News You Can Eat

Detroit-style pizza pop-up finds a home and more Dallas restaurant news

East Dallas is where this pizza will be at.

Thunderbird

Coming up on the end of 2020, Dallas restaurants are still optimistically opening, with an eye towards a better 2021. There's new Mexican, new pizza, and new coffee, plus a trio of opportunities for you to win money, food, and free stuff.

Here's what's happening in Dallas dining news:

Vidorra Addison, the Mexican concept that debuted in Deep Ellum in 2018, has opened its second location in Addison, at the Village on the Parkway at 5100 Belt Line Rd. #410, in the former Social House space, where they're serving Mexican dishes, cocktails, and a large selection of tequila. The menu includes shareable appetizers, soups, salads, tacos, and entrées such as flaming fundido with melted Oaxaca cheese served in a 400-degree Molcajete dish, and a selection of street tacos such as fried avocado tacos with panko breaded avocado, pico de gallo, ancho slaw, Cotija cheese and Southwestern crema. The Deep Ellum location is well-known for its lively outdoor scene and the new Addison spinoff features the same vibrant experience along with a 2,000-square-foot patio.

Thunderbird Pies, the Detroit-style pizza concept from the folks at Cane Rosso and Zoli's Pizza, has a new permanent location. It's at 7328 Gaston Ave., right next door to Cane Rosso White Rock, in the space newly vacated by craft beer brewery On Rotation. In the same East Dallas shopping center, they'll also open a permanent location of Cow Tipping Creamery, their soft-serve ice cream concept. According to a Facebook post, the two new concepts will open in March 2021.

Bullion: To-Go Marketplace, the takeout concept that replaced downtown restaurant Bullion, is closing on December 31. Bullion: To-Go Marketplace was launched in July 2020 to provide gourmet foods, beverages, and goods, which met Bullion’s same high-quality standards with contactless home delivery. The Marketplace even pivoted to provide the Dallas community with rapid and PCR COVID-19 tests. However, their parent company, Labora Group, has decided to no longer pursue the hospitality field. Bullion and Bullion To-Go will remain one of its operating businesses, with plans to re-open Bullion sometime in 2021. Any gift cards can be exchanged for a refund for their full remaining balance through February 28, 2021. Call 972-698-4250 or email info@bullionrestaurant.com to coordinate a refund.

Spiral Diner & Bakery has temporarily closed its Denton dining room due to staffing limitations. They hope to be back open January 2 at 50 percent dining capacity and are still open for pickup and curbside orders (call 940-514-0101.

Whataburger is extending the availability on its Spicy Chicken Sandwich, first introduced in September. The sandwich has a chicken filet, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayo, and is now on a new brioche bun. They're also bringing back the BBQ Bacon Burger with three slices of bacon, smoked cheddar, Monterey Jack, and BBQ sauce on a five-inch bun. It's still for a "limited time" so it could go away at any second.

Pizza Hut now has two plant-based meat pizzas: The Beyond Italian Sausage Pizza and The Great Beyond Pizza. For a more plant-based friendly option, you can order the Beyond Pan Pizzas without cheese.

Whiskey Cake Kitchen & Bar has a new fall menu featuring Smoked Salmon Dip with house kettle chips; steak & quinoa bowl with sweet potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, broccolini, and sorghum in piri piri dressing; browned butter-cauliflower soup; and a No Meat Sloppy Joe with Beyond beef, gochujang sauce, veggie slaw, ginger dressing and cilantro on a milk bun.

Torchy's Tacos is launching a "Hangover Hotline" January 1-3. Call 833-L8R-2020 and choose from a variety of options based on how bad your 2020 hangover is. Callers will be entered to win Free Tacos for a Year with a $500 Taco Money Gift Card. Meanwhile they have a January Taco of the Month: the Fancy Schmancy with hot smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, spinach, capers, pickled onions & jalapenos on a flour tortilla for $6.50.

Corner Bakery has been gifting free coffee to members of their loyalty program, Corner Bakery Rewards. Now they're adding cold brew and hot tea to the free lineup. When you join Corner Bakery Rewards, a free coffee, cold brew, or tea reward will be added to your account daily. No purchase necessary to redeem the reward. It’s available in-cafe, to-go, or online for pickup or delivery. It's available January 1-March 31.

Cheba Hut, the marijuana-themed sandwich shop in Deep Ellum, has an app that gives 10 cents back to DFW for every dollar you spend. It also has a mobile game that provides bonus loyalty points for free grub and gear. If you get the highest score, you can win $5,000, free Cheba Hut for a year, title belts, and T-shirts. The promotion runs through the end of January.

Dunkin' has a new "Extra Charged Coffee," with more caffeine than their classic Hot and Iced Coffee. Served hot or iced, it features green coffee extract that gives coffee drinkers an extra boost with 20 percent more caffeine. They also have two new "bold and exciting" hot coffees: Dunkin' Midnight and Explorer Batch.

Tupps Brewery has two new releases: R.I.P 2020 is a Double Dry Hopped India Pale Ale with favorite hops including Citra, Galaxy, Nelson, Sultana, Ella, Vic Secret, El Dorado, Azacca, Cryo Citra, Cryo Mosaic, Sabro, and Idaho-7 hops. It's sold at Kroger, Market Street, Total Wine, Specs, Goody Goody, Whole Foods, Central Market, plus local bars and restaurants on tap, plus at the taproom in McKinney. Meanwhile Blur, Tupps' hard-seltzer offshoot, has released its first seasonal seltzer: Champagne Bubbles, with bubbles, fruit-forward aroma, and a touch of Champagne flavor. Blur launched in September of 2020 with a variety 12 pack including: Mango Dragonfruit, Hibiscus Apple, Lemon Blueberry and Passionfruit Watermelon. Blur’s Champagne Bubbles will be sold in 6 packs in smaller retail stores around DFW, and is available only the DFW area for now.

Off the Bone Barbeque, a Black-owned BBQ restaurant in Dallas, is being featured in Pepsi’s latest ad spot, "Savor the Sound." It debuted on December 26 during the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Detroit Lions NFL playoff game and runs through February 8 on air via NFL Network Media and digitally on NFL.com. The ad kicks off Pepsi’s new platform and rallying call, "Dig In," that encourages the public to support Black-owned restaurants nationwide, with a goal of generating at least $100 million in sales over the next five years. Off the Bone is one of four restaurants featured in the ad, along with 7th & Grove in Tampa, Kitchen Cray in Washington DC, and the Breakfast Club in Houston.

Lawry's Steakhouse continues its 65-year partnership with the Rose Bowl to provide a celebratory meal known as The Beef Bowl for the two participating teams before the big game. The Dallas Lawry's location will be packing up and delivering prime rib sandwiches for all of the players, coaches, and staff on December 30 and 31.

FB Society is the new handle for Front Burner Restaurants, the restaurant innovation lab behind Whiskey Cake, Legacy Hall, Mexican Sugar, Sixty Vines, and Haywire. Their portfolio also includes a food hall, Modern Pour and Vestals premium catering, Bingham House event venue, Unlawful Assembly Brewing Co. and the non-profit Furlough Kitchen. FB Society will accelerate the expansion of Whiskey Cake and Sixty Vines concepts to new markets, with new concepts in the works including SoB (Son of a Butcher) in December, followed by a new chicken tender concept called Buttercup.

Fletcher's Original State Fair Corny Dog keeps its trademark following the resolution of a dispute between members of the Fletcher family, who reached a confidential legal agreement on December 23. A federal judge ruled that Fletcher's Original State Fair Corny Dog is the rightful owner of the Fletcher and Corny Dog names, and that Jace Fletcher Christensen, granddaughter of founder Skip Fletcher, is not allowed to use it in her restaurant, Corndog With No Name.

PETA has placed an ad next to a Jersey Mike's Subs at 14060 Dallas Pkwy., where much meat is served, encouraging people to seek out vegan lunch meats. "Sensitive, gentle cows are unique individuals who value their lives and don’t deserve to be killed for a fleeting taste of flesh," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. Each person who goes vegan saves the lives of nearly 200 animals every year and helps prevent future pandemics, since SARS, swine flu, bird flu, and COVID-19 all originated from raising and killing animals for food.

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Closure News

The original Dick's Last Resort in Dallas closes after 40 years

Dick's Last Resort

A venerable destination in the downtown Dallas area has closed: Dick's Last Resort, the notoriously saucy restaurant and bar at 2211 Lamar St., has closed permanently, after 40 years.

According to a representative from the Nashville-based chain, the final day for the Dallas location was November 30.

"Business at that location had been declining, and they were facing an increase in rent, so they made a decision to close," the representative said.

Dick's Last Resort was founded right here in Dallas in 1985 as a winking, impudent good-time spot with good bar food and cold beer, at a time when leg warmers and mullets were the rage.

The concept was hatched by bon vivant "Buffalo George" Toomer and Richard "Dick" Chase, centered on a saga about a bad boy named Dick whose big-league plans had failed and who pivoted to open a laid-back bar full of attitude and dick jokes. The restaurant featured gruff staffers and a Southern-style menu in a rowdy roadhouse environment.

It became a huge success, with customers coming eagerly to be insulted, get pelted with napkins and straws, and wear paper hats with crude comments and insults written in a sharpie such as "I've nailed more wood than HGTV." That atmosphere made it a popular destination for bachelorette parties and other group events, and it was a big tourist draw at its then-location in the West End. (It relocated to its current location close to American Airlines Center in 2005.)

Although the food took a backseat to the atmosphere, the menu — written on the wall — featured ribs, chicken, wings, and burgers, served casually in paper and buckets. In its heyday and for many years, it remained lodged on the TABC Top 10 list for beer sales in Dallas.

Chase was ousted for embezzling by the financial backers, who went on to grow the concept into a national chain, with locations in Boston, Chicago, and London. Those are now closed, but there are currently a dozen Dick's across the southeast in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, as well as Las Vegas and a longtime location in San Antonio on the Riverwalk.

Dallas restaurateur Mike McRae, who currently owns restaurants such as Dodie's Cajun Diner in Rockwall, Stan's Blue Note, and McRae's Bistro in East Dallas, worked for Dick's for 23 years and owned the Dallas location for 12 years.

"I was hired as their general manager 18 months after it opened," McRae says. "Richard Chase was kind of a hothead. He would fire people on the drop of a pin. We had a pink plastic flamingo with a light inside behind the bar, and he was adamant that the light be on all the time. He once fired a GM because the light was off."

Dick's was owned by Steven Schiff, a Dallas entrepreneur who was in real estate and oil, but had no experience in the restaurant industry.

"Steve talked to Norman Brinker and said, 'I've got this place but I don't want to be in the restaurant business — how do I sell this?'" McRae says. "Norman said, 'You need to open two more locations in different cities.' So we opened the location in San Antonio and a third in downtown Chicago. Both were wildly successful — way more than Dallas. These places were netting over $1 million in yearly profits, which was a lot of money back then. We opened one in London, Boston, San Diego, Myrtle Beach, they were in major cities all over the U.S."

McRae eventually became director of operations and they kept it running until 2009 when they sold the company to its current ownership group based in Nashville. McRae bought the Dallas location in 2010, later joined by his partner Gabe Nicolella; they owned it for 12 years before selling it back to the corporate owners in 2021.

"We did some crazy things in those days, like creating a fake restroom with a pair of tennis shoes visible and a tape recording of farting sounds," McRae says. "We only hired people who had been class clowns, who couldn't get jobs anywhere else. We served food in buckets and the placemats were torn-off butcher paper — things you couldn't get away with now."

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