Suggestions for Dallas. [General]

2012 May 11
Planning a trip to Dallas in early June and looking for suggestions. I used to work there and look forward to revisiting Dickey's, El Fenix, Solly's and especially Clark's Outpost clarksoutpost.com/menu.html

I will be checking roadfood.com and chowhound, but does anyone have any direct experiences they'd like to share? It's been a few years since I worked there and would hate to miss anything special.

2012 May 11
don't have any direct experiences, but eater.com is pretty good.
link below...

dallas.eater.com

2012 May 16
I was in Dallas a year ago in March, and ate some lovely things there. Dickey's is amazing of course. Iron Cactus on Main Street does fantastic Baja fish tacos and crispy shrimp tacos, spectacular guac. The rooftop patio is a terrific place to hang out. Good margaritas too.

Had the best crabcakes of my life at Avanti on McKinney, also a delicious tuna tartare app. Sit inside, the chairs on the patio are awful.

2012 May 16
Ah Texas - my favourite country - where Beef is King and Blondes dye their roots Black. Dallas is such a big city with so many choices including lots of great BBQs joints. Dickey's is good as you mentioned but as a change and what to have a little, there is always Dick's Last Resort
www.dickslastresort.com

Anytime I am in Texas I always get my BBQ fix at Rudy's - you have to luv a place that sells cuts of smoked meat by the pound and all the white bread you can eat

www.rudysbbq.com

Have a great trip

2012 May 16
Thanks everybody, and thanks new user 371 for the dallas eater link. I just gotta try anyplace named "Chicken Scratch". Keep the tips coming people, because I'm not leaving for a few weeks yet.


2012 May 19
I hear this place is good.
www.bakersribs.com/

2012 May 27
KenV thanks for that! looks like a good reason to visit Deep Ellum.

2012 Jun 25
Thanks for the tips everyone. Thanks to that Dallas eater link I found Sissy's and what a discovery! sissyssouthernkitchen.com
pic is of the chili fried oysters served with two amazing sauces. Other standouts on the menu were the chicken fried silver sirloin steak, gulf shrimp and grits and the amazing, heavenly sweet cream biscuits with fresh peach jam. And the drink offerings included a perfect Sazerac and my favorite: a bourbon/iced tea and blood orange juice concoction the name of which escapes me. Nice location on the edge of Highland Park in a restaurant row neighbourhood. Sophisticated atmosphere, simple, kind of casually elegant old country club feeling, with a few mounted animal heads for the Texas touch. Although it was tough to get a table, we used our willing-to-dine-late-or-early strategy and made it on a very busy friday night. Many people were coming in for bags of takeout too, and they offer buckets of Sissy's fried chicken to go for $20 that were literally flying out the door.

2012 Jun 25
Sissy's cream biscuits with sweet butter and fresh peach jam.

2012 Jun 25
Just a few of the drinks at Sissy's

2012 Jun 25
these are the fried lamb's balls at Clark's outpost. Very highly recommended - hot, with a thin crispy tempura like coating and tender interior. I preferred them without either of the profferred sauces, and simply dusted them with salt. Their menu online is no longer up to date, so calf fries, quail legs and trout were not available the night we went, but just about the best bbq pig ever. Although the suburbs have crept ever closer to Clark's, it is still habited by genuine cowboys fresh off the ranch (not so fresh actually), as well as tourists like me. The house made coconut cream pie is worth every calorie. It's about an hour's drive north of dallas with not much in between.

2012 Jun 25
We ate at a lot of taquerias in Dallas, including one of my former favorites, El Fenix which was just meh, with the exception of a really nice watermelon aqua fresca. Taco cabana was great for cheap eats, including decent $1.50 Margaritas in dixie cups at happy hour. But the best tacos we had were at a gas station. It's called "Fuel City" and it's a truck stop just west of downtown. All sorts of tacos including barbacoa, carne asada, and all the usual variations. Freshly made and delicious. But the big surprise was the corn stand out front. Picture is the "small corn" that I am going to try my best to duplicate when corn is in season this summer. They have a steaming vat of fresh sweet corn kernels, and they layer in alternately corn, hot sauce, lemon pepper, crema and queso fresco. One of the regulars in line said to me "They'll ask you what you want on it and the only way to do it is with everything" and she was right. So grab your food at the takeout window and sit on the communal picnic tables and look at the longhorns in the field to the north and the Dallas skyline to the east. Dirt cheap!

2012 Jun 25
And thanks Ken V. for the tip to Baker's Ribs, but we didn't go for the bbq, we went for the fried pies that they served at the bakery inside. Sorry no pictures, but we sampled a few. The fried pie is not really a pie at all, but sort of like a beaver tail/fruit empanada. They were very large and must be eaten immediately while warm. (We tried to save the leftovers but they were cold and excessively greasy later). The cherry was a disappointment, I think because the filling was more sauce than cherries, but the pineapple was full of chunks of fresh ripe fruit and the peach was sublime. Thanks again to all the Ottawa Foodies who can obviously be counted on to direct you to the special places to eat anywhere in the world!