Dallas is big Texas spirit personified.

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The city balances its historical past with its current identity as a Lone Star hub for its Wild West culture, unique arts district, JFK history, and, increasingly, as a hub for big businesses. (Some have started to call it Silicon Prairie.)

If you’ve visited Dallas before, you might already know that the city is also very well known for its restaurants, food trucks, and love of great eats. There are even wineries dotting the area around Dallas, giving residents access to delicious pinots, cabernets, and more.

Tex-Mex and barbecue are part of Dallas, just like its cowboy heritage. And you can take a bite out of this culture with a few city-crossing food tours. They let you sample beloved dishes from restaurants and food trucks you might not hear about otherwise.

If you want to taste true Texan culture, book one of these food tours in Dallas—or more. Food Tours of America is a well-known company that offers a few tours in a large-group setup, but you can also branch out into more indie territory, if you want.

Food tours in Dallas that deliver on great bites & culture

5 Local Food Tastings in Deep Ellum (Secret Food Tours)

Deep Ellum is one of Dallas’s most popular neighborhoods because it has a long history, an artistic and creative feel, and is home to some of the city’s best bars. It’s also a gastronomic hub where you can sample city staples, from brisket to Tex-Mex. Think: great eats, a bit of history, and street art galore.

Deep Ellum Foodie & Street Art Tour (Food Tours of America)

This is a similar tour to the first one listed. You’ll get a fantastic balance of history, street art, and food tastings from eateries around Deep Ellum. Both tour groups (Secret Food Tours and Food Tours of America) are highly rated and have plenty of experience. They also cost almost the same price. 

JFK Food & Culture Walking Tour (Food Tours of America)

Visitors usually get an earful (or two) about JFK when touring Dallas. If you want to dive a bit deeper into President John F. Kennedy’s life and legacy in the city while also savoring local flavors, look no further. You get to see important landmarks like Dealey Plaza and the Grassy Knoll between food tastings. Perfect for history buffs with an appetite.

Uptown Eats Trolley Tour (Food Tours of America)

Prefer to be ferried around by trolley instead of walking during a food tour? Here’s your perfect tour. You board a vintage trolley, then cruise through Dallas’s lovely Uptown neighborhood. Along the way, you’ll stop to sample diverse eats from some of Dallas’s top local haunts. The tour also includes a VIP look at the McKinney Avenue Trolley Car Barn.

5-Course Walking Food Tour in Dallas + History (Incloodie Food Tour)

Foodies, assemble! This is a small-group tour with a focus on Dallas culture that can be tasted through its top cuisine. In other words, you’ll sample a diverse range of eats that showcase the people who make Dallas what it is. Make sure you come hungry—this is a five-course tour, as the title says. You can also request gluten-free and vegetarian options.

Dallas Flavor & History Tour (Fun Texas Tours)

You can choose from two or four-hour tours on this straightforward option. The tour includes transportation in a climate-controlled van. You also stop at historical and cultural sights along the way.

Downtown Dallas Historic Food Tour: Taste What Dallas Invented (Incloodie Food Tour)

This three-hour walking tour takes you through Downtown Dallas and its Historic West End. Along the way, you’ll stop to eat some of Dallas’s most iconic dishes that originate in the city, including homemade Tex-Mex bites, BBQ, and more. Between stops to eat, you’ll learn about important historical monuments and markers.

Grapevine Foodie and Winery Tour (Food Tours of America)

Head to the scenic historic Grapevine area, just outside the city of Dallas. (The tour below is also based in Grapevine.) You can explore the downtown area as you go on a gastronomic journey that includes famous Dallas dishes, like brisket. You also get to visit a boutique winery and taproom to sample premium Texas wines.

Grapevine’s Wine & Chocolate Happy Hour (Grapevine Food Tours)

Head to Grapevine—this time, with a sweeter journey at your destination. This tour includes access to two wineries on Historic Main Street in Grapevine, along with a range of chocolate pairings to enjoy. You also get to learn about sabering, which is the art of lobbing off a champagne’s bottles top with a sharp saber.

1-Hour Distillery and Tasting Tour in Dallas (New Artisan Distillery)

I’m rounding off this list with two boozy tours. The first is a distillery tour where you get to dive deep into the art of crafting gin and bourbon. The tour is hosted at the New Artisan Distillery and is designed to be an experience. You’ll learn about distillation, then get to sample products in a Glencairn tasting glass in a classy tasting room.

Downtown Dallas Cocktail Crawl (Food Tours of America)

This cocktail crawl gives you plenty of culture to enjoy. You’ll walk from location to location in the AT&T Discovery District, doing some sightseeing on the way. At each spot, you get to sample a hand-crafted cocktail, sometimes paired with bites, as you learn about the city and its favorite flavors.

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• With their 37-23 win Sunday over the Dallas Renegades, the Louisville Kings now control their own destiny in the race for the final spot in the United Football League playoffs.
• Quarterback Chandler Rogers threw for a season-high 266 yards and two touchdowns.
• Kings running backs Ian Wheeler and James Robinson spearheaded a banner day on the ground, too.

The Louisville Kings notched their third consecutive win Sunday, 37-23 over the Dallas Renegades in front of an announced crowd of 10,378 at Lynn Family Stadium.

Louisville improved to 5-4 and moved a full game in front of the Birmingham Stallions in the race for the fourth and final spot in the United Football League playoffs. Chris Redman’s team needs only to win next week’s regular-season finale against the Columbus Aviators at Historic Crew Stadium to earn a trip to the postseason. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. May 31.

“Starting 0-3 this season, to be able to rally back and give ourselves a chance to (reach the postseason) is amazing,” Redman said. “I’m just really excited about this team and the opportunity that’s presenting itself.”

Here are three takeaways from Sunday’s win:

Trailing 17-16 around the 12-minute mark of the fourth quarter, Kings quarterback Chandler Rogers connected with Isaiah Winstead for a 40-yard touchdown that gave Louisville the lead for good.

That was one of Rogers’ seven completions of 20-plus yards. The former backup finished the evening 16 for 21, with a season-high 266 yards (16.6 per completion) and two touchdowns.

“We knew that their corners could not hang with our receivers,” Rogers said. “We took advantage of that, especially when they were playing in (a) two-high shell.”

Rogers spread the wealth Sunday. Five Kings players had receptions of 20-plus yards. Tarik Black led the way with three.

Black posted a game-high 82 receiving yards (20.5 per catch). He and Rogers linked up for a 22-yard touchdown that pushed the Kings’ lead to 37-17 with 3:28 remaining in regulation.

“Coach Redman gave me the keys to the franchise, and we’ve been on a roll ever since,” Rogers said.

When the Kings beat the Renegades in April, running backs Ian Wheeler and James Robinson combined for a season-high 147 rushing yards.

Round 2 on Sunday felt like a full-circle moment for a team that struggled to move the ball on the ground during the first four weeks of the season. Behind 93 yards on 13 carries from Wheeler and 88 on 22 carries from Robinson, Louisville set a new season high with 205 rushing yards.

“Once we get going — once that hole is open — me or Ian can pop off,” Robinson said.

To his point: Both RBs gashed Dallas for gains of 20-plus yards. And both came up big in the fourth quarter.

Robinson willed his way into the end zone for a two-point conversion after Rogers and Winstead’s 40-yard touchdown around the 12-minute mark. Wheeler delivered a 1-yard score with 7:47 remaining in regulation.

Behind Wheeler and Robinson’s big day, the Kings dominated time of possession — 34:15 vs. 25:45.

The Kings made some costly first-half mistakes — and committed a lot of penalties

The Kings took a 13-10 lead into the locker room. They should have had a lot more breathing room, considering they had 250 yards of total offense to Dallas’ 81.

The following “what if?” moments loomed large:

• What if the Kings’ defense came up with a stop on fourth-and-2 instead of allowing a 36-yard touchdown pass on the Renegades’ opening drive?
• What if Robinson didn’t fumble 3 yards shy of the end zone on Louisville’s first drive of the game?
• What if a Dallas super challenge of Lucky Jackson’s 63-yard punt return for a touchdown didn’t reveal an illegal block above the waist?
• What if free safety Keaton Ellis didn’t gift the Renegades 44 yards on a pass interference penalty, leading to a field goal?

The flag on Ellis was one of 13 (for a whopping 156 yards) that went against the Kings. That can’t happen if Louisville wants to make a deep playoff run.

“That’s the beauty (of) football: You can have a win, but there are always things to get better at,” Redman said.

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.

It’s been a month of extremes for Poorvesh Thakkar. 

The India-born, Dallas-based developer was slapped with a lawsuit trying to eject him from a Midtown Manhattan office building he bought in 2024. 

The legal challenge comes amid unseasonably sunny days for Thakkar, who recently reached a milestone in his Mustang Square development. That’s notable, because, despite launching his real estate development company in 2016, his development chops are still largely untested, as his pitched projects have mostly been delayed or aborted. 

Thakkar recently sold a 3.5-acre slice of the mixed-use project in Plano to an entity tied to Carrollton-based Madewell Spaces. The buyer said its plans to build 13 “standalone luxury office condominiums. D.R. Horton bought a swath of homesites at the project. 

Thakkar claims the project is “almost fully sold out and developed.”

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the project, because Thakkar’s legal trouble in New York seems more indicative of his success as a developer than this Plano project. 

The saga of the Midtown Manhattan office tower starts with an almost incomprehensible bet on the part of Thakkar:The largely untested developer struggling to get projects off the ground in his hometown of Dallas bought an office building in New York City with plans to turn it into a residential property, a tricky maneuver even for a seasoned developer. 

The only thing that can explain the move is the price tag. Thakkar bought the 23-story building at 135 West 50th Street on auction site Ten-X for $8.5 million, a 97 percent discount to its 2006 sale price. 

Safehold, which owns the land beneath the building, claims Thakkar’s firm failed to pay $9 million in property taxes that were due Jan. 1, 2025, and has since racked up almost $28 million in unpaid taxes, interest and other penalties.

After Thakkar failed to meet repeated extension deadlines and forbearance agreements, Safehold notified the firm that it was terminating the ground lease and demanded it surrender the building, according to the lawsuit. Thakkar refused to vacate the property, and the land owner is now seeking their immediate ejection, according to the complaint. He dug his heels in further with a countersuit in which he claims the ground landlord iced him out of his planned conversion project. 

Thakkar could win his case in New York and completely sell out Mustang Square and he’ll still face question marks as a developer, thanks to the litany of lawsuits he’s faced, with allegations ranging from loan defaults to EB-5 fraud. The legal trouble appears to have peaked with real estate offering fraud charges filed by the SEC in February. 

Austin’s Ayn Rand Museum

In case you missed Elon Musk’s recent embrace of Austin, the summer isn’t the only thing that’s hot in Austin. So is libertarianism. As war-tech startups set up camp in nearby Proto-Town, libertarian icon Ayn Rand is getting a museum built in her honor. The foundation dedicated to preserving the manuscripts of the Russia-born philosopher famous for her “Objectivism” theory is building a $30 million monument to Rand in the form of a library, exhibition room, office and “higher education classroom spaces.”

Fifth Third ditches Downtown Dallas

Dallas’ beleaguered downtown is still smarting from the news that anchor tenant AT&T is moving to Plano. To add insult to injury, Fifth Third Bank is ditching downtown, too, after its merger with Comerica Bank. Fifth Third is leaving a 200,000-square-foot vacancy in Comerica Tower. While the Ohio-based bank won’t settle into the still-under-construction site at 8300 Douglas Avenue until late 2028, it will leave its 200,000-square-foot lease at the 60-story Comerica Bank Tower at 1717 Main Street before the end of the summer.

Read more

Meet Poorvesh Thakkar, the Dallas owner Safehold is trying to eject from a Manhattan tower

It’s official: Fifth Third Bank will exit Downtown Dallas Comerica Tower after Comerica merger

Austin in line for $30M of libertarian development devoted to Ayn Rand

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