• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

Tillman’s Roadhouse   (Photo: Courtesy of Stephen Karlisch)

Skip the Nobu, Il Mulino, and Craft outposts—been there, done that—and check out the local talent. If the Ritz is Dallas’s new must-see hotel, Fearing’s is its most essential restaurant. Get there early to ogle the bronzed oil execs and huge-haired socialites at the Rattlesnake Bar, and book a table in Dean’s Kitchen, the most casual and lively of the five dining rooms

Also request a seat at the tapas-seviche bar—you’re literally inches from the action—at Stephen Pyles’s eponymous downtown restaurant. The place is impressively sculptural, filled with undulating wood ceilings, copper and birch branch installations, and pop-up artwork.

Faux deer heads share space with Murano chandeliers, plush banquettes, and damask wall panels at Tillman’s Roadhouse, located in the gritty Bishop Arts District. Go on the weekend, when the resident D.J. spins eighties and country favorites, and sample London-born bartender Lucy Brennan’s blood-orange margaritas.

For a more formal affair, trek out to Bijoux, located in Inwood Village, just off the Dallas North Tollway. It’s hard to believe that the subdued space—where Scott Gottlich puts his Le Bernardin training to use on the perpetually changing prix fixe—was once a pink and turquoise Cheeburger Cheeburger.

Published on Oct 31, 2007 as a web exclusive.