Welcome to Michelin Month. The Dallas food media is about to become a frenzy of coverage as our city’s restaurants receive their first-ever Michelin stars. It’s important because the Michelin Guide is a global entity, staffed by anonymous critics with years of restaurant industry expertise. It’s also important because the city of Dallas has seen a hollowing-out of its critical landscape; aside from D Magazine, which employs a full-time critic (me) and ranks the city’s best restaurants, the only other professional restaurant reviewing in town is done once a month in the Dallas Observer. Michelin is here to check our work, and to tell Dallas chefs how they stack up against the rest of the globe. And to help inform where you spend your money.
But there’s some other stuff happening, too, and this roundup includes my personal selection of the highlights.
News of the month: It’s gonna be Michelin
On the night of November 11, the Michelin Guide will reveal the restaurants in its first-ever Texas guide at a live ceremony in Houston. Restaurants could receive one, two, or three stars; a “green star” for sustainability; a Bib Gourmand award for budget-friendly eating; or no stars or bibs, but a “recommended” blurb in the Guide, which functions as an honorable mention.
Once Michelin makes its move, all the food news coverage for the rest of the month will be vacuumed up. We’ll be talking about who got snubbed, who got a surprise shout-out, who won the D reader prediction pool, what it all means for Dallas, and so on, until we’re all exhausted.
I’ve confirmed (off the record) that at least 11 Dallas restaurants have been invited to the ceremony. There will certainly be more. Michelin lists 28 spots for Denver, 41 in San Diego, 53 for Atlanta, and 66 in Miami.
But also: It’s the month of festivals and wine dinners
November, the one good weather month in the Dallas calendar, has a jam-packed calendar of festivals. You can party for charity at Meat Fight. You can party with all the Greek yia yias. You can party with Tiffany Derry at Shef. You can party with Misti Norris at Chefs for Farmers. You can party up in Plano. You can drive down to Lockhart for Texas Monthly’s barbecue festival. It’s a lot.
If you don’t want to party all day, you can still partake in a surprising number of November wine dinners. The most intriguing-sounding is a pairing of spicy Calabrian food with Calabrian wines, at Partenope in Richardson on Nov. 4.
Best meal of the month: The new tasting menu at Rye
With 11 courses of fun ideas like dessert for dinner, punny dish names, foods that look like other foods (or napkins), and celebrations of Texas foodways, Rye’s kitchen is pushing itself to new heights in both technique and entertainment. This is serious cooking, but delivered with a lack of ego or fuss. It’s not a bargain, but it’s also unforgettable. If that whets your appetite, I wrote a full-length review. (A full vegetarian tasting is available.)
Worst meals of the month: Several terrible pastrami sandwiches
I’m almost done tasting every single pastrami sandwich in the Dallas area for a full guide coming later in November. Basically every bad meal I’ve had recently has been from a restaurant that doesn’t understand that pastrami is supposed to be seasoned, or that it shouldn’t be served with iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles, or that melted cheese is a supplement, not the star.
Yes, this is an anonymous call-out for now. But the full ranking is coming. You’ll see the guilty parties.
Where to go in November: apparently, it’s Asian food month. That’s cool!
Everything opening now is Asian. That includes ShangHai Taste, a Las Vegas-based restaurant specializing in soup dumplings that recently opened a Plano location; DH Noodles & Grill, a new Muslim-owned Chinese restaurant that comes to Plano from the San Jose area; Feng Shui, an Uptown spot that combines Thai, Japanese, and Chinese menus (worrisome!); MiYa Chinese, which will be bringing a promising menu to Casa Linda when it opens on Nov. 25; and upscale Le PasSage, from which I’ve already written a postcard preview.
Vietnamese coffee shop Chimlanh debuted a new series of coffee classes; the first one is sold out, but you should keep an eye out for more. There’s a new Indian spot in downtown Dallas, Indian Masala Tadka near the West End. I’m interested in two non-Asian newcomers: Arepa Azteca in Oak Cliff and new Henderson hangout The Charlotte. I’ll try to write a column about The Charlotte’s new jerk-seasoned burger as soon as possible, because a jerk burger sounds incredible.
Finally, a new food hall is opening in Victory Park on November 8. Curated by chef Josh Harmon, whose magnificent Birdie chicken sandwiches will move from their former home at the Exchange hall downtown, the six-business Victory Social includes another Exchange refugee, Rise & Thyme, along with a taco stand and a sit-down dinner menu that promises duck frites.
Seven one-sentence restaurant reviews
The new prix-fixe lunch menu at Mirador is a great value ($30 for two generous courses and a to-go cookie) and spotlights the kitchen’s skill with fresh veggies. Encina has new brisket-gouda croquettes you must order. Rodeo Bar has dropped its Tex-Mex-ish burger with guacamole and a tostada between the buns, and its standard burger reads higher on cheese flavor than meat. Every dish my table ordered at Written by the Seasons came with a different side salad, and they were all delightful.
I loved the frites and watercress salad on the Dakota’s steak frites special; not so much the overcooked steak, which was just saying goodbye to its last trace of pink. (Ed. note, in the interest of fairness: Brian’s editor also recently had this special, and the steak was delivered a perfect medium rare.) If you ever see chilaquiles appear as a menu special at Las Almas Rotas, order them. Deep Ellum has a delicious new super-thin crust situation at Good Side Pizza Pub.
Required reading
- In Texas Monthly, taco editor José Ralat built a huge, genre-spanning guide to the state’s 50 best tacos, including a number of Dallas spots. But you’ll want to dive into the whole thing, and maybe plan a trip to San Antonio.
- Dallas Observer food critic Chris Wolfgang and photographer Nathan Hunsinger drove to Cameron, Texas, to attend a bull sale held at 44 Farms, and got an inside look at the ranch that produces some of the best beef on the planet.
- Emma Janzen, a renowned spirits writer who literally wrote the book on mezcal, wrote a list for Punch of the best places to drink it in the United States. Our own Las Almas Rotas is, deservedly, the very first spot on her list.
- Imelda García of the Dallas Morning News is launching a new column series, “D-FW Sabores,” dedicated to telling the stories of traditional Mexican foods and the people who cook them in North Texas.
- Restaurant Beatrice is the first B Corp-certified restaurant in Texas, and the Dallas Morning News’ Claire Ballor has an in-depth interview with its owners about how they achieved that goal and what the restaurant does for its Oak Cliff community.
- There’s a lot of interesting reporting in Diana Spechler’s Eater feature on the West End and its restaurants. The operators there are trying to build a distinctive neighborhood culture at a seam where touristy Dallas meets a historic reputation for crime and unhoused people. Though the story reserves judgment on the restaurants’ quality, I did laugh at the moment when a steakhouse owner brags about how truly, deeply Texan the business is—and then Spechler points out that the meat is all flown in from Kansas City.
- Junior Borges, whose first few years at Meridian created some of Dallas’ most interesting and exciting food (and served it on Dallas’ best restaurant patio), is taking an executive chef job at an Italian restaurant in Austin. But, he tells the Dallas Morning News’ Sarah Blaskovich, he’s not moving to Austin. The restaurant group he’s working with has its eyes on North Texas business opportunities to be announced later, and until then, he’s commuting down I-35. Hope we get to taste his cooking here again soon—and hope he has a whole lot of good music to jam to in the car.
- Blaskovich also brings us the very good news that Smokey John’s Bar-B-Que will be featuring its pastrami sandwiches, created for the State Fair of Texas, on the restaurant menu on Fridays and Saturdays for a limited time (or until we convince them to keep it around forever?).
Hot takes
Uh, this photo from Catch is not attractive
Catch, a swanky new chain restaurant opening on November 8 in Uptown, sent out this press photo to attract attention. And it looks…gross?
That’s supposed to be tuna tartare on top of rice cakes. So why does the tuna look like hot dog meat? Why do the sickly sauces make the plate look like a crime scene? Does that pallid green garnish make anyone else queasy? This looks like a cross between Rice Krispy Treats and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
Catch is buzzy, so it will probably attract a few dozen influencers who will produce reels in which they stare at voluptuous plates of food. For the first time ever, I feel like a restaurant could genuinely use the influencers’ help.
Deep Ellum phobia is overblown
The neighborhood has drawn negative headlines for several high-profile shootings and other crime incidents, almost all of them on weekends late at night. The unfair result is that diners and drinkers are avoiding Deep Ellum at all times of week. On a recent Tuesday around 7 p.m., I was one of three tables at a good restaurant, then the only party at a good bar. Where are y’all? If it’s not Saturday at 11:30 p.m. in front of Bottled Blonde, Deep Ellum is fine, and there are lots of great hangout spots waiting for you to come back. This is the same issue we wrote about a year ago. Get out there!
I’m saving my Michelin hot takes until after the announcement
Don’t worry: I’ve already cycled through excitement, dread, anger, pride, hype, bitterness, smarm, seasickness, and humility. But I’m trying to spare you all that until we know which emotions are merited.
What’s coming on SideDish in November
We’ll be reviewing Japanese burgers, pastrami sandwiches, and a decades-old fine dining institution that has fallen out of headlines in recent years. We’ll also be telling you the secrets behind the city’s very best cocktails.
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