2 openings, 2 closures made this a busy weekend in Dallas restaurants
Dallas had a busy restaurant weekend, some good news and some bad. Half good, half bad, in fact: there were two meaningful restaurant openings that took place in silence – but also two unfortunate closings, one in downtown Dallas and the other in Deep Ellum.
Let’s get to the good news first:
OPENINGS
NEONY pizza factories
The indie pizzeria in Oak Cliff will officially open on November 30th, but held a soft-opening preview over the weekend, which owner Alex Ham quietly announced on Facebook.
“Would like to meet all of you who have followed this thing and been waiting patiently for it!” he said.
Ham is a commercial photographer but previously had a pizza place in Korea. He’s posted appetizing photos of his pizza experiments, including great looking dough with long fermentation times that add all sorts of flavors to the crust.
Types of pizza sound delicious and include:
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Cup & Char with pepperoni, mozzarella and seductive drizzle of mascarpone
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Pesto cream, with house pesto cream sauce, sausage, spinach, zucchini and mushrooms
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Banh Mi Pizza with coriander aioli, lemongrass sausage, cucumber, pickled carrots and coriander
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Vegetable pizza with sliced tomatoes, mushrooms, red onions, bell pepper and roasted garlic
It’s an artisanal version of New York-style pizza, but with a lighter batter that has fermented for 72 hours and takes 4 to 5 minutes to bake, which means you can get it a little quicker than a traditional New York-style cake .
Not a piece of pizza, however. “The best pizza is fresh,” he says.
Cry wolf
Dallas-based chef Ross Demers opened his little, much-anticipated new restaurant on November 23rd at 4422 Gaston Ave. in a former subway.
It’s very Ross style: it seats around 28, with an open bar and kitchen that has a limited menu that changes frequently.
Demers has worked in a number of high profile restaurants, including Oak Dallas and Mi Piaci. Most recently, he helped open Local Traveler, the bike-friendly restaurant at the well-known intersection of Gaston and Grand, which closed in June. He previously had a brasserie called On The Lamb in Deep Ellum, which is known for its intense sausage products.
The menu isn’t listed on the restaurant’s website yet, but a look at the menu for the first week revealed:
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Oyster mignonette
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Parsley butter shrimp
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Tuna sashimi
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smoked mackerel with celery, potatoes, caviar and creme fraiche
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48 hours of Wagyu tongue
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Bibb salad
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grilled fennel with mache
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“Rich Man’s Omelette” with caviar
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Duck confit with olives
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Linguine with black trumpet mushrooms and shallots
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Gnocchi with beef cheeks
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Salmon with fingerling potatoes
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Ice skate with artichokes and capers
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Duck with kimchi and spring onion dumplings
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Beef with Pomme Anna
The wine selection is boutique with selections by the glass including Evolution Pinot Noir from Oregon, La Nerthe Grenache from Cotes-du-Rhone, Daou Cabernet Sauvignon, Crazy Creatures Rose and J. de Villebois Sancerre.
CLOSURES
Metropolitan Cafe
Simple restaurant in downtown Dallas on 2032 Main Street in the old Masonic Lodge / Western Union building that closed after 20 years on November 24th, the day before Thanksgiving.
The cafe was a deli that served breakfast agels, sandwiches, and salads, with an almost sober quality and a cool vibe that was both urban and retro, like the kind of place you’d love to be in any big city to find.
In a long, heartfelt Facebook post, owner Mike Vouras said it wasn’t because of health issues or any other external factor. “It just seems that this is the right time to move on. 20 years in one place is a long time, not to mention working in a busy, volatile and rapidly changing place all the time,” he said .
He thanked his landlord, Ken Good, whom he described as a “helpful, giving, understanding and honest businessman”, as well as family members and customers.
“I don’t feel like I’m losing customers. I feel like I’m losing about a thousand good friends,” he said.
Braindead Brewing
The groundbreaking Deep Ellum Brewpub closed on November 28th after nearly seven years of dramatic change in the neighborhood, from a low-key area on the rise to an overdeveloped cluster of high-rise buildings sprouting up from the ground.
BrainDead opened as a brewery and restaurant in March 2015 with its own beers made on-site and a beer-centric menu, and helped pave the way for other similar concepts.
But two of the original founders later left the brewery and the brewpub suffered a severe blow from COVID-19.
They concluded with a large, well-attended party on Sunday night.
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https://dallas.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/11-29-21-oak-cliff-pizza-ross-demers-metropolitan-cafe