King Cake News

Best ways to celebrate Mardi Gras 2025 in Dallas

Dodie's on the Harbor

Dodie's

Mardi Gras, the holiday known for beads and boisterous parades, falls on March 4 this year. Its origins in the U.S. date back to 1870 in New Orleans.

The biggest day of all during the celebration is Fat Tuesday, which turns attention to food and King Cake, a colorful cake that typically has a tiny baby doll inside, a sign of luck. Though Dallas is quite a ways from the birth place of Mardi Gras, you don't have to make the trip out to Louisiana to celebrate because these local restaurants make it feel like you're already in the midst of the party.

Here's where all the Mardi Gras specials are happening in Dallas:

Bbbop Seoul Kitchen. Oak Cliff restaurant will have a menu featuring gumbo, Asian Cajun drumsticks, and classic Hurricanes. Seating is first-come, first-served. March 2.

Bread Winners. Offering specials, including Shrimp Étouffée, King Cakes, and $8 King Cake Martinis. Plus, let us take your Mardi Gras celebrations to the next level with our catering options, featuring delicious King Cakes, Cupcakes, and Mini King Cakes. Available at Allen, NorthPark, Plano, and Uptown.

Cannon's Corner. Oak Cliff Irish pub hosting their Mardi Gras parade party with food and drink specials, including hurricanes and French 75s, po'boy sandwiches, and gumbo. There will be beads. March 2, 9 am.

The Charlotte. Neighborhood bistro on Henderson Avenue offering special menu with $35 blackened red fish, $35 crawfish boil, and drinks including a hurricane and frozen strawberry daiquiri, which are $12 each. March 4, all day.

Cinnaholic. Cinnamon roll chain is offering King Cakes for $30. This shareable cake will serve eight to ten people, and can be found at Addison, Arlington, Frisco, Grand Prairie, Irving, Grand Prairie, McKinney, Mesquite, and Richardson locations. Available now through March 4.

Colombian Country Club. Offering a menu with a gumbo crafted by the chef, while mini king cakes will be placed on tables to add a traditional touch, alongside their cocktails including the Columbian daiquiri, frozen strawberry daiquiri, and the Bourbon Street Old Fashioned. Plus, there will be a special drinks menu from Aguasol, providing a dual frozen machine featuring specialty frozen daiquiris. Prices a la carte. March 4.

Dee's Table. Frisco restaurant offering special dishes including the $19 pastalaya, $16 shrimp po-boy, Bananas Foster bread pudding, and Voodoo daiquiri. March 4, starting at 11 am with live music at 3 pm.

Dodie's on the Harbor. Rockwall restaurant is hosting food and drink specials the Friday through Monday leading up to Fat Tuesday featuring $11 gator bites, $7 King Cake and ice cream, and $5 hurricanes or margaritas. They'll also have a Fat Tuesday celebration from 2 pm to close featuring live music, free beads all day, bead contest, and $3 drink specials with margaritas, hurricanes, and Miller Lite.

Eatzi's. Dallas market and bakery is offering a King Cake made with soft cinnamon-sugar dough, cream cheese filling, with a sweet icing, topped with traditional Mardi Gras colors of yellow, green and purple sugar. Pus, a toy baby is hidden inside for good luck. Available for $24 with pre-orders through March 3.

Ida Claire. Addison restaurant celebrating with menu of boiled crawfish, King Cake bread pudding, gumbo, daiquiris, and hurricanes. Prices start at $6 for food and $12 for hurricanes. During Fat Tuesday, they’ll have a mask-making station with New Orleans-inspired tunes. February 28 through Fat Tuesday, March 4 with a Mardi Gras celebration.

Jack & Harry's. French Quarter-inspired chophouse in Snider Plaza is offering a menu with blue crab gumbo, oysters St. Claude, and prime, dry-aged steaks, and French onion filet. Prices are a la carte. Featured cocktails include Bourbon Street classics like the Sazerac and Hemingway Daiquiri, plus new $9 mini martinis. March 4.

Little Daisy. The Thompson restaurant is hosting a celebration on the lawn with a crawfish boil and menu featuring jalapeño & cheddar hush puppies, green goddess potato salad, and classic king cake and pralines for dessert. There will also be limited-time cocktails including Cherry Sazeracs, Hand Grenades, and daiquiris. Tickets are $65. March 4, 6-9 pm.

Nuri Steakhouse. Uptown steakhouse hosting a Mardi Gras soiree on the Jade Terrace featuring passed hors d'oeuvres, such as crab cakes and Wagyu dumplings, and special cocktails. The event also includes live entertainment. Festive masks and attire encouraged. Tickets are $150 with a reservation. March 4, 6-10 pm.

Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen. Cajun seafood restaurant offering a menu of specialty dishes including rainbow trout Mardi Gras and New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp. Dessert features vanilla cheesecake with traditional Mardi Gras king cake, cinnamon, graham cracker crust, and crème anglaise. They'll also be offering a keepsake Mardi Gras glass with each Swampthing cocktail order starting February 28. Dining specials available February 19 - March 4.

Quarter Bar. Offering New Orleans-inspired specials, including $6 Hurricanes, $8 King Cake shots, shrimp étouffée, a shrimp and crawfish boil, and King Cakes — all set to the backdrop of live music. March 4.

S&D Oyster Company. The Uptown oyster bar will be rolling out mini king cakes— 25 of which will have a mini baby hidden inside. Guests who find a baby will get their cake for free and win a $20 gift card to return to S&D. March 4, 11 am-10 pm or until they run out.

The Star in Frisco is celebrating Mardi Gras with a bar crawl, live music, and exclusive Mardi Gras-themed cocktails. There will be food and drink specials including $5 Hurricanes and Painkillers from Tricky Fish; Marco Gras and festive beads from Monarch Stag; The “CAT5” cocktail from Snowbird Kitchen; Hurricane Shots and beignets from La Parisienne; rum runner and gumbo from The Glen; and Star Hurricane from Frisco Omni Hotel. Free admission. Menu item prices vary by restaurant. March 4, 6-9 pm.

TLC Vegan Cafe. Richardson restaurant offering a vegan Creole dinner menu featuring chicken gumbo, red beans and rice, boudin balls, Creole fried TLC, and Bourbon Street bread pudding or beignets for dessert. Reservations are available for $55 for 3-course, or $65 for 4-course. March 1, starting at 4 pm.

The Village Dallas, the mixed-use community in east Dallas is offering Mardi Gras packages to access specials at its dining spaces. Buzz and Bustle, the local craft coffee house, is featuring a Banana’s Fosters cold brew latte, mini King Cake, Muffaletta sandwich, and mango sunrise drink; Over Under sports bar is featuring red beans and rice, shrimp etouffee, and a crawfish boil, served by the pound with corn and potatoes while supplies last; and Sandy Pickle offering a beignet station, hushpuppies with remoulade, and shrimp po’boy. Tickets include Hurricane package for $25, and the Crawdaddy package for $40. March 1, 12-6 pm.

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Pasta News

Downtown Dallas tasting restaurant embraces new Italian theme

Sauvage

Pasta at Sauvage Dallas

A chef-driven restaurant in downtown Dallas is shifting gears: Sauvage, the fine-dining concept near the Statler Dallas hotel known for its multicourse tasting experience, is diving into a more fluid approach by taking on a new identity each month.

Their new model will begin in February with an embrace of Italian food. Each ensuing month will usher in a new theme, driven primarily by cuisine.

According to chef Casey La Rue, it's just a fine-tuning of the seasonal approach that the restaurant already takes.

"Sauvage has always shifted with the seasons — ingredients come and go, dishes evolve, small changes happen constantly," he says. "The rotating theme lets us explore a cuisine, a perspective, and a set of flavors more deeply, while still staying grounded in the local farmers, ranchers, and producers we work with every day."

Casey opened Sauvage with his wife, Amy La Rue, in September 2025 at 1914 Commerce St. as a tasting-menu-style restaurant with just 12 seats and two seatings per night. The restaurant is a collaboration, with Casey serving as chef and Amy, who is a pastry chef, doing desserts and breads; the couple also owns La Rue Doughnuts, the massively popular artisan shop at Trinity Groves.

Their unique approach included cooking everything on a wood fire, eschewing traditional methods such as a deep fryer. They'll still make the wood fire the centerpiece, but with an embrace of Italian food. That means pastas made in-house, plus meats and seafood with Italian ingredients and techniques.

The starting menu includes dishes like gatto di patate — smoked potato with a savory custard and caviar, or couscous rustico with Wagyu beef cheek.

"We'll be making couscous in-house — it's 'rustico' because it's handmade and the couscous pearls won't be uniform in size or shape," Casey says.

There'll be smoked Wagyu beef rib, crusted not in the usual salt and pepper but with olives instead, and served with lion's mane mushrooms; and carne cruda with venison and crispy sunchoke which he describes as "an Italian tartare."

Other courses include Gulf prawn sausage with Swiss chard, boar belly with parsnip puree, and opening dishes such as focaccia with Gulf snapper baccala spread.

Desserts include spumoni, an eye-catching ice cream confection that originated in Naples and is hugely popular in the Northeast, featuring three distinct layers of cherry, pistachio, and chocolate ice cream; white coffee tiramisu, a decidedly chef's take with a coffee-cocoa gel and hazelnut sabayon; and zeppole — ricotta doughnuts, summoning the restaurant's doughnut-shop sibling.

"Part of our motivation is that we didn't want to be doing the same thing over and over," he says. "When customers come in, they invariably ask when the next menu change will take place. Changing to a new theme or identity every month also gives our staff a chance to get creative."

downtown chefs openings