After two years of post pandemic disruptions and jitters, new restaurant openings boomed in Dallas in 2024, and the surge in activity hasn’t slowed down yet. More exciting places to dine and drink were scheduled to arrive as this feature went to press. But by our mid-October deadline, we’d already tasted enough good stuff to fill this feature with 11 standouts.

Some of 2024’s Best New Restaurants fit into Dallas’ long-standing image: the glamorous $20 million steakhouse, the all-American grill, tales of underdogs and first-timers pulling themselves up through sheer talent. But others defied our expectations in fun ways. There’s a luxury high-end destination—by and for Indian Americans. There’s a great new barbecue spot—whose owner just moved from Chicago this spring. Our favorite new tacos are cooked by a chef from Peru who spent most of his career serving pasta, and our favorite new pizzas come from a Ukrainian former computer wholesaler who quit his job to pursue baking.

In other words, this year saw something for everyone. Let’s dig in.

Every neighborhood needs a good bistro. “Needs” might be a strong word—a bistro is not as important as a fire station—but if you’re going to live somewhere, you’d like to know that you can take your date or your friends somewhere a little bit nice but not too fancy and have a terrific salad, a round of oysters, or a reasonably priced steak. Dress up for a special night out, or stop in because the fridge is empty; you’ll feel equally welcomed either way.

The Lake Highlands area lost its bistro when the oddly named RM 12:20 closed in early 2023. But the newcomer that moved into the same space, Goldie’s, has filled the gap neatly. Though the dining space is small, you can choose between the dark, romantic bar area or the more convivial side room, which replicates the look of a European cafe. Wherever you sit, you’ll have a generous selection of nice bistro wines, a phrase that here means affordable, food-friendly, and not at all cheap-tasting. The restaurant’s name comes from the wine world: an owner nicknames glasses of Champagne “goldies”, and the menu encourages you to “have a goldie.” Cute, but I do wish I could tell my friends about this restaurant without adding, “No, not the barbecue spot in Fort Worth.”

At Goldie’s, bistro classics are executed with style and aplomb. A generous bowl of mussels comes with pickled Fresno peppers and mustard seeds floating in the broth, plus plenty of dark, well-cooked fries for dunking. The pork chop is seared just right and served with a potato salad that I’d drive across town for: tiny new potatoes tossed in plenty of mustard and pickled red onions.

The best bistro food is about making the most from the least, and so is my favorite Goldie’s dish. It’s a salad of shaped cucumbers and dill plated on top of creamy avocado puree. Over the top, the kitchen tosses crumbled asadero cheese and chickpeas fried for so long that they’re darker than roasted peanuts. The result is refreshing, charming, simple without being dull, just a little different from what you expected. Kind of like the restaurant that serves it.

Every few days, the cooks at Tacos El Metro roast a whole pig. They may put its face in the kitchen window as proof. No matter how you order the roasted pork, it will be memorable. The restaurant’s signature taco, “puerco el metro,” features pulled pork topped with crispy cubes of chicharrón. Its best torta showcases pressed leg meat along with a fistful of pickled veggies. The messiest appetizer, huesitos, is a real treat: fried rib tips tossed in your choice of salsa. With salsa verde, they are finger-lickin’ good.

This restaurant is a casual collaboration between two restaurateurs with fine dining experience: Sergio Quijano and Mike García, both veterans of Julian Barsotti’s Italian food empire. (Quijano was the group’s wine director; the Peruvian American García was executive chef at Fachini.) Quijano is a Mexico City native, which is why the walls are decorated with maps and signage from the city’s metro system, and why several of the signature dishes are foods he grew up eating there. The menu is still evolving—summertime meant a lovely ceviche, and this fall brought the addition of breakfast tacos—which makes us all the more excited to return.

Aside from going whole hog, the best trait of Tacos El Metro is its commitment to fundamentals. It sources quality corn tortillas from a local shop that nixtamalizes its own heirloom corn rather than using bags of treated flour. Crisp buñuelos are fried to order and dusted in sugar. Even the borracho beans have deep flavor and a touch of pork. But not whole hog, this time. No, they feature a traditional home cooking ingredient: chopped-up hot dogs. This taco spot knows when to go all-out and when to keep it simple.

The samosas are served in a trio, each with a different filling, the cabbage-artichoke variety especially memorable. The paneer is roasted until golden, sliced, sandwiched with sauce, and cut into triangles, so that it looks like a mirror-world grilled cheese. The desserts are over-the-top reinterpretations of traditional sweets. The two-story dining room is opulent to the max, with a lakeside view, private spaces, and a glass wall looking into the kitchen.

There is no other Indian restaurant in Dallas like Sanjh. Its sophisticated plating, distinctive style, and intense commitment to scratch-made sauces set it apart. The cocktails bring extraordinary blasts of flavor (including hot peppers), and the price of all these qualities means that the bill can deliver surprises of its own.

Although Sanjh is unique to Dallas, it has rivals in other American cities. Musaafer in Houston, Indienne in Chicago, and a number of New York restaurants all present Indian food with refined techniques, spectacular plating, new ideas, and unapologetic flavors. They dumped spice-level ordering and karahi serving dishes by the wayside and declared Indian food’s right to be creative, luxurious, and, yes, high-priced. They can be, frankly, even more bold in their deviations from tradition in both recipes and service.

Sanjh outclasses some of these national leaders (such as D.C.’s humdrum Rasika) while remaining more focused than others on taking traditional dishes—butter chicken, palak paneer—and raising them to new heights of craft and visual beauty. We see the potential for even more here, but we also see all the ways that Sanjh could transform Dallas food culture. It proves you don’t need to serve steak or lobster to be a successful high-end restaurant in this town. It nudges non-Indian diners to see Indian food in a glamorous light. And it serves some of the best cocktails any restaurant in this town has ever served. That’s a pretty good start.

A Greek grandmother’s recipes don’t need upgrading. What this Lovers Lane restaurant achieves is more like a cosmetic boost. Its Greek salad retains Yia Yia’s dressing recipe but brings new texture and color to the traditional mix of cucumber, olives, tomatoes, and feta. Spanakopita and moussaka are prepared just as they should be and in hearty portions big enough to share. If there’s one thing Nikki remembers from its owners’ grandparents, it’s the importance of a generous plate.

Lisa and Tom Georgalis opened this restaurant and bar as a tribute to their heritage. Their first date was to the New Year’s Eve party at their Greek church. When they tweak the classics, they do so with good taste. The dining rooms offer a variety of moods—from the Aegean blues of the bar to an amber side room with a skylight—all of them a step up from a gyro joint. The wine list showcases Greek wines at affordable prices. Whole fish is grilled flawlessly and plated over half a garden’s worth of herbs. Lunchtime’s lamb “pita pockets” arrive deconstructed, letting you build your own sandwich with the hearty stewed lamb and its citrus glaze.

But the kitchen didn’t tweak everything. The oregano used here is Greece’s native variety; the sea salt is imported from Greece. Nikki’s spanakopita, as big and well stuffed as egg rolls, are the size Tom Georgalis’ grandmother made them. If you can finish your order, she’ll be proud.

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What’s the definition of a neighborhood restaurant? It’s the place around the corner that you go on date night and also on a night when you open the fridge, see the empty veggie crisper, and lose your will to cook. It’s the place where everybody knows how you like your martini. Maybe it’s a place so good that you start thinking about moving into their neighborhood from your own. A writer in Denver claims he once liked a bar so much that he walked around the surrounding blocks until he found a place for rent and signed the lease.

Goodwins is like that. It offers an all-American menu, with some catering to Dallasites’ specific tastes—this city loves a spicy tuna tartare like nothing else—and some savvy marketing. (That “party dip”? It’s a Greek recipe, combining peppers, feta cheese, and dill.) The leadership team here has worked at restaurants such as The Grape, Neighborhood Services, Town Hearth, and Remedy, and they built on that experience to create a superpowered neighborhood spot.

Even the simplest preps here are thoughtfully done, like a pork chop topped with gentle pickled peppers and onions for contrast, or a slow-cooked confit chicken leg quarter that gets finished in the deep fryer for crispy skin. The steak sandwich is literally that: a glowing medium-rare steak, sliced and sandwiched. Order a paloma, and the citrus peel garnish might be wrapped around your straw.

Put simply, everything at Goodwins is what it should be. When you read a menu description and think about how good it might be to taste that food—well, you’re going to get exactly what you’re imagining. Then you’re going to drive down Goodwin Avenue, looking for real estate agents’ yard signs.

Linda and Travis Prausa love nothing more than being a two-person culinary embassy from Indonesia to Dallas. Walk into their petite Medical District restaurant and ask for a recommendation, and you’ll be regaled with savvy advice. Linda might tell you how Javanese food, her native specialty, differs from many of the other local traditions in the world’s fourth-most populous country. She’ll explain what’s meant to be spicy and what’s not.

Travis grew up in West Texas and dived into the world of Indonesian cooking when he married Linda. If you ask for recommendations, he’ll answer out of his own enthusiasm, because he just discovered these dishes himself. He might turn you on to Indonesian fried chicken, in which the bird is boiled with galangal, herbs, and spices, then battered and fried, then topped with all the crispy little bits of batter and herbs that floated to the top of the fryer. He might sneak you an extra cup of the sweet-tart chili sauce made with plenty of lime. He’ll definitely sing the praises of beef rendang, a spicy stew that is good (and hot) enough on its own, but equally thrilling in a fried rice where the tender beef practically melts into a sauce.

About half of Bali Street’s business comes from catering. The only Indonesian restaurant in North Texas, it serves a community of thousands of immigrants and also medical workers from nearby UT Southwestern who were hungry for more good Asian food in the area. That catering emphasis might explain why the dining room is small and often chaotic with boxes and stacked chairs. But the welcome you’ll receive is as warm as welcomes get, and you may soon find yourself falling for Indonesian food, making plans to come back and try the next dish, asking other customers for their favorite dishes. In other words, you’ll be following Travis Prausa’s footsteps.

Here’s an only-in-Dallas story: a passionate home baker decides to quit his computer wholesale job and open a pizza joint, and it becomes an unlikely second home for Ukrainian war refugees. Eugene Plyako has been a sourdough obsessive for decades now; he first thought about opening a pizzeria back in 2011, when his idea for a Neapolitan-style shop was beaten to market by a little place you might have heard of called Cane Rosso. I first met him on Facebook during the pandemic, as he posted album after album of his experiments with bagels, baguettes, babka, khachapuri, and, of course, pizza.

Pizzeria Carina takes up just 700 square feet and doesn’t have a dishwasher or freezer. Those constraints force the kitchen to get creative. Plyako shuffles his menu regularly, experimenting with new doughs and toppings. He’ll fold a pizza crust in half and make a sandwich out of it. He’ll take his puccia loaves, slice them in half, and build spectacular (and very filling) sandwiches inside them. This fall, he’s begun testing out Roman-style pizza al taglio, rectangular pies that you order by the (generously sized) slice.

Two things haven’t changed. One is the obsessive geekiness he brings to his craft, the near-scientific mind that drives him to constantly tweak and improve. The other is his determination to hire fellow Ukrainian immigrants, including refugees who’ve settled in Dallas since Russia’s invasion. Last Christmas, one of his employees baked him a honey cake to show her gratitude for her work at Carina. Since then, it has made regular appearances on the restaurant’s menu. A tinkerer herself, now she’s perfecting a tiramisu.

In some ways, Mābo offers the simplest experience of any restaurant on this list. Show up (with a reservation on Resy) at its doors, and chef Masayuki Otaka will put on a two-hour show featuring his set menu of appetizers, sashimi, and yakitori grilling. His show includes curtains that rise when the first course is ready, rolling smoke from the grill, props, and the possibility of an encore: you can add extra yakitori to your dinner for an additional charge.

But there’s nothing simple about this. Otaka has been perfecting his yakitori skills for decades, including for many years as the head chef of Teppo, a landmark restaurant in the history of Japanese food in Texas. He updates his menu year-round, though the changes may be subtle. This month’s grilled quail may be replaced by a slice of duck breast. You may walk away feeling new appreciation for chicken cuts like the “first wing” (the closest portion to the body) or the “oyster” (the tenderest flap of thigh).

These theatrics come with theatrical prices: $200 per person, plus tax, tip, and drinks, which aside from bottled Japanese beer are not meant for the frugal diner. As a customer, it’s best to think of Mābo as a miniature vacation, a one-night trip to Japan. As a diner in general, think of Mābo as another sign of Dallas’ growing prowess as a city steeped in Japanese food culture. Otaka is one of the originators of that culture in our city. Even if you buy a supermarket sushi tray for dinner, you have him to thank in some small degree. But that’s nothing like seeing the man in action.

The return of Giuliano Matarese and Tiziana Cosentino might be the most heartwarming comeback story of the year in Dallas food. Their previous restaurant, Mille Lire, closed after several of its owners, and their children, died in a private plane crash.

“You don’t recover from such a thing,” Cosentino says. “But you turn all that pain into the desire to honor them, and to create something beautiful that will create joy for a lot of people, starting from that pain that will never go away.”

So Matarese and Cosentino decided to pivot to something casual, a restaurant where the masses could enjoy their family recipes without pomp, fuss, or added expense. At Miss Pasta, just about every dollar you spend goes into ingredients and kitchen labor rather than fancy plates (they’re paper), waitstaff (you’ll order at the counter), or high rent (it’s on the side of a Richardson strip mall). There aren’t any glitzy cocktails, and the wine choices are red, white, or rosé, all made by family friends.

Miss Pasta is all about pasta. Watch the noodles get made fresh at the counter—this used to be the meat-cutting station for a barbecue joint—and then pick from about 20 varieties. Matarese keeps most of his options simple, the way they’d be served in Italy, especially his hometown, Naples. Rigatoni catches all the bright, spicy amatriciana sauce in its curves, while the red sauce layered into the lasagna tastes of all four hours of cooking. The only new invention Matarese has on his menu is the restaurant’s signature bowl, named after Cosentino, Miss Pasta herself. It’s a combination of all her favorite things.

The sheer audacity of this guy. That’s what every other restaurateur in town can’t get over, that Wan Kim, the founder of Nuri (and owner of Smoothie King), spent $20 million of his own money to build this new steakhouse because, he says, he couldn’t find any other restaurants in Dallas he liked enough to visit with out-of-town friends. And, he adds, he doesn’t care if he ever makes the money back. The nerve!

Where Nuri’s courage fails, only a little bit, is in breaking the Dallas steakhouse mold. Instead, it reimagines our steak tradition from within, adding touches of Kim’s Korean heritage and a few dishes that nod to Smoothie King’s original home, New Orleans. Tuna tartare is a Dallas staple, but Nuri’s is served with shrimp chips; order a side of mac and cheese, and it’ll include fried Spam. Nutty and gently spicy ssamjang can take the place of steak sauce, or you might have your meat with a pat of kimchi butter. Don’t miss the side dish that fuses Cajun maque choux with Korean corn cheese, and don’t overlook the lamb chops, which are coated in Dijon and chives, then drizzled with a pot of I-never-want-anything-else cumin garlic butter.

Nuri has a clear ambition to be recognized as one of Texas’ best restaurants. That kind of thing takes time, but right now it offers the sort of new imagination and modern thinking that has been missing in our steakhouse market for years. The wood is just as dark, the wine cellar is just as deep, but something exciting is happening here.

One caveat: my service experiences at Nuri changed dramatically when I was recognized. When I was under the radar, the whole staff was warm, funny, and helpful. But when someone spotted me, servers and managers became neurotic, delivering endless menu-explanation speeches, interrupting conversations, rearranging glassware, and trying to upsell us on a $250 Australian lobster tail. The sommeliers, at least, remained expert at navigating the impressive wine cellar. Most guests will enjoy great service, but if you’re a celebrity, you might want to bring a wig.

Imagine rewinding the clock one year and telling Luis Rivera Rodríguez that in 12 months he’d be on a list of Dallas’ best new restaurants. He had never owned a restaurant or worked in one. He was about to go on a Netflix cooking competition, Barbecue Showdown, where he would be the only backyard amateur in a lineup of caterers, food truck owners, consultants, and other pros. Oh, and he didn’t live in Dallas.

In other words, Rivera had a heck of a year. He—spoiler alert—didn’t win Barbecue Showdown, but he gained the confidence and experience necessary to think about smoking meat for a living. Then he got a phone call from an old elementary school friend, Zach Flagg, partner and operations manager of Dallas’ Outfit Brewing. If Rivera ever wanted to set up a food service business of his own, Flagg said, he’d be welcome at Outfit anytime. At his home in Illinois, Rivera started packing his bags.

His menu at Outfit is short and sweet. Choose between smoked brisket and pulled pork and get them on a rice bowl, with a slaw and sauces influenced by his Venezuelan roots and his upbringing in Chicago’s Latino community. There’s a lot of Venezuelan flavor, a little bit of Southside Mexican, and, of course, that classic Texas brisket. On Saturdays, he’ll serve his meats and sauces in arepas, and on Sundays he offers Springfield, Illinois’ contribution to the breakfast canon, the horseshoe plate, but with smoked meat and Mexican crema. Everything on his tight menu pairs well with Outfit’s Mic Czech pilsner and Stampede, its light beer. 

It’s funny. Meat Papi’s barbecue evokes Rivera’s upbringing as a Venezuelan American immigrant kid trying to find his identity in Chicago’s Mexican community. But sampling his brisket bowl at his old friend’s brewery, I can’t help but feel that Meat Papi is an only-in-Dallas experience.  

This story originally appeared in the December issue of D Magazine with the headline “The Best New Restaurants.” Write to brian.reinhart@dmagazine.com.