Antique photos and books cover the bookshelf at Pillar, an American bistro in the Bishop Arts District from chef-owner Peja Krstic.
“We wanted to bring in some soul, like Pillar had existed already,” he said. The antiques picked by his wife, Silvana, match the charm and history of the 98-year-old building in Oak Cliff, now a neighborhood full of restaurants.
Lofty Idea is a cocktail at Pillar in Dallas made with Irish whiskey, apple brandy and fig.(Azul Sordo / Staff Photographer )
In its past life, this restaurant space was French bistro Boulevardier and Spanish eatery Cafe Madrid. Under Krstic’s watch, Pillar is a bright, airy bistro with no culinary boundaries.
There’s little culinary crossover between Pillar and Krstic’s other restaurant, Michelin-awarded Mot Hai Ba in Lakewood. But he found ways to add Asian ingredients anyway, like the punch of fish sauce in Pillar’s braised collard greens served with fried chicken. That’s Krstic’s favorite dish, and you can sense the care that went into it: It’s a half chicken cooked in coriander schmaltz and buttermilk fried with curry and turmeric. It’s served with Nduja cream sauce, the aforementioned collards and a side of cornbread brioche and honey butter.
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It’s so tender, Krstic cuts it with a fork. And while customers might say “mine, all mine,” the owner hopes customers order chicken for table and share it. Pastry chef Diana Zamora’s bread is good enough to get friends reaching across the table without permission.
If it seems like Pillar is a Southern restaurant, given the fried chicken dish, it isn’t. It’s an American restaurant with not a lot of rules — a retelling of the Serbian-born chef’s story.
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The building that houses Pillar is nearly 100 years old. The design for this new restaurant has checkered booths and dainty wallpaper. Exposed brick shows age and charm.(Azul Sordo / Staff Photographer)
He immigrated to Dallas 20 years ago after visiting a family member who moved to Texas. Krstic had plans to become an attorney, but he always worked in restaurants part-time, at home and in Texas, to pay the bills. He was a great chef from an early age.
His two decades in Texas include chef jobs at Arcodoro Pomodoro, Jasper’s, Fuse, Chamberlain’s, Standard Pour and more — that’s Italian food, American, Asian fusion, steak and upscale bar food.
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“I like to combine cuisines,” he said.
Inside Pillar, Dallas’ newest restaurant in a historic building
An early favorite at Pillar is the beef tartare ($20), which looks more like a stuffed mushroom than a plate of raw meat. It’s neither: Krstic stuffs little cups of crispy hashbrowns with beef, kimchi mayo and chives. They’re rich and small, just right.
Beef tartare is a standout appetizer at Pillar.(Azul Sordo / Staff Photographer )
Also on his menu is tuna carpaccio ($22), a plate that might look like the expected beef tartare but is in fact a “sheet” of raw tuna with lump crab remoulade hiding underneath.
Roasted beets and grilled leaks are two seasonal dishes that would make Mom proud — “eat your vegetables!” — but with the finesse few get to experience at home. The beets ($16) are braised in hibiscus tea and served with ricotta, toasted hazelnuts and dill. The leeks ($19) come with butter-poached crab.
The rest of the menu includes dishes you know — pillars in any American restaurant, you could say.
Examples include a double-patty cheeseburger with brisket pastrami ($19), pork rib cassoulet ($29), shrimp and grits ($27) and a delicious-looking duck, leek and bacon pot pie ($28). The agnolotti filled with ricotta and caramelized onions and grilled short rib ($28) is another one of Krstic’s favorites.
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The name “Pillar” came to Krstic after he visited Ernest Hemingway’s House in Key West, Florida, and saw a photo of the author’s boat, Pilar. Krstic set out to open a seafood restaurant named after Hemingway’s boat, but the restaurant seemed more natural as an American eatery. Pilar became Pillar.
On the wall walking in, designers hung portraits of important historical figures — pillars — from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to investor Nikola Tesla and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
The cocktail menu keeps up the “pillar” theme. The Prima Donna is a “spiced and spicy” mezcal drink with a house-made hibiscus-beet mixer, explained Naomi Bombardier, the cocktail consultant who co-created Pillar’s drinks. It’s named for a fiery redhead, Lucille Ball.
The Zero Degrees, a classic gin martini served extra cold, is named for Tesla, the scientist who never got a college degree.
The only menu item that will be repeated from Krstic’s other restaurant, Mot Hai Ba, is the chocolate cake. It’s a tall slice, a play on red velvet with mascarpone, chocolate mousse and more.
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“It’s the best chocolate cake in Dallas,” he said, without even a smirk. Try it.
Pillar is at 408 N. Bishop Ave., Dallas. It opened Dec. 8, 2024. Reservations recommended. Closed Mondays.
For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on X at @sblaskovich.
Dallas-based Merit Energy is moving its headquarters to a taller tower in the northern part of the city.
The energy firm will occupy 104,034 square feet of office space at Two Lincoln Centre, 5420 Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway. Merit will take the 10th through 12th floors at the 19-story property. Investor firm Nuveen Real Estate is leasing the space.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Matt Schendle, Zach Bean and Mary Frances Burnette represented Nuveen, while Jeff Ellerman and John Ellerman represented Merit Energy.
Merit Energy, one of the largest private oil and gas operators in the United States, is currently located at the 13-story Galleria North Tower II on Noel Road. It’s roughly a mile and a half from the new office space.
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To get Merit Energy to Two Lincoln Centre, three tenants were moved and had their leases renegotiated, Cushman & Wakefield said.
The high-profile north Dallas office complex landed a series of major leases in 2023 following millions of dollars in renovations. Updates were complete in fall 2022.
Built starting in 1980, Lincoln Centre’s 15-story, 17-story and 19-story office towers contain 1.6 million square feet connected to a 500-room Hilton hotel.
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Renovations included a revamp of the office building interiors and several outdoor spaces for tenants. The hotel was renovated to include a new junior ballroom, according to previous Dallas Morning News reporting. Other amenities at the site include Ascension Coffee, Lincoln Centre Wine Market, concierge services, a food hall and a park.
As of the end of September, more than 24 million square feet of office space in Dallas-Fort Worth is occupied, down 14.8 million from the end of 2019. D-FW office vacancy rates are 24.7%, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield.
Raytheon sells Dallas property to Georgia-based car dealership
Luxury cars will eventually occupy a space once meant for defense manufacturing.
West Coast investor spending $1.5 million to convert Dallas hotel to apartments
Construction is expected to begin earlier this year. The company converts hotels into workforce apartments, according to its website.
Dallas investment firm snatches hundreds of acres in northern D-FW
Texas Republic Management has purchased hundreds of acres in Grayson County.
Seasons like this often yield the same sort of responses from people.
“The Dallas Cowboys are Murphy’s Law embodied.”
“Don’t worry, the Cowboys will find a way to make it worse.”
“If there is anything I trust the Cowboys to do it is to let me down.”
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You know the type of responses I am talking about. Odds are someone you know or interact with, maybe even you yourself, has offered these to someone at some point this calendar year. It has been a very long time since we felt truly good about this team, although the last two weeks did offer a bit of a reprieve from the doom and gloom with them winning back-to-back games against division rivals and even taking home one on Thanksgiving.
Monday night was like the 6 A.M. alarm for the first day following a long and amazing weekend. It snapped us back to reality akin to Cinderella when the clock struck midnight. All we have now is a pumpkin and our collective thoughts.
This weekly discussion is a space for those thoughts, 3 of them to be precise.
Welcome to our Day After Thoughts following Monday night’s loss to Cincinnati.
It really is difficult to contextualize just how bad this season is
I’ve asked this before but will do again: What is the best moment you have felt as a Dallas Cowboys fan since the team’s playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers in January?
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It is a really difficult question to answer. Options include the KaVontae Turpin punt return against Cleveland or his kick return against Washington, or perhaps the Jalen Tolbert game-winner in Pittsburgh. That’s it.
The turn of each significant moment in the NFL calendar has been met with overwhelming frustration by this team, something that their two-game winning streak helped mask, which the loss uncovered and revealed to the light once more. Given that the loss also effectively ended their playoff hopes (however faint they were), it has now cast them into the worst place you can be for an entire month of action… meaningless football.
The Murphy’s Law proposition certainly feels like it has held true with this team with how they lost on Amani Oruwariye’s blunder. This team has found new and innovative ways to twist the knife of pain that they made sure to bury over the slow course of an entire offseason.
What else can go wrong?!
Rico Dowdle should have been used this way starting Week 1
Rico Dowdle has 329 rushing yards in his last three games played for the Dallas Cowboys. Given that he has had 18 carries at minimum in each of the last three games (no player since Ezekiel Elliott in 2020 has had such a streak for the Cowboys) it makes a lot of sense.
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Why is that, you ask? The point here is not that Dowdle is some game-changing running back who the Cowboys have been suppressing for over half of a season, but it is certainly obvious, and was way back when, that he is the best option on the team. Any carries in any other direction were inefficient by definition.
Whether you do or don’t buy that the Cowboys wanted to make Zeke a thing again out of some level of loyalty to a favorite player of theirs (this would never happen, no way they would let a player un-retire from a totally different profession like, I don’t know, broadcasting, only to return and command a lion’s share of snaps at their position) they at best completely misevaluated the talent on their own roster by not committing to this path many, many months ago.
A huge part of the operation has to be questioned and fixed.
The Micah Parsons extension talk is just around the corner from all of this
As things stand we have maybe a month separating us from the Dallas Cowboys having a new coach. Things can work fast once the regular season is over.
Of course, that proposition still carries an “if” given that we do not know if the team will decide to retain Mike McCarthy after all. They are speaking positively of him in this current moment, but what else can they really say with a month to go as noted?
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One thing that is for certain is that the moment the dust settles on this disaster of a season the hourglass flips upside down for Micah Parsons and talks surrounding a contract extension for him. The Cowboys already burnt up some time in that hourglass by not getting it done last offseason and in not taking care of CeeDee Lamb or Dak Prescott until the eleventh hour they drew a ton of national attention to themselves (that maybe did not quite exist at the level it does now) for how they go about stalling on these massive deals.
If the Cowboys are quick to get an extension done with Parsons, something that seems inevitable and an objective they would want to take care of, then they will prove that on some level they learned from the chaos of last offseason; however, if they delay and stall yet again then we can lower expectations around the head coaching search (assuming there is one) because no one will be able to save the franchise from themselves.
The Cincinnati Bengals beat the Dallas Cowboys 27-20 on a botched punt return, and the Cowboys are now 5-8. Mark Schlereth believes that the Cowboys should stick with Mike McCarthy as their head coach, and Craig Carton and Danny Parkins discuss what went wrong for Dallas.
