Mike Snider remembers a bustling Deep Ellum eating scene from years previous prefer it was yesterday. Many years earlier than opening AllGood Cafe in 2000, Snider had lengthy known as Deep Ellum house. Between working reveals at Sons of Hermann Corridor and helping with catering for Baker’s Ribs, Snider grew to become conversant in the neighborhood and has seen it by its a number of eras. Snider remembers his recollections of the neighborhood fondly, as he displays on the Deep Ellum and its evolution with Eater Dallas on the district’s one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. And amid modifications within the neighborhood like issues of gentrification and the closing of music venues, Snider nonetheless has religion in Deep Ellum’s native eating scene.
A diner and music venue, AllGood is understood for its chicken-fried steak, which always reveals up on “Better of Dallas lists.” The menu options hearty Southern consolation classics crafted for warming up on a chilly day, together with a pork chop smothered in brown gravy and served with mashed potatoes, and a meatloaf that comes with a selection of crimson sauce or brown gravy.
AllGood can be a hub of artwork and tradition. Artists together with Wilco, Ozzy Osbourne, and Eddie Clendening and the Blue Ribbon Boys have carried out units contained in the restaurant — it’s well-known for internet hosting native singer-songwriters for normal gigs. Having labored behind the scenes within the native music trade for many years, Snider goals to assist performing artists make as a lot as they’ll. “I’ve by no means made a dime from ticket gross sales,” says Snider. “Artists may supply me a free T-shirt or one thing, and that’s good. However I’ll give them 20 bucks [for the shirt] anyhow.”
Whereas AllGood has held sturdy for over 20 years, Snider can’t deny that the neighborhood has modified. With the variety of music venues dwindling, chains taking the place of domestically owned favorites, and hire costs rising and pushing out artists and artistic individuals in favor of company entities, many really feel that Deep Ellum has misplaced its coronary heart.
“No person can afford to stay right here,” says Snider. “I used to have staff who used to stay in lofts close by, however they’ll’t afford that anymore. It looks like New York Metropolis or San Francisco.”
AllGood’s rock and nation aesthetic, in addition to its eclectic group of staff, are what Snider believes have been key to the restaurant’s survival. “Individuals come right here and see the those that work right here, and so they wish to see that we’re distinctive,” he says. “We don’t have TVs, however we have now distinctive music, and good meals.”
Though Snyder is pleased to welcome new faces to the neighborhood, Deep Ellum isn’t the identical place he fell in love with 20 years in the past. “I miss the outdated days,” Snider says. “It’s modified for certain. It’s exhausting to remain right here, nevertheless it goes round in a cycle.”
Extra optimistic about the way forward for eating in Deep Ellum is Richard Andreason, Rudolph’s Meat Market & Sausage Manufacturing facility’s vp of gross sales and advertising. Andreason has labored for Rudolph’s, which was based by his grandfather, for 35 years.
A few of his earliest recollections of Deep Ellum happen within the ’80s, when, he says, the neighborhood had a “bohemian” air. Andreason says that the neighborhood has advanced over 4 many years, and nonetheless has quite a bit to supply diners.
“I don’t suppose Deep Ellum has misplaced any of that cool,” says Andreason. “You may actually get every part down right here. If you’re conversant in Deep Ellum, you’re nonetheless capable of store and expertise music.”
Andreason posits that whereas Deep Ellum has modified, the expertise is equally as thrilling because it was within the late ’80s and early ’90s.
For over a century, Deep Ellum has served as a hub for domestically owned eating places. It was additionally a launching pad for hip-hop and R&B performers, together with Erykah Badu and Large Tuck. The neighborhood’s roots date again to the late nineteenth century, with historic markers noting its significance as a freedman’s city. Nonetheless, a quickly gentrifying Deep Ellum is elevating issues that native and POC-owned companies could also be pushed out.
Deep Ellum purists have blended emotions concerning the quite a few chain eating places which have opened in recent times — amongst them Hattie B’s, Hawkers, Gus’s World Well-known Fried Rooster, Velvet Taco, and Brooklyn Dumpling Store. These COVID-era additions have given some diners pause about the way forward for native eating and small companies in a neighborhood that has traditionally been house to small, native, and POC-owned companies Deep Ellum. Followers of the outdated guard have remarked on X (previously Twitter) and elsewhere that the world has too many scorching hen locations, or that these quirky taco retailers don’t supply conventional Mexican or Latin delicacies; nonetheless, some chains definitely fill a distinct segment that’s lacking inside Dallas-Fort Price.
Pinky Cole, who first opened the plant-based burger chain Slutty Vegan in Atlanta, Georgia, knew she needed to open up a location in Dallas-Fort Price this previous summer season, as a result of Texas is a big marketplace for meat eaters. Cole brings much-needed vegan choices to the neighborhood.
“As Slutty Vegan has grown and we’ve scaled the enterprise, we have now at all times been obsessed with disrupting the trade in new methods,” says Cole. “What higher manner to try this than to deliver scrumptious different protein choices to the Deep Ellum group of Dallas? Deep Ellum has a vibrant historical past spanning 150 years, together with an evolving and thriving meals scene, which made it the right place to introduce Texans to Slutty Vegan.”
Restaurant teams like Milkshake Ideas are additionally persevering with to deliver recent eating places to Deep Ellum, together with the trendy American Stirr, which additionally has a rooftop bar the place company can dance the evening away whereas wanting into the Dallas skyline, and Vidorra, a self-described “fashionable Mexican” restaurant that’s spacious sufficient for dancing. However along with launching new eating places, the group additionally helped revamp a Deep Ellum favourite.
Again in 2021, Milkshake Ideas started work to develop and renovate Severe Pizza, a late-night pizzeria with grungy rock vibes, which is a favourite cease for these getting out of reveals, or wrapping up a night of ingesting and dancing.
“Our first ever workplace was a little or no humble room in the back of Stirr, and that room regarded straight out at Severe Pizza,” says Imran Sheikh, CEO of Milkshake Ideas. “In the course of the variety of nights I spent down there, it was at all times unimaginable to me the loyal following that that they had, by day and particularly by evening. The large pie was at all times one thing I cherished to point out company of mine after they got here on the town from London and different locations, like, ‘Take a look at the scale of this 30-inch pizza.’”
Sheik considers Milkshake Ideas “champions of the neighborhood.” Most not too long ago, the restaurant group opened Saaya, a Mediterranean restaurant in a lounge-style setting within the Good Latimer space, simply two doorways down from Citizen, a nightclub additionally owned by Milkshake.
The London transplant is conscious of individuals’s aversions to the altering enterprise make-up of Deep Ellum, however is grateful for the crowds they proceed to herald — whether or not they’re regulars of the neighborhood or guests from out of city. Nonetheless, he has religion in Deep Ellum as a eating scene, each now and sooner or later, and solely envisions its progress.
“I can say with some certainty that we’ve had loads of success,” says Sheikh. “However I may also say that we’ve additionally had success within the face of some continued challenges, whether or not it’s parking, whether or not it’s crime, whether or not it’s repute. We wish to proceed to see it evolve and develop, and see a pleasant mixture of tenants down there, whether or not it’s a nationwide retailer or restaurateur, simply as a lot we wish to help the native mom-and-pops down right here.”
