Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Dallas
Dallas has a variety of Seoul-crushing Korean shops and eateries to indulge your wildest K-pop dreams, but 9 Rabbits Bakery has our vote for best Korean coffee shop. The Koreatown bakery, run by Grace Koo, also makes endearingly cute specialty cakes and offers a variety of teas, smoothies and aesthetic desserts that'll transport you to the cherry-blossomed bridges of Busan. The best part is the shop's rabbit-themed decor — filled with charmingly whimsical bunnies — that make it feel as if you've stepped into an Easter fantasy with Korean subtitles. This place will impress kids or your date. Hop to it and try the banana bread.
When The Grapevine moved from its longtime Oak Lawn location to a new space in the Medical District last year, patrons quickly learned to love the place for what it is now. The dive bar is still as delightfully sexually ambiguous as Harry Styles (Is it a gay bar? A straight bar? The owners say it's both, so yeah, it's a bisexual bar) and has kept its best feature: the patio. The new location is much larger and still has a rowdy, large outdoor space, but it also has an indoors-ish courtyard patio where you can have the freedom to smoke without the punishment of the heat — because your body has been punished enough through smoking. We're also happy to say that the foosball, pool tables and strangers-to-make-out-with are all still there.
Audio engineer Tre Nagella has four Grammy Awards, an absurdly long list of renowned clients and a bouquet of flowers he once received from Taylor Swift (which she sent after canceling a session, so Taylor). The producer and mixer has worked with seemingly everyone who's relevant or even talented — from Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne, Ed Sheeran, Christina Aguilera and Ariana Grande to local heavyweights Erykah Badu and Kirk Franklin. Nagella's Dallas studio, Luminous Sound, has become the on-speed-dial destination especially for big-time artists on big-time tours who are on a big-time deadline to get a record or song out, and for 25 years it's been a go-to for sound mixing for TV and film. There are many sound (pun intended) reasons behind Luminous Sound's popularity: It's a state-of-the-art studio in a 6,500-square-foot space designed by a master acoustician, and most important, it holds Nagella's unfailingly expert ear.
Dallas has an astounding share of piano masters, but lately we've been following most closely the dexterous digits of Christian Valdés . The musician was raised by noted salsa players and moved from Colombia with a scholarship to the University of North Texas, where he graduated with a bachelor's in jazz piano performance. He then attended the University of Texas at Arlington, where he earned a master's in Jazz Studies. Valdés' education was on clear display as he waltzed onto the music scene, taking on Latin, jazz and contemporary gigs all over Dallas and other major U.S. cities. Even though Valdés could play the most complicated piano arrangements in his sleep, the composer and bandleader will never stop the pursuit of excelling in his craft. He is soon to depart for the Big Apple after being accepted at New York University's elite doctorate program in jazz piano performance, but not without leaving a trail of melodies echoing behind we won't soon forget.
No other Dallas jukebox ever stood a chance against the selection at Herby's, the Oak Cliff restaurant co-owned by DJ Sober. Sober has long reigned over North Texas nightlife (and also New York's, Austin's and other cities') so it's only natural that Herby's, which has a pleasingly minimal yellow-white-black aesthetic and fine burgers, could boast of the best curated jukebox. Madonna, Morrissey, Mariah — that's just one shelf. Of course, Sober will swap out selections periodically. You'll also find posters signed by musicians such as Leon Bridges and a cool piece of Texas art by Ralls' own Rob Wilson. As a certified cool spot, the shop has occasional pop-up art events and DJ nights. Come back for breakfast.
Dolly Python in Old East Dallas and its sister Bishop Arts location have long held real estate on our annual Best Of Dallas issue as recurring recommendations. The shops have an outstandingly curated collection of vintage clothes and excitingly weird curiosities that make it worth the visit every time. And now they offer more glitzy sightings than Los Angeles' Chateau Marmont's bar on a Saturday night. Dolly's legend has spread to Hollywood (no surprise, Vogue recently named it one of the best vintage shops in the world), and it's become a destination for celebrities visiting Dallas. Just this past year, it attracted big-name shoppers such as Mad Men star Jon Hamm, Kanye's nemesis Pete Davidson and indie melancholy-pop queen Lana Del Rey. So keep your camera charged if you're looking for a sick selfie to go with that vintage concert tee.
This one is for adventurous types only who can easily shrug off centuries of an evolution-instilled fear of heights. The luxury Joule hotel is best known for its giant outdoor eyeball sculpture, its cool underground bar Midnight Rambler and its lower-level, endlessly cool Taschen bookstore — all available to non-guests. It also has a rooftop pool that's really to infinity and beyond. The pool has a cantilevered design, meaning it sticks out 8 feet from the building, and through the pool's protruding glass side you'll get an excellent view of downtown's Main Street. If you've ever had a surrealist fantasy of swimming among the clouds, well, Salvador Dalí fan, this is it.
There's plenty to do at the lively Lower Greenville coffee shop Halcyon, with its permanent collection of beaten-up board games plus movie nights, happy hours and wine nights, but we are clinically obsessed with its Saturday night trivia competitions. This is when you get to order food and a mocha and answer general culture questions with your team while making s'mores at your table. With a fire and everything. We can't think of a better pairing than the taste of childhood camping memories and the silly adult pride of publicly quantifying all the worthless info you've hoarded in your memory, all for a swell prize.
If you've ever dreamed of going back in time to witness those Greenwich Village parties where a young harmonica-playing, wild-haired unknown named Bob Dylan channeled Woody Guthrie as an androgynous Patti Smith observed deeply from her seat, check out Zounds Sounds B-Sides. Though the new Dallas venue (which is next door to the excellent Zounds Sounds School of Music) is well organized, it still feels truly DIY, spontaneous and indie in the best ways as the perfect spot to soak up all that I-saw-them-first, really-first, atmosphere. But they aren't all up-and-comers on the roster. From classical pianist Bobby Orozco, to a live painter onstage and a private chef serving audience members a plated dinner sample, and artists ranging from punk to jazz, there are a whole lot of reasons to check out B-Sides.
's ubiquitous, militantly monochrome color palette flooded movie theaters, Halloween parties and red carpets for what felt like 46 months in 2023, it's understandable that many of us never want to see the color pink again. But if you're still in the "think pink" mindset, you'll find an absolute pink paradise in XOXO, the uber-Instagrammable, shamelessly girly, every-day-is-Valentine's Dallas restaurant. This place was way ahead of Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, serving highly aesthetic desserts and decor for years. The food is as good as it looks, and the service is just as sweet. XOXO is not all lipstick and influencers, though: Erykah Badu has been spotted there (and showed up 15 minutes before closing, of course) and it sometimes has DJ nights with non-pink-wearing guests.
