Food News

Surprising surfeit of openings boost this roundup of Dallas restaurant news

Kenny's

This roundup of dining news around Dallas has multiple openings and a few closings. There's a new coffee shop, a new branch of a popular healthy fast-casual chain, a kolache restaurant from Houston, and a toast place from DC. There are also numerous seasonal menu offerings available for a limited time.

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

Jinghe Japanese Restaurant, a new Japanese barbecue eatery, has opened at 5321 E. Mockingbird Ln. #105 in the former Urban Taco space at Mockingbird Station. The menu includes ramen, rice, and noodle dishes, plus sake, beer, and cocktails.

Isla & Co., the New York concept that opened in October 2022 in the former Lucia space at 287 N. Bishop Ave. in Bishop Arts, has closed. They sent an email stating that they were unable to make the economics of the location work. Isla & Co. was founded by two Australian natives, and it was ambitious but hard to peg: a specialty coffee shop that did brunch all day as well as dinner, with a menu featuring influences from Australia, Europe, and SouthEast Asia.

Urbano Cafe, the East Dallas cafe that was threatening to close, will stay open after all but with new owners: Pasha and Sina Heidari, who also own Mike’s Gemini Twin in the Cedars, Bowen House, and Las Palmas Tex-Mex in Uptown. They will operate Urbano Cafe with the same team in place. They're also re-opening St. Martin's Wine Bistro, founded by their father Mohsen Heidari, which they'll reopen with their uncle Omid Haftlang on Bryan Street.

La La Land Kind Cafe, the coffee shop chain known for its bright yellow color scheme and charitable mission to employ foster youth, has opened a new cafe in Plano across the street from Trader Joe’s at 2301 Preston Road #B. The cafe is the company’s ninth in Texas and first in Plano. The menu features espresso and coffee drinks, plus toasts and grab-and-go options.

Flower Child, the healthy fast-casual restaurant chain, opened a new location in Plano at 2101 Preston Rd. #A. The restaurant is the company’s 12th in Texas and sixth in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Flower Child is known for salads, bowls, and wraps with mix-and-match combinations of seasonal vegetables, fruits, grains, and proteins, as well as lemonades and kombucha on tap, along with wine and beer.

Toastique, the Washington DC-based gourmet toast and juice bar, made its Texas debut with the opening of a location on the border of Dallas and Addison at 5455 Belt Line Rd. on Feb. 10. Founded in 2018 by entrepreneur and former college athlete Brianna Keefe, the restaurant concept has locations in Washington DC, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia. The menu includes toasts, acai bowls, juice, smoothies and lattes as well as grab-and-go options.

Brass Tap, the Tampa-based craft beer bar chain, opened a location at 4925 Greenville Ave. taking over the former Grub Burger space in Energy Square. Brass Tap is famous for having 50-plus beers on tap, plus full bar and kitchen. They have a dozen locations already in DFW.

Kyodai Handroll & Seafood Bar has closed down its Carrollton location at 2626 N. Josey Ln. #107. The Japanese sushi restaurant did not share a reason for the closure but thanked patrons on Facebook for "unwavering support throughout the years." The company still has a location in Frisco.

Kolache Shoppe, a family-owned bakery from Houston that serves Texas-Czech kolaches and coffee, opened a new location in Celina at 605 S. Preston Rd. #100. It is the company’s first Dallas-area location and fourth overall. The bakery offers two dozen flavors such as apricot, poppy seed, apple, sausage, egg and cheese, brisket, and venison sausage, plus monthly specials on weekends, and a full-service espresso bar with beans from Houston roaster Geva Coffee.

Léonie, one of the restaurants housed in Hotel Swexan in Dallas’ Harwood District, has added a weekend afternoon tea service on Saturday-Sunday from 2-4 pm. The restaurant is typically reserved for hotel guests only but will open to the public for the tea service. The menu features black leaf teas like English Breakfast, Earl Grey, and Jardins de Darjeeling; specialty green leaf teas such as Jardin des Merveilles, Thé Vert au Jasmin, and Thé Vert à la Menthe; and a Rêves Enfantines herbal tisane. In addition to teas, the menu features sweets like pistachio cakes, lemon meringue pie, seasonal scones, and tea sandwiches.

Kenny’s Restaurants, the Dallas-area restaurant group, will offer lunch and dinner specials at three of its restaurants — Kenny’s Wood Fired Grill, Kenny’s Italian Kitchen, and Kenny’s East Coast Pizza — through March 4. New dishes include fish filet tacos with crab and bearnaise sauce, lamb chops, and chicken scallopine in champagne cream sauce.

Royal Yum, a Thai restaurant in Denton, has added a new menu item that fuses Thai and Mexican flavors. Called the Thai Ginger Dilla, the item includes chicken breast, ginger, mushrooms, cheese and carrots inside a toasted tortilla with a spicy, garlicky sauce for dipping.

Tacodeli, the Austin-based taco chain, is bringing a seasonal favorite back to its menu: the Borracho Taco, with sherry and tequila-braised pork seared with basil, chile, and lime and topped with onion, cilantro, and avocado. They’re also adding a seasonal agua fresca with blood orange and basil. Available through March 25.

Dive Coastal Cuisine has new seasonal menu items. Appetizers include a white bean and kale soup or charcuterie salad with prosciutto, grapes, burrata, microgreens, hot honey, and a balsamic sauce. The main courses are clam chowder made without cream, and a salmon burger on a brioche bun with cucumber, radish microgreens, wasabi aioli, cilantro sweet chili, and ponzu. Available through February 29.

Firebirds Wood Fired Grill, the steak and seafood restaurant chain, has launched a new seasonal menu, including an appetizer, five entrees, dessert, and a cocktail. In addition to the wedge salad with bleu cheese appetizer, entrees include a crab cake salad, shaved roast beef grilled cheese served with tomato soup, honey garlic glazed grilled salmon with a seasonal grains pilaf, filet and tempura lobster tail, and grilled scallops with a grain salad and champagne butter sauce. Top it off with a caramel pecan bread pudding for dessert and strawberry cotton candy vodka cocktail. Available through February 29.

SusieCakes, the home-style bakery concept from California, is adding a new boozy cupcake to its menu in honor of Black History Month. It's a vanilla cupcake topped with blonde whiskey buttercream made with whiskey from Black-owned liquor company Uncle Nearest. SusieCakes will donate a portion of the proceeds to Uncle Nearest as the company raises money for its HBCU Old Fashioned Challenge. Available through February 29.

Snooze A.M. Eatery, the Denver-based breakfast chain, has begun accepting reservations for the first time. Parties of four or less can book reservations via the Snooze website or mobile app, Yelp, or Google; parties of larger than four must call the restaurant directly to book. They also have new dishes: a crispy garlic and avocado miso rice bowl, soft scrambled eggs with ricotta and chives, chilaquiles and bread pudding French toast with vanilla crème and caramel sauce.

Loop 9 BBQ in Grand Prairie has introduced two BBQ sauces available for purchase in bottles to take home. Flavors include the company’s original BBQ sauce and the “Fire” sauce with chipotle and ancho peppers. The sauces are available for purchase at the restaurant at 2951 S. State Hwy. 161.

The Mitchell in downtown Dallas has a tres fancy new menu that's heavy on French classics: steak frites, escargot, duck terrine, frog legs, scallops, veal chop, bone marrow with toast points, and caviar. Plus oysters, elk chop, steak tartare, baked Brie, and beet salad.

McCormick — yes, the seasoning company — has announced its 2024 Flavor of the Year, Tamarind and Pasilla Chile, along with a new collaboration with Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer. Through the collaboration, chefs from McCormick and Black Tap built a limited-edition menu that infuses the tangy, Mexican-inspired seasoning blend into several menu items, including a ground chicken burger basted with a sweet and tangy tamarind chile jam, fries tossed in house-made chili oil and Tamarind seasoning, and a chocolate churro shake topped with a light dusting of the spice. Available through February 29. Black Tap has seven restaurants across five states, with the sole Texas location at 2475 Victory Park Ln. in Dallas.

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers opened a new location February 6 at 3715 South Hwy 75 in Sherman. The drive-thru restaurant features 91 indoor seats plus outdoor patio seating. The fast-casual chain is known for its made-to-order steakburgers, hot dogs, shoestring fries, and frozen custard.

Tiff’s Treats has opened a new, delivery-only outpost in Forney, the first of its kind in the Dallas area. Tiff's is known for its fresh-baked cookies, with flavors like chocolate chip, lemon sugar, and peanut butter. Delivery can be ordered through the Tiff’s Treats website and mobile app, as well as DoorDash and Uber Eats.

Chick-fil-A is opening a location on the border of east Dallas and Garland at 11875 E. Northwest Hwy. Owned and operated by franchisee Michael Walkup from Grapevine, the location will join more than 140 other Chick-fil-A restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Church’s Texas Chicken has added limited-run fish and shrimp options to its menu available through Easter: fried Pacific pollock in panko breading; a fish sandwich with the aforementioned filet on a brioche bun with tartar sauce; six- and 20-piece shrimp coated in a crunchy Southern breading; and a lemon cheesecake fried pie.

Shipley Do-Nuts has opened a location in east Frisco at 8155 Custer Rd. #100. It joins more than 350 locations across 12 states.

McDonald’s has brought back its fan-favorite Shamrock Shake, a Saint Patrick’s Day-themed milkshake made with vanilla soft serve and mint syrup. Its Oreo Shamrock McFlurry — which is the same thing as the shake but with crushed oreos blended in — is also available. The annual menu items are typically available until Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17.

restaurants

Where to Eat

Where to eat in Dallas right now: 10 best desserts to try for February

DFG

Lemon Doberge cake at Del Frisco's Grille

If January is the month to diet and make up for holiday excess, then it only follows that February is the month to indulge. Thus, for the February edition of Where to Eat, CultureMap's monthly column recommending restaurants to try, we dive into desserts: the newest, the most intriguing, the most decadent. Speaking of sweet things, we have a list for Valentine's Day dinners, as well as a list for V-Day ideas that don't involve going out to restaurants at all.

Here's the sweetest Where to Eat of all: 10 must-try desserts.

Chip City Cookies
New York-based chain with locations across the Northeast and Florida is taking a run at the booming cookie market, which is currently populated by chains whose cookies seem to be nothing more than "sweet." Chip City's cookies are thick and made with high-quality ingredients, summoning the ultra-thick cookies first created by famed Levain Bakery in New York. Chip City has numerous flavors such as chocolate chip, cookies & cream, and the confetti cookie, a sugar cookie flecked with colorful confetti bits. The first Texas location opened in McKinney in 2025, and a second location is about to open in Frisco at Dallas North Tollway and Lebanon Road.

Crispy Cones
Ice cream shop chain that appeared on Shark Tank just opened a location in Plano — its second in the area, following one that debuted in North Richland Hills in 2025. It's an innovative concept that places as much attention on the cone as it does the ice cream. Their cone is fashioned after the "chimney cone," a hollow, sweet pastry with roots in Eastern European with a texture that's more like a croissant: crisp on the outside but soft and fluffy inside. And then they fill it with creamy soft-serve ice cream in flavors such as vanilla, chocolate, swirl, or seasonal flavors like pistachio or cookie dough.

Curuba Colombian Kitchen
Mom-and-pop featuring authentic Colombian food opened in Allen in 2025 with arepas, the corn patties filled with cheese and shredded meat, and empanadas with choice of fillings from chicken, brisket, vegan, shrimp, or ground beef. They have a big selection of sweets: tres leches cake, passion fruit mousse, rice pudding, with in-house bakery turning out Latin cakes and treats such as milhoja, a layered puff pastry. The item generating buzz is their rendition of tiramisu, into which they fold mashed curuba, a tropical fruit also known as banana passion fruit, which is also their namesake — giving the dessert a refreshing tropical twist.

Del Frisco's Grille
The lemon cake is one of the best cakes of all, a far better cake than Italian cream cake with its yucky array of tiny mealy chopped nuts (which do not belong in a cake); the chocolate cake, which overwhelms everything in its path; and the vanilla cake, which has no reason to exist. When it comes to lemon cakes, there may no better example than the Lemon Doberge cake at Del Frisco's Grille, a six-layer marvel featuring lemon cake, lemon buttercream icing, and a lemon glaze drizzle. Del Frisco's Grille itself pronounces it to be "exquisite," and who would dare argue.

Gyu Kaku
This international chain based in Tokyo now has two Dallas locations, including Addison and a second that just opened in Deep Ellum. They specialize in Japanese barbecue, aka yakiniku, in which raw meat is brought for diners to grill at the table themselves. Their dessert menu includes make-your-own s'mores — a perfect dish for this place, since every table has its own built-in grill. But don't overlook the green tea tiramisu, a hybrid that gives the classic Italian dessert a cool Asian theme by layering vanilla cake with matcha ice cream.

IYKYK Mochi Churro
Unusual dessert shop that just opened near Dallas Love Field specializes in Korean-style mochi churros — a hybrid street food treat that combines churros — the Mexican classic fried doughnut — with mochi, the Japanese rice cake with the chewy texture. To make the churros, IYKYK uses the same rice flour commonly used for mochi, which makes the churros chewier on the inside with a fried-crisp shell. (It also makes them gluten-free.) In addition to mochi churros, they also offer soft-serve ice cream in exotic and Asian-inspired flavors including ube, Earl Grey, matcha, and chocolate, for $4.50.

Keke Japanese Cheesecake & Drinks
Cozy bakery recently opened in Sachse with desserts and beverages, in particular Japanese-style cheesecakes and matcha drinks in more than a dozen varieties. Unlike dense New York-style cheesecakes, Japanese-style cheesecakes are soft and fluffy, thanks to their combination of cream cheese with whipped meringue. Keke has four flavors: original, chocolate, Oreo, and coconut pandan, which has a pronounced vanilla flavor. They also do Basque cheesecakes, a favorite from Spain with a burnt brown top, as well as lava cakes with molten centers like matcha, chocolate, or cheese.

Green tea mille cake at Mango MangoPhoto courtesy of Mango Mango

Mango Mango
New York-based Asian dessert chain with a location in Plano, at 2205 N. Central Expwy., calls itself the "House of Desserts" and fittingly so. They have all kinds of exotic ice cream, sundaes, tiramisu, mousse cakes, crepes, waffles, fluffy shaved ice, and more. The must-get is their mille cake — the irresistible layer cake made famous by Lady M Cake Boutique in New York, featuring paper-thin crepes stacked one atop each other, layered with flavored fillings such as green tea or mango cream, resulting in a delectably dense, almost cheesecake-like texture, $9 a slice.

Mexican Sugar
Local chain serving Mexican and Latin dishes is semi-famous for its Chocolate Avocado Cake, featuring a moist chocolate cake paired with avocado mousse, cinnamon meringue, and a vanilla rum crème anglaise. While its dense, fudge-like texture is surely more than decadent, it is perhaps the fact that it has avocado on its ingredient list — adding a richness in a sneaky "you can't taste the avocado" way — that makes it a talker.

Pietro’s Italian Bakery
Beloved family-owned bakery in Frisco opened in 2020 with a case-ful of Italian pastries: cannoli, sfogliatella, tiramisu, biscotti, cakes, and Italian butter cookies, baked from scratch with quality ingredients and old-world techniques. Their cakes in flavors such as carrot cake and red velvet boast many layers, making for a stately slice; the limoncello, featuring lemon-infused Sicilian sponge cake with Italian mascarpone mousse filling — is a local favorite. Take home a pastry sampler box with cannolis, lobster tail, Napoleon pastry, and chocolate eclair.

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