A Space-Themed Bagel Shop Opens Downtown, Two Hands Comes to The Quad, and James Beard Announces Its 2023 Semifinalists

The Dallas dining scene is always evolving. To help you stay in the know, we’ve gathered the buzziest openings, the unfortunate closures, and any other food news we might find fitting. The Dallas Dish is your weekly helping of need-to-know North Texas restaurant news — and will hopefully point you in the direction of your next great reservation.

Several Dallas restaurants and chefs are named semifinalists for the 2023 James Beard Awards.

One of the most prestigious culinary awards of the year named their semifinalists today for best chefs and restaurants of the year. Several Dallas-area spots made the cut for the 2023 James Beard Awards. First up, Meridian‘s’ Junior Borges was nominated for Outstanding Chef, Lucia for Outstanding Restaurant, Best New Restaurant noms go to Restaurant Beatrice and Tatsu, Outstanding Bakery for La Casita Bakeshop and Kuluntu Bakery, and Best Chef (Texas) could be Sandwich Hag’s Reyna Duong, Molino Olōyō’s Olivia López and Jonathan Percival, José’s Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman, or Regino Rojas of Revolver Taco Lounge. Find all of the Texas nominees (including two for Fort Worth, finally!) here.

A Lewisville-based bagel shop opens a second location in downtown Dallas.

Oren Salomon opened the first brick-and-mortar Starship Bagel in Lewisville in 2021. Before that, the New York-native had been selling bagels from his home, according to Eater Dallas. Now you can find the popular New York-style bagels in downtown Dallas — right between Uno Mas and Campisi’s. The new shop serves bagel sandwiches including one named after The Millennial Falcon (there’s a Star Wars theme going on here)— it includes avocado, tomato, cucumber, pickled onion, sprouts, and your choice of schmear. You’ll also find iced lattes and drip coffee on the menu.

The bagel scene has expanded in the city over the last few years with the openings of Shug’s and Scalfani’s. We’ll have to see how Starship stacks up. So far, it wins best name.

A New York-based Australian cafe will debut its second Texas location at Dallas’ The Quad.

In 2024, a healthy Australian-style restaurant called Two Hands is set to open at the newly renovated The Quad (formerly the Quadrangle) in Uptown. Based in New York, the cafe opened its first Texas spot in Austin in 2020. The cafe offers an all-day menu featuring breakfast bites, salads, bowls, and burgers, while the dinner menu opts for shareables and larger entrees. According to the Dallas Morning News, there are still four more new restaurants yet to be announced at The Quad. We will keep y’all posted.