The crowds pouring into Highland Park Village crave luxury. At this open-air mall in a Dallas suburb, they park their Porsches, flaunt Yves Saint Laurent handbags, flit in and out of Audemars Piguet, and pause for brunch at Sadelle’s, Major Food Group’s posh new sandwich shop in New York.
Sadelle’s has been open a little over a year now, and it’s not uncommon for the place to be packed on Tuesday afternoons as well-dressed diners sip mimosas and snacks of $18 pigs in a blanket and $85 latkes topped with salmon and osetra caviar. Even the sugar for the coffee is served in tiny Le Creuset frying pans.
Dallas has long had a reputation for living big, an image built on oil money and the sprawling farms showcased in the TV series of the same name. But today the city is enjoying a surge of new development, new residents, new wealth – and a dining scene pumped up by the arrival of several high-end national restaurant groups, all looking to cater for the party.
These companies are giving Dallas the kind of attention they’ve previously given to tourist playgrounds like Las Vegas and Miami. In the past two years, local outposts have been established by STK, RH, Komodo, La Neta Cocina y Lounge, and even Nusr-Et, the Salt Bae steakhouse. Major Food Group opened a Dallas branch of its maximalist Italian restaurant Carbone last year and says it has even bigger ambitions in the city.
The local rumor mill is abuzz with speculation about the next possible import – names like Miami’s Joe’s Stone Crab (which said it had no plan), or Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar (which did not respond to requests for comment) and Pastis (which said it it was in “preliminary talks” about a space) from New York City.
“I’ve been called by every restaurant group in the country,” says Stephen Summers, whose family owns Highland Park Village. He added, “Every group you can think of, from Los Angeles to New York City to international groups, seems to want to be in Dallas.”
The pandemic prompted many Americans to move to places like Miami and San Antonio where it was warmer and Covid restrictions were looser.
No city has benefited more from this shift than Dallas. From April 2020 to July 2021, the Dallas-Fort Worth area gained about 122,000 new residents, more than any other metropolitan area in the country, according to Census data. Some demographers predict that by the 2030s, Dallas — now the largest metropolitan area in Texas — could replace Chicago as the country’s third-largest metropolitan area.
Where do those people go for fun? The Dallas-Fort Worth region has no beaches, mountains, or wonders of the world, but it does have about 15,000 dining options. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average Dallas household will spend a higher proportion of its income on dining out in 2022 than households in New York, Miami or San Francisco.
Like any major city, Dallas has its share of poverty – 17.7 percent of the population lives in poverty – and economic inequality. The area is home to 92,300 millionaires and 18 billionaires, according to a 2022 report from Henley & Partners, a London investment firm, that ranked Dallas as the 18th richest city in the world. Several Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T and American Airlines, are headquartered in the area.
“You have no idea how fast things get spent in that market,” says Julie Macklowe, the founder of the Macklowe American Single Malt Whiskey, which sells for $350 to $400 a shot in numerous Dallas restaurants. “It’s like the American version of Dubai.”
These luxury chains cater to the city’s ultra-rich – and those who want to spend an evening living like them. Las Vegas-based restaurant group Blau + Associates recently opened Crown Block in Dallas’ towering Reunion Tower, where the seafood tower costs $230. The place had about 10,000 reservations before it even released a menu.
The three-month-old Dallas branch of La Neta Cocina y Lounge, originally from Las Vegas, offers a $95 lobster taco served in a cheese-stuffed tortilla.
Ryan Labbe, owner of the restaurants, has high hopes for Dallas, where—unlike Las Vegas—a meal isn’t just a pit stop on the way to a show or a club.
“Dinner in Dallas is your night,” he said.
In Dallas, these companies have also found manageable operating costs. There is no state or local income tax. Rents are cheaper and ingredients cost less than many other major cities, says Matt Winn, a partner in and the chief development officer of the Chicago-based Maple Hospitality Group, which has two restaurants in Dallas—Monarch and Kessaku—and has plans to open a third, Maple & Ash. It was easier to hire workers, he said, and sell extravagant dishes.
At Monarch, “we have a whole king crab that serves eight people and costs $1,000,” Mr. Winn said. Diners in Dallas “will show up and spend that.”
In a city whose dining scene has often been overshadowed by Houston’s diverse cuisines and Austin’s array of distinctive independent restaurants, many locals relish the attention.
“Two Ritz-Carltons are being built here,” said George White, a retired IT salesperson who often dines out. “Things happen.”
But a splashy dining scene isn’t necessarily interesting, said Brian Reinhart, the restaurant critic at D Magazine, which recently published a list of the city’s 50 best restaurants — and deliberately left the restaurant chains out of town.
“As we move into a world where the best food is as chain-like as the most basic fast food,” he said, “it’s going to be harder for Dallas to maintain any sort of distinction or culinary character.”
Chain restaurants have traditionally been part of the city’s identity, albeit cheaper ones: Chili’s, On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina, and 7-Eleven all started here. The proliferation of these businesses damages the image of the local food scene, said Mark Masinter, the founder of Open Realty Advisors, which leases real estate to Dallas restaurants.
But in recent years, many of the city’s independent restaurants have thrived and garnered national praise. Bon Appétit chose Dallas as its restaurant city of the year in 2019. Other publications have named Petra and the Beast and Roots Southern Table as one of the best in the country. (The Times included Roots in its list of favorite American restaurants for 2021.)
Sam Romano, who runs local steakhouse Nick & Sam’s, said the influx of out-of-town restaurant groups will further raise Dallas’ fame. “With restaurants comes prestige,” he said, referring to Major Food Group’s decision to open a satellite of Carbone, one of only four in the United States. “That says something about Dallas.”
A few years ago, Dallas wasn’t even on the radar of New York restaurateur Eugene Remm. At the encouragement of a colleague, he visited in 2021 and was surprised to find dining rooms packed every night of the week.
“If you can find restaurants that are busy on Mondays and Tuesdays and restaurants in a close two-mile radius that can do $17 million, $22 million, there aren’t more than 10 markets that can justify that kind of spending on a regular basis, ” he said. “That makes it special.”
Next year, he plans to open Catch, an upscale seafood and steak restaurant in the city’s burgeoning Uptown neighborhood.
He once associated Dallas with “George Bush and cowboy hats,” he said, but found it more like New York. “People go to membership clubs and have the same Dior store and the same Gucci store and everything the same.”
Not every national restaurant group succeeds here. Chef Tom Colicchio closed his Craft location in Dallas in 2012. Il Mulino, a New York City-based Italian importer, closed in 2006 after only two years of operation.
Today, diners in Dallas are more cosmopolitan, said Candace Nelson, who opened a Sprinkles cupcake shop location in 2007, followed by a branch of Los Angeles restaurant Pizzana in 2022. “They are thrilled as a concept from their many trips to their city to to go.”
On a recent Friday evening at Carbone, that excitement was palpable among the diners. Throughout the evening, customers poured out of Cadillac Escalades in stilettos and suits. Servers in crimson uniforms whizzed through the restaurant with $600 bottles of Burgundy and slabs of chocolate cake covered in edible gold.
“The people who work here call them captains, and they have the outfits,” said Nav Singh, who works in real estate and spent money celebrating his birthday in Carbone. “They make an effort. At a mom-and-pop store, it might be a white shirt, black pants. Compared to the average restaurant in Dallas, he said, “This is more elevated.”
But the boom in out-of-town restaurants has not come without casualties for the home side.
In 2021, Julian Barsotti, a longtime owner of a Dallas restaurant called Carbone’s, sued Carbone for copyright infringement. But it was Mr. Barsotti who eventually changed the name of his restaurant after making a deal with Major Food Group.
“In the end, if the name meant that much to them, I was happy to compromise,” said Mr Barsotti, who said he could not reveal the terms of the deal.
Erin Willis, who recently closed her French restaurant, RM 12:20 Bistro, in East Dallas, said the big restaurant groups were partly to blame.
“These big companies that now own all the restaurants can afford more advertising, they have deeper pockets, they’re glitzier,” she said. “It puts the little places like myself in the background, and we can’t survive.”
The outside groups also weaken the city’s culinary diversity, she said.
“Dallas has so much ethnic food to offer, but what the business side is doing is bringing so much of the same to the metroplex,” she said. “There is no variety. It takes out the people who are trying to stay true to their culture.”
Teiichi Sakurai runs Tei-An Japanese restaurant downtown, a short drive from two nationally known sushi restaurants, Nobu and Uchi, who came from other cities. But Mr. Sakurai said his business has not been affected by the competition.
“Nobu, they have a lot more European dishes, with Japanese carpaccio style fish,” he said. “We do handmade soba.”
And Dallas guys are loyal, he said. “We’ve had regular customers for 25 years.” National groups come and go, he said. “They don’t remember names.”
Regino Rojas, who serves food from his native Michoacán, Mexico, at his restaurants, Revolver Taco Lounge and Revolver Gastro Cantina, said upscale chains focus more on creating an atmosphere than serving unique food. His clientele, he said, is different.
Additionally, said Mr. Romano of Nick & Sam’s, Dallas is only getting denser and bigger as new developments expand the metro area’s footprint. If restaurant groups want to settle here, “we have the space and the people to do so.”
Is there such a thing as too many dining options?
“I don’t think there are enough left,” he said.
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