Dining news

14 Dallas-Fort Worth eateries get spotlight in Black Restaurant Week

Smokey John's BBQ

dallas.culturemap.com

A dining event from Houston has returned to Dallas-Fort Worth: Black Restaurant Week, which highlights Black-owned restaurants and encourages diners to support them, will take place at more than a dozen restaurants around DFW from March 15-24.

Founded in 2016 by Warren Luckett, Falayn Ferrell, and Derek Robinson, Black Restaurant Week showcases African American, African, and Caribbean cuisine, according to a release. It began in Houston before expanding to DFW in 2021.

The idea is that the week provides marketing and PR services for Black-owned restaurants that can’t afford to pay for such services. It helps balance out disproportionate barriers, such as access to business loans, that many Black entrepreneurs face.

It’s also meant to help combat the challenges restaurant owners are facing due to rising food and labor costs — 53 percent of restaurant owners have experienced lower profits since 2022, according to James Beard Foundation’s 2023 industry report.

“COVID-19 changed the landscape since 2020,” Luckett says in the release. “Now, the price of food is soaring. From being overlooked for revitalization funds to inflation, most Black-owned culinary businesses cannot afford advertisements/PR/marketing to build awareness and attract consumers. That’s why we proudly do this for free – it’s peer-to-peer support for 10 days within each market and for the past nine years.”

Diners interested in participating in Black Restaurant Week have a simple mission: Grab a meal at Black-owned restaurants. DFW participants so far are as follows:

Belzoni’s Catfish Cafe. Tiny restaurant on the far west side of Fort Worth in White Settlement with a primary focus on catfish. Owner Dwight Cooley is a native of Belzoni, Mississippi, the town unofficially known as the farm-raised catfish capital of the world. In addition to standard catfish filets, they offer “catfish rounds,” bite-sized circles of catfish stuffed with jalapeños and onions and served with spicy tartar sauce. Sides include turnip greens, hushpuppies, mac and cheese, and green beans.

Blends Daiquiri Express. Drive-thru daiquiri spot founded in The Colony in 2017 features a menu of nine specialty daiquiris, plus several popular beers. Food options include po-boys, burgers, wings and tenders, and fried shrimp or catfish, with sides of fries, red beans and rice, and blended greens. They also offer several hookah flavors, which can be smoked on the restaurant’s outdoor patio.

Casa del Vegano. Vegan taqueria in Oak Cliff that opened in 2021 offers a plant-based menu of Tex Mex favorites like burritos, flautas, chimichangas, tortas, tacos, and quesadillas. They also do a vegan spin on birria tacos, the crispy cheesy twist on a taco, but filled with Impossible beef.

Chef Point Restaurant & Bar. Gourmet restaurant in Colleyville became a local sensation in 2011 when Food Network's Guy Fieri featured it on Diners, Driveins and Dives. Chef Franson Nwaeze's menu includes dishes like roasted duck in orange sauce and oxtails in African red sauce, as well as their signature bread pudding smothered in cognac sauce.

Cookie Society. cookie shop that catapulted to fame after a nod from Oprah Winfrey now has locations in Addison, Frisco, and Southlake. Their cookies are larger than usual and are made with butter, giving them a crisp exterior with a tender middle and chewy texture. They do a rotating menu, offering 10 varieties every month, ranging from classics like chocolate chip to seasonal flavors like king cake, frosted oatmeal, banana pudding, strawberries & cream, and a plant-based chocolate chip.

Granny Jas. Pickup-only catering service based in Dallas is known for its soul food pie - cornbread “pies” filled with Southern comfort food. Specialties include oxtail soul food pie, filled with mac & cheese, greens, and yams and topped with oxtail; spaghetti pie, filled with spaghetti and topped with catfish; and red bean and rice pie, filled with red beans and rice and topped with catfish.

Kessler Baking Studio. Founded by Clyde Greenhouse in 2014, the Oak Cliff bakery makes all its goods from scratch. Signature items include the giant oatmeal cream pie cookie, but the lineup also includes cookies, biscotti, blondies, and brownies, plus breakfast items on Saturdays only including cinnamon rolls, biscuits, muffins, scones, and banana bread.

Reggae Wings & Tings. Jamaican restaurant in Mesquite offers jerk chicken and pork, curry goat and chicken, ackee and saltfish, mac and cheese, fried plantains, and more. Owners Roy and Marci LaBeach are both natives of Jamaica who have been living in Dallas since 1987.

Restaurant Beatrice. Cajun restaurant in Oak Cliff from Michelle Carpenter, owner of the award-winning sushi restaurant Zen Sushi in Bishop Arts. The menu from Carpenter and executive chef Terance Jenkins includes duck and housemade andouille gumbo made with smoked aromatics, fried chicken with pepper jelly, and a vegan gumbo made with an assortment of leafy greens in an earthy base.

Shells and Tails 2 Geaux. Mobile food truck and catering company in DeSoto offers authentic Cajun cuisine. Menu includes crawfish, crab, and shrimp boils, with rum cakes for dessert. It’s from Chef Jermaine J Paddio, who grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Smoke’N Ash BBQ. Ethiopian-influenced barbecue spot in Arlington has earned rankings on Texas Monthly’s “Top 25 New and Improved BBQ Joints in Texas” and the New York Times’ :”20 Best Texas Barbecue Restaurants From the New Generation.” Menu includes pulled lamb, pumpkin stew, loaded BBQ fries, pulled pork, rib tips, and other Ethiopian-barbecue fusions.

Smokey John’s Bar-B-Que. Dallas barbecue restaurant is known for its traditional hickory-smoked BBQ, with Southern-inspired sides and catfish baskets. In 2022, they were the third place winner in H‑E‑B’s Quest for Texas Best competition, snagging a $10,000 prize and the opportunity to have their barbecue rub sold in H-E-B stores.

The Daiquiri Shoppe. Cajun restaurant serving New Orleans-style daiquiris in Grand Prairie. The menu features a variety of Louisiana dishes like etouffee, jerk braised oxtail, baked potatoes, po-boys, and fried fish baskets.

Vegan Vibrationz. Plant-based concept in Plano’s Legacy Hall is famous for its vegan version of the fast-food favorite the crunchwrap. Founded by chef Jovan Cole, a native of Florida who first launched as a food stand at the Dallas Farmers Market in 2018, the spot offers vegan quesadillas, chicken-fried oyster mushrooms, and "lobster" mac & cheese.

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Noodle News

YouTube critic Mike Chen ranks his favorite noodles in Dallas

Pho Pasteur

YouTube food critic Mike Chen, who travels the world spotlighting mostly Asian restaurants for his Strictly Dumpling YouTube channel, recently dropped into Dallas to rank his favorite noodles in town.

Titled "24 Hours Eating The Best NOODLES + DUMPLINGS Around DFW," the video follows Chen as he visits five restaurants, ordering noodles and dumplings at his favorite places as well as new discoveries.

The visit marked a return to DFW for Chen, who briefly resided in North Texas in 2021 and who has previously posted videos covering ramen, Vietnamese food, sushi, and barbecue.

Here's where he ate:

Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling
The video starts out with him noting that "there's a lot of new noodle places around the Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco area," before entering Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling, a Chinese Halal restaurant that makes its own noodles, with locations in Plano and McKinney (which CultureMap covered in May — do you think he saw our story?!).

He raves over the extensive menu, featuring not only noodles but "a bunch of dumplings" and many other options like walnut shrimp and mapo tofu.

He also raves over the price. "Wow — $10 for Biangbiang noodles" [a dish featuring flat noodles with minced garlic, green onion, chili powder] — "only in Texas," he says.

He orders the Big Plate chicken, like a chicken stew with flat noodles, chunks of soft potato, carrots, yellow onion, green onion, bell pepper, and cilantro; as well as a variety of dumplings, including beef, pork, chicken & corn, veggie, and soup dumplings, heaping praise on their light chewy wrapper.

"My philosophy is always, eat the worst first and save the best for last, so let's start with the veggie dumplings," he said.

Pho Pasteur
On Day 2, he goes to Pho Pasteur, a longtime highly acclaimed family-owned chain with locations in Richardson, Arlington, and Carrollton, the location he visits.

"I've been thinking about this place for a long long time," he says. "I remember when I was living here, this was one of my favorites."

He orders pho with fatty brisket — "because here in Texas, whenever you see brisket, you get the brisket," he says.

After taking a sip of the broth, he proclaims, "This is the stuff — I've always said that this place has one of the best, if not THE best broth in America, with such a concentrated beefy flavor, and it's got so much depth."

"This might be one of my most-missed food items after I left Dallas," he says.

z.TAO Marketplace
His next destination is the z.TAO Marketplace, an Asian grocery store and food court in Plano which oddly has not updated its social media presence since 2020. He oohs and aahs over the supermarket's bounty including the many different Asian flavors of Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Fanta, then orders a bowl of hulatang, a traditional thick Northern Chinese soup, hand-pulled dan dan noodles, and a sandwich with chopped pork.

Moriya Shokudo Ramen & Curry
He also visits Moriya Shokudo, which started out in a food court in Koreatown before opening a stand-alone restaurant in Richardson in 2024, and which has won local awards for its ramen and curry.

He orders the garlic ramen and marvels at its garlicky-ness, with a black garlic-flavored tonkotsu broth along with roasted whole garlic cloves.

"This is a really intensely garlicky bowl — to call it intense would be an understatement," he says. "I would say this is a must-try."

Pho Big Bowl
His last place is Pho Big Bowl, a Vietnamese restaurant which started out in Watauga before opening a location in Carrollton in 2022.

He likes the lightness and yet potent beefy flavor of the broth. "I feel like when I'm here in Texas, I don't add nearly as much sriracha as I would at places in New York or Seattle," he says.

"I am really jealous of all the good pho places you have here in the Dallas area," he says. "I feel like, of all the cities in Texas, this area has the best pho, hands down."

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