makeSTATEMENT

Pietro’s Italian Restaurant

Where: 5722 Richmond at Greenville

Type of food: Italian

Price: $8-$22 (cards accepted with min. of $25)

YOU COULD DRIVE BY IT A DOZEN times and never notice it’s there, hidden away from the constant flow of tra c on Greenville Avenue by a tall row of corn.

Pietro’s Italian Restaurant has been serving the East Dallas community for more than 50 years. Pietro Eustachio and his parents, Salvatore and Rosalia, originally established it as a pizzeria along Lowest Greenville.

In 1972, Pietro and his wife, Grace, moved the restaurant to Richmond and expanded the concept to an Italian restaurant. Pietro bought the property, tore down the existing duplexes and built the restaurant from the ground up. He also built an apartment above it, where he and his wife raised their children. (So when he says his kids “were raised in the restaurant,” he means it quite literally.)

Pietro has watched neighborhood families grow up. Children who used to visit the restaurant now visit with their children.

“I’ve got people who come from all over Dallas,” he says.

That diehard fan base — the kind that will drive for miles and miles for a plate of chicken Parmesan — plays a big part in the success of the restaurant. It’s the freshly made Italian food, which hasn’t changed a lick in 50 years, that keeps patrons coming back.

Pietro’s family is from Sicily. His brothers moved to Dallas as young men, and soon the rest of Pietro’s family joined them, although Pietro still has extended family overseas.

The 1980s were Pietro’s Italian Restaurant’s most popular decade. Lines out the door would keep the restaurant hopping until 11 p.m. These days the restaurant closes at 9 p.m. Pietro says he hopes to keep the restaurant open as long as possible.

“My customers love me,” Pietro says. “I’ll have a little kid and it’ll be his birthday, and they’ll ask, ‘Where do you want to go?’ He’ll say, ‘I want to see Pietro.’ That’s why I can’t get out of business. I love my customers.”

Daddy Jack’s

Where: 1916 Greenville at Oram • Type of food: Lobster, seafood • Price: $14-$69

IF

YOU WANDER INTO DADDY JACK’S

New England Lobster and Chowder House one evening, you’ll likely find it bustling with activity.

The dining area is cozy in a way that forces patrons to share elbow space with strangers, which is actually kind of charming. Not to mention, it’s sometimes the source of unlikely friendships, says owner Cary Ray.

“Sometimes people come in here, first-timers, and they’re sitting right next to someone else,” Ray says, “and then before the night is over, they’re friends. It’s a completely di erent experience than you get at most places.”

Ray opened Daddy Jack’s in the heart of Lower Greenville in 1993. “The late ’90s was the last heyday on Greenville, in terms of good businesses,” Ray says. Like all businesses that made it through the recent years, Daddy Jack’s had to weather the changes on Lowest Greenville brought on by spiking crime rates in the late 2000s.

Today Ray is enjoying the revitalization of Lowest Greenville, which he believes was spurred in part by Trader Joe’s opening in summer 2013.

The interior of the restaurant, which was styled after a typical New England chowder house, has a casual neighborhood feel. Although Daddy Jack’s o ers a variety of seafood tilapia, shrimp, calamari, king crab — it’s best known for its lobster.

“What makes it work is the really highquality cuisine,” Ray says. “It really comes down to the ingredients, buying the best, freshest meat and ingredients. It’s for people who don’t want to dress up but still want great seafood.”