Eleven years ago, in June 2013, this magazine published a ranking of the 100 best restaurants in Dallas. Every single restaurant from 1 to 100 was placed in the order of dining critic Nancy Nichols’ preference. (These days, we only rank the 50 best.)
The top 10 was full of familiar names. Lucia, then a relatively young restaurant, came in tenth. Another youngster building a reputation, Matt McCallister, ranked fifth, one spot ahead of John Tesar’s restaurant Spoon. Fearing’s and Stephan Pyles ranked seventh and eighth. Tei-An, five years into its reign as one of America’s top Japanese restaurants, was third. In second place stood The Mansion on Turtle Creek, run by chef Bruno Davaillon.
But what restaurant stood proud as 2013’s No. 1 pick, more impressive than the cooking of Davaillon, Tesar, McCallister, David Uygur, or Teiichi Sakurai? You guessed it: Neighborhood Services.
“No other restaurant in town consistently executes such an enticing menu in a comfortable setting with effortless service,” Nichols wrote. “The egalitarian menu…has something for everyone.”
Looking back now, you might snark about that ranking. I won’t. It evokes a core historical truth about Dallas’ food scene. For many years, we did not have a healthy middle class of restaurants between the ultra high end and the everyday lunch spots. Put another way: if you went to The Mansion once a year and Burger House once a week, where did you go once a month?
Since 2013, Dallas’ swankiest dining has evolved in ways both good and bad. Our super-casual restaurants get more diverse by the year. But the biggest transformation in our city is the dramatic improvement of our culinary middle class. The restaurants that win hearts, not awards. Our city is finally filling out with bistros and grills that are sophisticated but unstuffy.
Seen this way, Neighborhood Services was revolutionary. Its first customers were used to splurging on formal meals from Spoon, Abacus, or Stephan Pyles. At that time, well-run but approachable restaurants like The Grape, Lucia, Parigi, and Bolsa weren’t just good. They were rare.
Don’t trust me or Nancy? I recently had the opportunity to interview Dean Fearing and Greg Katz together, for the September issue of the magazine, and we touched on the subject. The full interview will appear online next month (subscribers already have copies), but here’s a teaser.
“We didn’t used to have neighborhood restaurants, and that was the problem in the ’80s and ’90s,” Fearing said. “It was these stiff restaurants. And I was part of one of them! That was the place to eat. Dallas wasn’t going to make it until the neighborhood restaurants started opening up.”
Katz, whose specialty is chic, well-run neighborhood restaurants, agreed: “I think now, for the first time in Dallas, there’s so many people, and the city’s grown so much, that a lot of these restaurants and neighborhoods can survive.”
Neighborhood Services is part of an extremely busy culinary middle class in Dallas these days. It has to compete against newcomers including Goldie’s, Goodwins, Ramble Room, Green Point, and Bobbie’s Airway Grill; recent favorites such as Encina; and even Badovinus’ own National Anthem. One of Dallas’ favorite high-end restaurants, Gemma, decided to move into the bistro category, which is enjoying a surge of its own as diners enjoy French plates without pretense at Knox Bistro, The Mitchell, Little Daisy, Parigi, and Beverley’s. The Italian market, long one of our city’s weaknesses, has perked up with arrivals like Il Bracco and Via Triozzi, new groceries and delis, and a jazzy remodel at Barsotti’s.
Obviously, bad middle-class restaurants still exist and are still opening. But the bad kitchens are less bad these days—they’re mostly just boring—and the good ones are better.
I’ve mentioned before that I have directed national food writers to certain praiseworthy Dallas restaurants, only to get the demoralizing feedback that they didn’t understand why I recommended them, because every city has those places. Well, we didn’t have them. Now we do.
Our current neighborhood restaurant revolution gives us the chance to build a culture from the ground up. Some of our very best places to eat are informal dining rooms where the locals gather on casual Wednesdays right next to foodies who’ve crossed town for the experience. Two of the best new restaurants of 2024 so far, Goodwins and Nikki Greek Bistro and Lounge, are in the same camp. (Our reviews of both are coming in the October issue, but you can tell from this column what the reviews will say.)
Dallas has always had high-end dining options where you can dress up and spend the equivalent of a month’s car lease on a posh dinner. No doubt the arrival of the Michelin Guide will keep our fanciest spots in good condition. Dallas has also always had super-casual lunch counters and barbecue joints—and those are arguably better than ever, too. Finally, we’ve always had extraordinary strength in our diversity, from regional Mexican cooking to Iraqi burgers.
The recent change in our food culture takes place in the middle. A decade ago, Bolsa and Neighborhood Services were innovators. Now they’re normal. Thank goodness for that. If we’re going to build a better future for dining in Dallas, it won’t just be through acquiring a better destination to celebrate a birthday. It will be because we have so many better places to eat dinner every other night of the year.
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Brian Reinhart
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Brian Reinhart became D Magazine's dining critic in 2022 after six years of writing about restaurants for the Dallas Observer and the Dallas Morning News.
