As a millennial of a certain age, I can admit that I am somewhat seduced by the concept of New York City. I mainlined a steady diet of Sex and the City and Broadway musicals from puberty into my early twenties, and all that pro-deli propaganda has a real effect on a girl’s psyche. I say all of this as an admission that I am just as likely to assume that something that hails from New York City—insert Pace picante sauce commercial voice here—brings with it a little bit of gravitas.
And relatedly, I can admit that I was initially a little excited that so much of New York has become readily available in Dallas. I can go have a smoked salmon tower at Sadelle’s for brunch, pop over to Van Leeuwen for midday ice cream, and grab coffee at Maman before sitting down to dinner at Catch. There are two problems with this itinerary, though: first, I am merely a broke journalist and cannot afford to eat quite so lavishly, and second, even if I could, none of these places would be worth spending much of my hard-earned cash.
This realization was sparked by a recent trip to Maman, where I waited in line for what felt like an eternity as I browsed the menu of $8 lattes and $6 cookies made in collaboration with Martha Stewart. Again I will admit that I was excited to try the gingerbread chocolate chip cookie that earned the Martha stamp of approval—until I walked up to the pastry case and noticed that nearly every single cookie in the case, gingerbread or not, was burnt around the edges. I do not mean slightly too browned, either. B-U-R-N-T.
I was, I confess, offended. I was in University Park, yes, but the nerve of charging upwards of six dollars for a single cookie that was literally charred to a crisp made me feel like the restaurateurs of New York City are looking at us Dallas folk like a bunch of marks. Do they think we’re the kind of people who care more about whether or not something is flashy or expensive than whether it is good? Yes, that’s the stereotype, but surely it can’t be a business model, right?
Then I got to thinking about the other experiences I’ve had at New York exports. That first $500 meal at Carbone with friends where the server accidentally dribbled red wine in my lap and the pasta was far harder than even the most liberal definition of “al dente.” The brunch at Sadelle’s with lopsided-cut bagels so stale they were practically a legal liability—and also cost $200 with a couple mimosas. My experience at Maman was not isolated. It’s starting to feel like these New York exports think they just don’t have to try when they get to Dallas.
These restaurants seek to cash in on their big-city cachet without bringing the actual experience that earned them this reputation. It’s all razzle and no dazzle.
These experiences stand in stark contrast with my recent dinner at Rainbowcat, Misti Norris’ quirky little pop-up inside the East Dallas bar Saint Valentine. In addition to the housemade spam musubi and pimento cheese, the restaurant’s standout dish is the Nugs, a replica of that fast food icon, the Chicken McNugget. Fried in a tempura batter, Norris’s nugs are infinitely better than the mass-produced pink-slime thing they’re imitating, but, as a reinvention of a chain food, they’re also a bit of a metaphor for why this onslaught of fancy chains just feels so weird.
Only listed as “Nugs” on the menu, Norris’ tempura-fried chicken nuggets are arguably the most interesting dish in the city right now. They may not have an absurdly detailed presentation or a bunch of pricey ingredients, but they’re technically solid, seasoned to perfection and fried shatteringly crisp. Texas Monthly food writer Paula Forbes described them as one of the best things she ate last year, above any of the $50+ dishes at the city’s fine dining temples.
Here, Norris manages to transform a plate of chicken nuggets, that most bland of mass-produced comfort foods, into something truly special. They’re perfectly executed without being fussy, over-the-top without being visually over the top. The housemade pickles, fermented in all sorts of freaky ways in keeping with Norris’s preservation-centric ethos, are called the Sour Patch, a nod to the iconic sour candy. There’s no need for pedigree or pretentiousness, just a bunch of great dishes served in an unassuming environment.
Not to make too big a leap, but this is what we are all hoping for when we visit a glitzy new restaurant, imported from New York or homegrown. We want them to turn something that is typically mundane (read: eating dinner) into a transcendent experience, more than the sum of its parts, just like those chicken nuggets. Elevating the mundane is exactly what made Carbone, which brought glitz and celebrity glam to the humble red-sauce Italian joint, a star. It’s that feeling of transcendence that is the hallmark of a great restaurant—and what sells investors on helping them grow into national chains.
But somewhere along the way, something is getting lost in translation. On some level, what is happening here right now really is not about Dallas. It’s about chainification in the restaurant industry more broadly, something that is happening everywhere, not just our city on the prairie. Dallas is a naturally perfect proving ground for chain restaurants, and the dozens of emails I get each week from publicists announcing the arrival of a new coffee shop or fried chicken chain from somewhere on the planet are proof.
Our city is ripe for chain expansion for a number of reasons. Some of them are good, our diversity and relatively high median income among them. But some, like our car-centric infrastructure and the enduring perception that Dallas diners will drop any amount of money on the next new flashy thing, aren’t as helpful. It’s that latter point that makes me feel a bit like the target in an elaborate scam, like they think I don’t know what good pizza or pasta or cookies actually are because I’m just some cow-riding hick from Texas with cash to blow.
I am not opposed to the idea of chain restaurants—I actually have a bit of a contrarian view here from most of my colleagues in food journalism, because I know from more than a decade of reporting on the industry that it is very difficult to operate a single independent restaurant. Scaling up offers a legitimate opportunity for growth, one that allows businesses to lower their costs, streamline operations, run more efficiently, and, at the high end, offer higher wages and benefits like health insurance to employees.
As such, I know that something being a chain isn’t the real problem. We have a number of great locally grown chains, like Cane Rosso and ZaLat and even my beloved Chili’s, that serve a lot of excellent food every single day. We also have a lot of imports, like Jollibee and Uchi, that are equally beloved. What is at issue is that when this new crop of ritzy chains arrived in Dallas, the experience they bring diners is distinctly different from what you might get at Carbone and Avra and Catch in New York City. (Or what you once could’ve gotten. Let’s be real, the New York dining scene has long since moved beyond both of these restaurants.) It’s a pale imitation, one that still is going to cost you a thick wad of cash.
These restaurants seek to cash in on their big-city cachet without bringing the actual experience that earned them this reputation. It’s all razzle and no dazzle, the kind of thing that makes you really appreciate the simple purity of those chicken nuggets at Rainbowcat. Because of this moment that we’re in, it’s eminently refreshing to order a restaurant dish that actually lives up to the hype, for a change, after so many disappointments at the spots that influencers and food media love to fawn all over.
At the end of the day, I know this is a real privileged problem to have. No one’s forcing me to go waste my money at Maman or Prince Street Pizza. I could simply go to Rainbowcat and eat those nugs. But since it appears that the chain onslaught shows no signs of slowing down, I think we should demand more from the places that want to come to Dallas from New York or Los Angeles or anywhere else. We know that you can’t bring us New York, and we don’t want you to—we just want you to bring the food that made you famous, not a knockoff that is, at best, eminently mid.
Author
Amy McCarthy
Amy McCarthy is a Dallas-based journalist focused on food, booze, music, and culture. She has covered Dallas dining and culture for more than a decade. Her work has appeared at Eater, Texas Monthly, PEOPLE, Cosmopolitan, Serious Eats, among other outlets.
