TEXAS
Best of the Big D: 18 Stellar Dallas Restaurants for 2025
Lucia
By Rebecca Thompson | March 30, 2025
There was a time when Dallas food meant steak, maybe a lobster tail if someone else was paying. I remember once ordering “vegetarian” at a legacy steakhouse downtown and being handed a plate of buttered green beans, like I was on a cleanse I didn’t agree to.
But that version of Dallas—the over-sauced, over-served, oversized one—has quietly made room for something more interesting. The new restaurants here aren’t just good for Dallas. They’re just good. Some are ambitious and fussy. Others serve food you want to eat with your hands while standing. All of them are worth your time. Here are 18 Dallas restaurants I’d recommend, without qualification or apology.
1. Lucia
287 N Bishop Ave | Website | Instagram
You know how some restaurants feel like they’ve been there forever, even if you’ve only just discovered them? That’s Lucia. It’s a postage-stamp-sized spot tucked into Bishop Arts, where chef David Uygur makes pasta the way Italians do when they’re trying to show off for their grandmothers. The menu changes often, which feels like a flex—like, sure, they could give you a greatest hits album, but instead they’re going to play all B-sides and still blow your mind. I once had a rigatoni with beef shank ragu so rich it should have come with a nondisclosure agreement. Reservations aren’t easy, but that’s part of the charm. It’s not trying to win you over. It just does.
2. Mirador
1608 Elm St | Website | Instagram
On the top floor of a downtown department store, Mirador is the finest of Dallas’ fine-dining restaurants. The room is bright and lovely, the kind of place where people take long lunches and pretend they’re not checking their phones. The menu leans fancy without being fussy—think lobster rolls, bright salads, and a very cold martini.
3. Via Triozzi
1806 Greenville Ave | Website | Instagram
Via Triozzi is the kind of Italian place where you sit at the bar and get talked into a second plate of pasta. They’ll tell you it’s because they just made it fresh, and you’ll believe them. The cacio e pepe is salty and rich in a way that feels vaguely inappropriate for a Tuesday.
4. Georgie
4514 Travis St | Website | Instagram
Georgie used to be the kind of steakhouse where you’d expect to overhear a tech guy explain crypto. Then chef RJ Yoakum took over and made it interesting—dry-aged beef, sure, but also charred cabbage with brown butter and lemon that I would genuinely fight a man for. The transformation was enough to get him a James Beard nod.
5. Mābo
6109 Berkshire Ln | Website | Instagram
The room is quiet and dark, the kind of place where you whisper things like “a5 wagyu” and “aged soy.” Mābo is Dallas’s first proper omakase experience, with the chef handing over 20 or so bites that escalate from simple to borderline theatrical. It’s a meal where you lose track of time, and also the names of fish you thought you knew.
6. Purépecha
2701 Main St | Website | Instagram
Attached to Revolver Taco Lounge, Chef Regino Rojas offers tasting menus of four or seven courses showing off the dishes of his hometown of Michoacan, Mexico. The plates are fine-dining interpretations of centuries-old recipes, with the highlight, carnitas, cooked confit-style in pork fat. And his quesadilla stuffed with hen of the woods mushroom and menonita cheese arrives blanketed in a heart-stopping mole verde—just simply one of the best dishes in town.
7. Smoke'N Ash BBQ
5904 S Cooper St | Website | Instagram
Texas barbecue and Ethiopian spice don’t seem like natural partners until you try Smoke’N Ash in Arlington. Then you start wondering why nobody ever thought to wrap brisket in injera before. Fasicka and Patrick Hicks earned both a James Beard nomination and a spot in the Michelin Guide, recognition that they created something that somehow tastes both deeply traditional and completely new.
8. Bar Colette
3699 McKinney Ave | Website | Instagram
In December 2024, Bar Colette’s menu went through a remake thanks to Kazuhito “Kaz” Mabuchi, the executive chef and partner of Namo, Bar Colette’s sister restaurant next door. The menu is now Mabuchi’s creative takes on modern Japanese dishes and sushi. And while drinks alone make it worth a visit, Mabuchi is now just as much the draw. There’s also the vibe, the kind of slick space you’d expect in Midtown Manhattan, not Uptown Dallas. For dessert: Basque cheesecake, which might seem out of place until you learn, as I did, that it’s trending big-time in Tokyo these days—and who isn’t a sucker for a place where you can learn something new about food?
9. Starship Bagel
1520 Elm St | Website | Instagram
If you believe the New Yorkers, no bagels outside the five burroughs are supposed to be this good. And yet: a dense, chewy circle of dough, hand-rolled, boiled, and topped with crisp poppy seeds that end up on your shirt the rest of the day. If you grew up on bagels that came in sleeves from the supermarket freezer aisle, this spot in Lewisville is corrective therapy.
10. Apothecary
1922 Greenville Ave | Website | Instagram
There’s something slightly sinister about this place. The cocktails arrive smoking or bubbling or served in tiny glass cauldrons. And the small plates are actually terrific—clever versions of tapas and bar snacks that are worth the visit on their own. It’s the only bar in Dallas where I’ve been handed a tiny course of crab with my drink, an experience I’d gladly repeat.
11. Little Blue Bistro
320 W Eighth St | Website | Instagram
This spot in Bishop Arts is small enough that if you sneeze, the bartender might hand you a napkin. It’s moody and charming and seems to exist on its own wavelength. There’s a patio out back and a natural wine list that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Order the escargot, even if you’re not the type who usually does.
12. Doña Maria
8140 N MacArthur Blvd | Website | Instagram
This spot in Irving looks like a simple strip mall spot from the outside, which is exactly how you know it’s good. Inside, it’s a warm, slightly chaotic Dominican kitchen where you might get mofongo so garlicky it clears your sinuses, or a pastelón that tastes like your friend’s abuela made it for a party you’re not cool enough to be at. It’s not reinventing anything, just getting everything right.
13. Pillar
408 N Bishop Ave | Website | Instagram
The menu at Pillar in Bishop Arts looks like someone’s very well-traveled Pinterest board. You’ve got a little Japan, a little France, a little South Texas—somehow it works. Everything is plated just so, but none of it feels like it’s trying too hard. Bonus: you can get out of here for under $40 if you’re smart.
14. Le PasSage
4205 Buena Vista St | Website | Instagram
Le PasSage in Downtown merges French and Vietnamese in a way that sounds like a stretch until you taste it. The Pekin duck, pictured above is crispy-skinned and served splayed out prettily, along with ingredients to make little mu shu tacos. It's elegant without being stuffy, and yes, the waitstaff will pronounce everything correctly so you don’t have to.
15. Ramble Room
6565 Hillcrest Ave | Website | Instagram
Ramble Room in Snider Plaza is a restaurant built for the Highland Park set, but you don’t need a trust fund to eat here. The burger is beefy and a little messy, and the deviled eggs are spiked with something mysterious and delicious. Come for brunch and stay long enough to wonder what it’s like to live in one of the mansions down the street.
16. The Porch
2912 N Henderson Ave | Website | Instagram
It’s been around for a while, but The Porch in Uptown has aged well, like a pair of boots you keep getting resoled. The shrimp and grits are still perfect, as is this dippable grilled cheese. You will see someone here ordering a salad with fried chicken on top and you will want that too.
17. Claremont
4343 W Northwest Hwy | Website | Instagram
In December 2024, brothers Greg and Nicholas Katz transformed the former Suze space into Claremont, a neighborhood grill designed to be a local gathering spot. The menu features comforting classics like pimento cheese, chicken wings, and a standout double-cut Duroc pork chop. Notably, the smoked brisket sliders are crafted using beef from Zavala’s Barbecue in Grand Prairie. The Katz brothers, originally from South Africa, infuse familial touches into Claremont, naming it after the Cape Town suburb where their grandparents reside. With its warm ambiance and thoughtfully curated menu, Claremont blends tradition with a fresh perspective.
18. Tejas BBQ
1318 N Peak St | Instagram
There’s no dining room, no bar stools, no table numbers—just a walk-up window and the smell of smoked meat drifting down Peak Street. Tejas BBQ and Tacos is the new venture from Antonio Guevara and Tifany Swulius, longtime fixtures of East Dallas service life who finally opened their own place after years of working in kitchens, bars, and a whole lot of late-night pop-ups. Guevara handles the smoker, Swulius bakes and runs the front, and together they’re turning out tacos, brisket, and specials that are simple, unpretentious, and exactly what the neighborhood seems to want. It's to-go only, but you won’t mind—this food was made to be eaten over a hood of a car, or standing with a friend on the sidewalk.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Thompson has held many jobs over the years, from daily newspaper writer to middle-school math teacher to mom of a troublemaking tomboy. She’s searched her home state of Texas for the best brisket and tacos and will gladly spend days debating the merits of combining the two.
