Was it Nero Wolfe who said, “You can’t go home again?” That sounds like something he’d say to Archie Goodwin, but I can’t be bothered to fact-check right now, as I’m pretty hangry thinking about all the restaurants that have come and gone in Dallas over the last few decades. It’s easy to build them up in one’s mind’s eye, a hodge-podge of warm and fuzzy memories from a more innocent, simpler time that never really existed in the first place outside of Mayberry in old Andy Griffith Show reruns.
One can wax nostalgic over Furr’s liver and onions or the oversized frozen margaritas served two at a time with garter belts on the glass stems during JT McCord’s happy hour and fool yourself into believing that those were the days of good eats, and who would blame you? Nostalgia, however, doesn’t care about quality or uniqueness. For every closing of The Grape or the Highland Park Cafeteria, there are dozens of Black-Eyed Peas and Steak and Ales that are no more, but all are fondly remembered by someone.
The restaurant game is difficult, with the estimated first-year failure rate ranging from 30% to 60% according to the National Restaurant Association. An Ohio State University study found an 80% failure rate within five years. Ouch. The pandemic in 2020 was especially hard on restaurants worldwide, of course, and Dallas was no exception. Given all of this, there are bound to be many restaurants that open, capture the hearts and stomachs of a community, and then close, some in the blink of an eye…