspired cuisine, featuring a live-fire/smoke method of cooking.

The restaurant has a phone number. Help wanted ads have been up for a few weeks. Tick tick tick.

Georgie By Curtis Stone
New restaurant in the Knox District, in the former Villa-O space, comes with the surprise participation of celebrity chef Curtis Stone, as a kind of spinoff of Gwen, a Hollywood butcher shop and restaurant he opened with his brother Luke in 2016.

The menu features Australian Blackmore wagyu, caviar with red wheat blini and crème fraiche, hot smoked salmon, and black cod. A separate bar menu will serve snacks such as beer-braised chicken and fish & chips.

The restaurant is a collaboration between the two brothers and Stephan Courseau, their Dallas-based partner and owner of nearby restaurants Le Bilboquet and Up on Knox. Their website still says "coming soon" but they've already hosted "friends and family" events before opening on November 18, and they're open for Thanksgiving.

Terry Black's Barbecue
BBQ restaurant newly opened in Deep Ellum comes with sterling Central Texas BBQ cred: Brothers Mark and Michael Black have family ties to Terry Black's Barbecue in Austin, Black's Barbecue in Lockhart, and famed Smitty's Market.

They're doing all of the BBQ basics: brisket, chopped beef, pork ribs, sausage, turkey, and their signature beef ribs. In true Central Texas style, the meat is sold by the pound, although you can also get your meat in a sandwich form.

Sides include potato salad, coleslaw, beans, green beans, Mexican rice, mac & cheese, and creamed corn. And like any barbecue restaurant post-BBQ Snob, they have his favorite dessert, banana pudding. Must have pudding for Daniel.

The restaurant opened on November 21 at 3025 Main St., in the former Comedy House space (who were forced to move) and they're also practically across the street from Pecan Lodge. Brass ones!

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Wings News

New chicken wing joint sells 'em by the pound in Dallas' Deep Ellum

Wings By the Pound

A no-nonsense wing spot has debuted in Dallas' Deep Ellum: Called Wings By the Pound, it sells exactly that, at a shop at 2707 Main St., in the former home of the Slutty Vegan burger joint, which closed in 2024.

Wings by the Pound states proudly that it "isn't a combo joint" but is instead "a counter built on one idea — call your weight, watch it hit the scale, and take it off the scale." Then presumably you take it home, you eat it, end of story.

It presents itself as an alternative to typical wing spots which sell wings by the number. Numbers are complicated.

"We sell you weight. Pick wings or tenders, call your poundage from a half-pound to four, and we weigh it up in front of you," they say.

From there it's the standard wing-joint set of choices: wings or tenders, level of heat, sauces, and sides. "No combos, no guessing," they brag, although is there a lot of guessing with wings?

Here's some very specific numbers:

One pound of wings, which they approximate at 12 pieces, is $15.05. Two pounds, or 24 pieces, is $27.11.
One pound of tenders, which they approximate at 8 pieces, is $17.02. Two pounds, or 16 pieces, is $25.06.

They also sell french fries — crinkle cut — in choice of plain, cheese sauce, or "pound sauce" for $8 to $15. Pound sauce is their version of the prototypical secret sauce, which generally boils down to Russian-ish dressing, i.e., mayonnaise and ketchup with various add-ins, spicy and otherwise; the version at Wings By the Pound incorporates hot sauce.

There are wet sauces, including Thai, chipotle, hot honey, and garlic Parm; dry rubs, including suya (peanut) and jalapeño-lemon; and five dips: cheese sauce, ranch, bleu cheese, honey mustard, and pound sauce.

Some might recall that there was a Wings By the Pound concept that first debuted in 2020 at Trinity Groves, the restaurant incubator in West Dallas, but that closed in 2022.

This Wings By the Pound is a new concept from ArkDal Hospitality Group, headed by Cary Thompson, Royce Colley, and Mo Wells, which also operates Velour Restaurant in Victory Park.

The location in Deep Ellum has no seating on premise and functions as a take-out spot only. A spokesperson said that the location opened in mid-June.

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