The 10 Restaurants That Defined Dallas Dining This Year

Since Kinzo opened on Christmas Eve 2022, fish from Tokyo have regularly been flying to Frisco, Texas. The restaurant is chef-owner Leo Kekoa’s gift to one of the fastest-growing cities in America; after all, Frisco has billions of dollars in development projects underway, including a Universal Studios theme park and new headquarters for the PGA. After years of working in Uptown at Nobu Dallas, Kekoa had the wisdom to listen to his wife when she asked where they were going to eat after moving to the suburbs.

His nineteen-course omakase with Edomae-style sushi, mostly from Tokyo’s Toyosu Market, is the highlight at Kinzo. Koshihikari rice prepared with four Japanese vinegars is taken seriously, too. Kekoa and his dream team of chefs, young and retirement-age, have learned that diners will pay $185 for the omakase, similar to city prices.

Kinzo means “neighborhood,” and it’s a reflection of a national movement that includes Mujō, which recently brought one of a handful of Michelin stars to Atlanta. Restaurants like these tell us a very clear story, namely that diners want high-end sushi where they live, even if it’s not in an obvious downtown hub. And they’re getting it.

A new restaurant in an old soda fountain captured the imaginations of the city like no other this year. Mister Charles is maximalist dining, and makes no bones about it. Caviar-dotted canapés, high-end steaks, diver scallops, and uni shell carbonara are presented by debonair servers in a dining room spangled with crystal chandeliers and tapestries.

It’s “irreverent,” ambitious, and resurrects longed-for classics like the baked Alaska, but somehow even more stunning. As Duro Hospitality co-owner Chas Martin shared when he offered his tips for snagging a coveted table, we are in Dallas’s golden era of dining. Mister Charles is the place to celebrate that fact.

In her first restaurant, chef Leigh Hutchinson juxtaposes over-the-top glam with genuine, no-frills, red sauce comfort food. She’s from Coppell, but has Sicilian roots, and if you don’t encounter one of her family members while in the restaurant, you’ll see their photographs on the walls.

The robust lasagne al forno is the must-have, but you can’t miss with any of the pastas freshly made with imported Italian flour in the dedicated pasta room. The all-Italian, low intervention-focused wine list, with 21 selections by the glass and around 60 bottles, makes for many delightful return trips. It’s all a reminder that Dallas has many foodways and influences.

Until this year, never has a restaurant from Fort Worth, Texas, been a finalist for one of the nation’s best new restaurants in the James Beard awards. Restaurateur Juan Ramón Cárdenas, his son and executive chef, Rodrigo Cárdenas, and longtime friend and hospitality leader Adrian Burciaga changed that — namely by bringing the specialties of their native Saltillo, especially slow-cooked cabrito, to Cowtown, a place where restaurants serving Tex-Mex, chicken fried steak, and calf fries have traditionally prospered.

The team avoids watering down Northern Mexican cuisine: Chapulines and tacos de lengua are on the menu. But they also understand their audience, offering up dry-aged prime tomahawks and New York wagyu steaks from Rosewood Ranch. Invigorating the menu is a Mexican-forward wine list that will change everything you never knew about Mexico’s wine regions.

For some time, Dallas has had a handful of restaurants with top chefs developing menus, but never before has it had a chef fresh off a stint at a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Napa Valley (ahem, the French Laundry) arrive for an executive chef role. R.J. Yoakum, who took over Georgie’s kitchen early this year, is moving the restaurant — which previously was mostly noted for its interior design and Australian grass-fed steaks — away from the steakhouse realm. Diners can now find more fish (Tasmanian ocean trout, peppercorn-crusted hiramasa), perfect dry-aged duck breast, and vegetarian pastas to go with a few well-executed steaks.

Whether it’s from Yoakum’s mesmerizing work on the plate, or some bold talk straight from his mouth, he wants the world to know: He’s ready for this role; he has different influences than other Dallas chefs; and he’s very competitive.

Named after British slang for corrugated steel, new Wriggly Tin in South Dallas is a restaurant of the future. Owners Jacob Boger and Aaron Garcia (the beloved brewer of erstwhile Small Brewpub) started the two-year endeavor of rebuilding a World War II-era Quonset hut by first checking to see if the surrounding community wanted a “folk cosmopolitan” brewery and pizzeria in their neighborhood. Fortunately, they did.

Wriggly Tin is defined by “celebrating what the common people love,” the owners say, along with doing what is truly most sustainable, rather than what seems that way. Compostable bamboo silverware is enough to fork up salads and meatballs, actually, and the five beers brewed on site will be bottled to avoid the plastic-liners of cans. The chef is Desmon Coleman, who earned a following with his Hustle Town pizza pop-up, and he’s making even better pies now in a real kitchen.

More info here.

Poll the locals for their favorite restaurant, and at the top will usually be Lucia, the Italian restaurant in Bishop Arts opened by David and Jennifer Uyger in 2010. The duo are the picture of keep-your-head-down persistence and excellence, a quality that was duly recognized this year with a finalist spot for outstanding restaurant at the Beard awards.

The housemade pastas will test your knowledge of pasta shapes, and pastry chef and baker Maggie Huff creates her own form of euphoria. Less noticible, but also important, is that Lucia also has the loyalty of its employees. That could be because the Uygers decided to institute an automatic service fee during the pandemic in order to create a more sustainable work environment.

A maven of fermentation and whole hog butchery, chef Misti Norris has remained committed to her earthy, natural, funky-in-a-good-way style since her first restaurant by the same name. Opened in a renovated gas station in 2018, Petra and the Beast soared with national praise, including nods from Esquire, Bon Appétit and Food & Wine.

After weathering the pandemic with takeout and creative patio configurations, mercifully, this year, Norris was able to take Petra a few miles down the road, where her whole utilization and forage-focused cooking now comes with a wine and spirits list that’s as natural and down-to-earth as the food.

More info here.

New Italian restaurant openings turn heads, and with the opening of no fewer than ten last year in Dallas, our heads are spinning. But 61 Osteria, opened this year in Fort Worth by Dain “Adam” Jones and executive chef Blaine Staniford, is exceptional.

Aside from the cheesy arancini, rosemary focaccia, and mouthwatering martinis made with Italian vodka, the coiled serpente pasta is a praiseworthy — nay, destination-worthy — creation by Staniford. 61 Osteria is proof that Fort Worth can be fancy now, and it’s high time. As Texas Monthly pointed out: “A place that has museums of national caliber should have restaurants to match.”

Many successful restaurants are boosted by positive press, while others earn the patronage of the public and local celebrities on their own merits. Kitchen + Kocktails is a vibe unto itself — and is now one of Dallas’s top-grossing restaurants (after an initial opening debacle).

One reason Kelley has such a large support group is that he’s a homegrown talent: On his path to becoming an attorney, he graduated from Paul Quinn College before going to the University of Houston. When he’s not lawyering, he’s focused on his goal of serving the best comfort food in the nation to extremely loyal diners who enjoy the upscale environment, drinks, and music, along with plates of Southern fried chicken, Caribbean jerk lamb chops, and banana pudding waffles. It all makes for a remarkable success story that somehow hasn’t yet been told as fully as it might be.

Call 469-841-0073 for more info.

For a long time, Oren Salomon has known that bagels are his own personal key to happiness. It’s why he left Dallas to stage at Boichik Bagel in Berkeley, Calif., one of the nation’s top bagel shops, before opening Starship Bagel in Lewisville in 2021. It was a quiet affair until the opening of a satellite location downtown this year. The Dallas bagel scene has skyrocketed ever since: Starship was soon named one of the “Very Best Bagels in the US” by Bon Appétit, and in October, it swept awards, including Best Bagel, at New York’s BagelFest.

Thanks to Salomon, who upholds the bagel as the one perfect food, Dallas is a bagel town now. His vision of promoting Dallas food culture extends even further, though. As he forecasted in a recent TV interview: “By the end of the decade, Dallas will be the best food city in the nation.” We’re onboard.