Doughnut News

Old-time doughnut shop in Dallas' Oak Cliff takes break in December

The shop's iconic sign and retro architecture.

UPDATE 2/14/2023: Lone Star Donuts has re-opened and is making and selling doughnuts again.

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Lone Star Donuts, a Dallas doughnut shop that's been around for more than 70 years, is closing its shop at 1727 N. Beckley Ave. at the end of the year for repairs and maintenance.

Its parent organization, Lone Star Consolidated Foods, will continue making baked goods including bread, biscuits, doughnuts, and pastries, for chains like Walmart and Sam's Club.

"The shop might be closed after Christmas or New Year's, when the traffic dies down," Johnson says.

But no more driving up for doughnuts baked that day, as well as the breakfast burritos, coffee, signature breakfast "puffs," and popcorn which the storefront sold Tuesdays-Saturdays from 7 am-2 pm.

Lone Star Donut's roots date back to 1950 but the shop has been at its current location since 1963. The company is credited with introducing the first automated doughnut production line to Dallas where you could see the doughnuts being made — a convention since popularized by Krispy Kreme.

By the '80s, they'd evolved to become Lone Star Consolidated Foods, Inc., with a wholesale operation that surpassed the doughnut shop, baking other goods such as cinnamon rolls and Danish for food service, supermarkets, restaurants, and other outlets.

By contemporary foodie standards, its doughnuts weren't fancy or varied. They had four basic options: plain, powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, or chocolate-covered, either in cake doughnut or yeast/raised, plus an apple fritter, jelly stix, and really, that was about it, very old-school.

In March 2020, oblivious to the looming spectre of the pandemic, they were still optimistically posting their full menu of doughnuts and goods.

But by November 2020, they'd cut back on hours and also stopped making fresh doughnuts, winnowing down to selling imperfect and overrun items from their production facility such as sweet rolls, cinnamon rolls, and baby cakes.

At the time, they said hoped to be back to offering their traditional products "once the effects of the pandemic have passed."

Much of the shop's mystique resides in its nostalgic value, from its prototypical '50s architecture to its classic Lone Star Donut retro sign, part of a long tradition of iconic doughnut shop signs — a reminder of a time and place that are long gone.

Johnson says that for now they're not reviving the doughnut production, although they're not ruling it out entirely.

"The shop is what brought us here, and we want to observe a faithfulness to our legacy," he says. "But it's not like when my father started in 1962. Before the pandemic, even when we were going full bore, the shop accounted for only 1 percent of our total revenue. We're waiting to see how much we bring back."

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READY TO ROLL

Trendy Dallas sushi bar exports its handrolls to San Antonio

Nori Handroll Bar/ Facebook

Nori Handroll Bar will make its San Antonio debut in spring 2027.

A hot Dallas sushi spot is rolling toward San Antonio: Nori Handroll Bar will open in spring 2027 in the city's historic Pearl district.

It's landing at the Coopers Row apartment complex at 1118 E. Elmira St., San Antonio.

Nori specializes in hand rolls, otherwise known as temaki, which are a less exacting version of maki — the tightly rolled cylinders most Americans associate with sushi. The seaweed sheets enclose the typical fillings of rice, fish, and vegetables, but are wrapped in a looser cone or tubular shape.

Although several San Antonio restaurants offer the dish, it doesn’t yet have a dedicated handroll bar. The Dallas restaurant is about to fix that.

Nori Handroll Bar first debuted in the Deep Ellum neighborhood in 2018. Entrepreneur Mark Lee partnered with Jimmy Park, a former Nobu chef known for Pōk the Raw Bar in Dallas’ West Village. Originally, the spot only offered 12 hand rolls.

Now under the ownership of chef Deukbok Cha, the restaurant has since extended the menu to several à la carte options stuffed with king salmon, unagi, soft-shelled crab, scallops, and other seafood. The rolls are also offered in sets, ranging from I Could Eat (three hand rolls) to Hangry (six).

Nori's other offerings include sashimi, indulgent chef’s specials like truffle caviar nigiri, and fun appetizers like poppers made with jalapeño, cream cheese, red crab, and spicy tuna. Cha has also introduced Korean flavors that reflect his heritage.

The Dallas location is modeled after the neighborhood alleyway bars found on the streets of Tokyo, offering only 24 seats. The San Antonio outpost has not yet released renderings of the space, but at 2,995 square feet, it might offer a little more stretching room than the original.

“Pearl has such an incredible food culture, and it’s exactly the kind of place we want to be a part of," says Deukbok Cha, chef and owner of Nori Handroll Bar, in a release. “We want to create a gathering place where people can stop in for fresh hand rolls and Japanese-Korean flavors that are simple, approachable, and genuinely delicious.”

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