Holidays Are So Fun

Where to eat in Dallas right now: 10 restaurants for out-of-town guests

Check out the details at Bullion.

Photo courtesy of Bullion

With the holidays looming, company's coming, and you need a plan. You need dining options. Taking out-of-towners to eat is a multi-pronged mission. The restaurant you choose needs to welcome groups, represent your hometown, satisfy a variety of tastes, and hopefully not break the bank.

Here's our list of Dallas restaurant suggestions for where to take your holiday company, the 2017 edition:

Bullion
For fancy fine dining at its most newly opened, this gilded restaurant in downtown Dallas from chef Bruno Davaillon is where it's at. Unless your guests are big spenders, don't come starving, and plan on drinking up the details, because the details here count. There's the invincible exterior, with a marquee clad in gold scales; the spectacular two-story glass sculpture in the entry; the gleaming Christofle flatware; the linens from Garnier-Thiebaut. It's all subtle, understated luxury, creating a backdrop for the quiet precision on the plate of dishes such as duck with parsnips and endive.

Dallas Farmers Market
Food halls are a thing right now, and props to our downtown market for cleverly reimagining what was once a piecemeal shed into a vibrant collection of eateries and shops. Many food groups are represented: from tacos to banh mi to Indian food to pizza to macarons to tamales to espresso. You can buy cheese and a bottle of sparkling wine to share from Scardello, or beer and a bag of popcorn for the table. Parking's plentiful, and the capper is that you can buy locally grown fruits and vegetables, too.

Flower Child
The savvy Phoenix-based Fox Restaurant Concepts has a thing for Dallas, and the feeling is mutual. We have two of their True Food Kitchens, one Italia North, and we're one of only seven cities (currently) to have a branch of this hippie, happy chain. These days, everyone has a family member who's vegan or vegetarian or watching their gluten or likes organic produce or hates GMO. The menu at Flower Child has something for all tribes. There are bowls and plates with mix-and-match components like tofu and grass-fed beef. It's fast-casual, practical, friendly, and pretty cheap.

Kuby's Sausage House
Connect with Texas' early German settlers at this Snider Plaza restaurant and deli, which has been serving house-made sausages, schnitzels, and German classics since 1961. Meat's a big deal; hunters across Texas bring their kill here to be processed into grillable chunks, which should serve as stimulating conversation while you and the folks dig into Reuben sandwiches, potato pancakes, and the best-selling sausage plate, with sauerkraut, hot German potato salad, and red cabbage.

Norma's Cafe
If Dallas has a local cuisine, it's probably home cooking, kind of the Southern version of the American diner. For years, modest restaurants served daily specials like chicken and dumplings and pot roast, with oodles of vegetable sides. We're more fancy these days, and longtime chain Good Eats/Dixie House bit the bullet. But Norma's Cafe has been a Dallas tradition since 1956. There are biscuits and gravy, meatloaf, some of the Dallas' best pies, and the city's indigenous dish, chicken-fried steak. Five locations include one in Plano, but if you want to find the roots, hit the original in Oak Cliff.

RJ Mexican Cuisine
Veteran downtown Dallas restaurant has dishes from all eight culinary regions of Mexico, and some American food, too. Guacamole, queso, enchiladas, and tacos sit side-by-side with steak, seafood, salads, and ribs. RJ has stuck it through in the historic West End long enough to see the neighborhood through some downs and now ups. Bonus: It's also walking distance from our No. 1 tourist attraction, the Grassy Knoll.

Slow Bone
Barbecue has to be on the list, obviously, duh, but Slow Bone makes the cut because it has something special: a trained chef in Jeffery Hobbs, who elevates the quality and oversees an expanded menu that has something for family members who don't just want a slab of brisket. Slow Bone has a great brisket, but it also has Hobbs' fried chicken and many wonderful sides, like fried okra and a potato salad spiked with horseradish. You can make a meal out of the sides.

Tacodeli
Breakfast tacos are a mysterious object to some out-of-towners. (Or, for that matter, tacos of any kind.) They know eggs, they know sausage, they just don't necessarily know that you can assemble those ingredients inside a soft tortilla and eat them, all together, before noon. Show them the ropes at Tacodeli, the small chain from Austin, a town that knows a thing or two about breakfast tacos. Both Dallas-area locations are situated in nifty little centers — Sylvan Thirty and The Hill at US-75 and Walnut Hill Lane — where you can shop and walk off your tacos in preparation for lunch.

Trinity Groves
Restaurateur Phil Romano's restaurant incubator in West Dallas is like a giant outdoor food court with a dozen options under one roof: fried chicken at Fat Chicken, seafood at Amberjax, Asian at Chino Chinatown, craft beer at Luck Kitchen, middle Eastern at Souk, sushi at Sushi Bayashi, vegan at V-Eats. And that doesn't even get into the secret weapons at Trinity Groves: the divine chocolates at Kate Weiser Chocolate, and the stunning cakes at Cake Bar. Hell, just go for cake and chocolate.

Zoli's
Former Oak Cliff slice place, newly re-opened as an Italian-American restaurant in Addison, is going to feel familiar to anyone who grew up in the Northeast in the '60s, which surely represents a goodly chunk of out-of-town guests. The pizza crust here remains one of the best yeast items in DFW, but the restaurant also has a vivacious spirit, with big family-sized tables and kitschy eye-candy on the walls, that makes it a fun destination beyond getting a bite to eat.

where-to-eat holidays

Spring Arrival

West Dallas gets new Spanish-Peruvian restaurant with big-name chef

Photo courtesy of Ulloa's

Paella will be on the menu.

A new restaurant with a high-profile culinary director will bring Spanish and Peruvian flavors to West Dallas: Called Ulloa’s, it is coming to 727 Fort Worth Ave., with a projected opening in March 2027.

The concept is from philanthropists Susan and Woodrow Gandy, who were previously investors in the historic Belmont Hotel just around the corner. They've teamed up with Dallas celebrity chef Kent Rathbun as culinary director, along with Christopher Tunnell as general manager to lead the front of the house.

Rathbun is a name Dallas diners know well, with a resume that includes The Mansion on Turtle Creek, the Landmark Restaurant at the historic Melrose Hotel, Seventeen Seventeen at the Dallas Museum of Art, Abacus, Jasper's, Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen, and more. He's won numerous awards and made multiple appearances on Food Network. He was most recently behind the launch of On The Rocks, an Italian bistro in Burleson.

Chef Kent Rathbun will be the culinary director of Ulloa's. Photo courtesy of Kent Rathbun

Tunnell’s background spans both culinary direction and front-of-house operations. He worked at Los Angeles hot spots Ketchup, Geisha House, and Les Deux, as well as the Mandalay Bay and The Mirage in Las Vegas, before moving to Dallas to open The Mexican, the upscale restaurant in the Design District.

“I am truly excited to partner with Chef Kent Rathbun, whose reputation is amazing — not only in the DFW Metroplex, but in the culinary world,” Tunnell says. “He has been with this project since the beginning, helping develop it; this will be a very chef-driven, culinary-forward restaurant.”

The team's vision for Ulloa’s is both culinary and urban, with hopes of anchoring the corridor and attracting other businesses to Fort Worth Avenue — a stretch connecting downtown Dallas with Oak Cliff that remains somewhat underdeveloped despite its panoramic skyline views.

The restaurant is named for Spanish explorer, astronomer, and scientist Antonio de Ulloa, who spent extensive time in the Mexican peninsula before becoming Louisiana’s first governor. During his travels, Ulloa documented a fogbow — a circular rainbow formed when sunlight meets mist that causes silhouettes standing between the sun and fog to appear ringed in light, a phenomenon known today as “Ulloa’s Rings.”

That vibrant phenomenon inspired both the restaurant's identity and logo. The concept promises "bold, worldly flavors in a welcoming neighborhood setting inspired by exploration and discovery,” the owners say.

Ulloa's Rendering of Ulloa's.Rendering courtesy of Ulloa's

While the menu remains in development, Tunnell describes the culinary direction as “Spanish soul with a Peruvian heart.” The kitchen will merge the coastal flavors of both traditions — ranging from paellas and ceviches to crafted cocktails and signature adaptations by Rathbun.

The 200-seat, two-story space will feature a downstairs dining room, a large bar, and an outdoor patio. Upstairs, plans call for a secondary bar, a private dining room, a patio, and an expansive balcony patio, offering views of the city's skyline and of the Margaret Hunt Hill and Margaret McDermott bridges.

While the upstairs space will be available for private events, the owners intend for it to operate primarily as an organic extension of the main restaurant. The buildout will include a guest elevator along with ample parking, including both self-parking and valet options.

The team says the restaurant will have have an aesthetic that's “warm, theatrical, generous, elegant but alive, with the energy of a great Spanish tapas bar and the soul of Peruvian hospitality.”

Ulloa’s plans to launch with dinner service first, followed by lunch and weekend brunch.

restaurants bars peruvian flavors west dallas oak cliff kent rathbun