Restaurants / Closings

Dallas’ Summer Restaurant Blues — Four High-Profile Closings Rock the City’s Food Scene

BY // 08.14.17

Dallas is a tough city for a restaurant. This summer’s been especially rough for the city’s restaurant industry though — four high-profile restaurants in greater Dallas-Fort Worth have shuttered in the last week alone.

Gourmet comfort food and wine purveyor Max’s Wine Dive in the West Village officially closed for good after dinner on Wednesday, August 9. The Houston-based chain chose not to renew the lease on its McKinney Ave space after five years in business. If you need your fried chicken and champagne fix, you’ll have to head to Max’s Fort Worth location.

Yesterday, two more critically-acclaimed restaurants suddenly closed.

Smoke in Plano closed after brunch on Sunday. The modern barbecue spot opened in January 2015 as the second location of James Beard Award-winning chef Tim Byre’s restaurant. The original location is at the Belmont Hotel. Apparently what worked in Oak Cliff didn’t translate to the North Dallas suburb.

Smoke Plano proves that even the hottest restaurants aren’t immune from the closings.

The restaurant made a public announcement on Facebook the day of the closure, stating, “We truly tried to make it work, but to put it simply there is no more gas left in the tank. Thank you for your support. We could not have made it this far without you.”

Smoke is operated by Turn the Tables Hospitality, the group which is currently working on six new restaurant concepts at The Statler Hotel.

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Chef Matt McCallister’s Filament in Deep Ellum also closed its doors on Sunday after a year-and-a-half in business. The Southern restaurant was meant to be McCallister’s more casual dining spot, but it stuck out as one of the neighborhood’s most upscale venues. McCallister tells GuideLive that the business was too slow at the restaurant, and that he realized the location was not an ideal fit.

On the other hand, the chef’s Design District restaurant FT33 has been getting rave reviews and will not be affected by the closure.

As unfortunate a week as the aforementioned restaurants had, another newly-closed Dallas restaurant takes the cake.

Chipotle in Downtown Dallas’ West End shuttered last week after an incident where rats fell from the ceiling during lunch service in July. One guest posted a gnarly video on Facebook showing the rodents scurrying about the restaurant.

While Chipotle obviously isn’t in the same restaurant class as the upscale closings, the image (and videos) of rats raining down from the ceiling have brought national attention to this Dallas incident — and closing.

The fast-casual chain released a statement in response saying, “This is an extremely isolated incident but of course it’s not anything we’d ever want our guests to encounter.”

The West End location will be closed until the building has been fully inspected.

This is the latest in a chain of unfortunately gross events happening at Chipotle, beginning with the 2015 E. Coli outbreak. Will this be the straw that broke the camel’s back? Only time will tell, but burrito bowls are suddenly looking a lot less appealing. 

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