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JingHe entrance on Mockingbird Lane. Read more on page
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Advocate (c) 2024 is published monthly in print and daily online by Advocate Media - Dallas Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation based in Dallas and first published in 1991. Contents of this print magazine may not be reproduced. Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for the content of all advertisements and sponsorships printed, and therefore assume responsibility for any and all claims against the Advocate. The Publisher reserves the right to accept or reject ay editorial, advertising or sponsorship material in print or online. Opinions set forth in Advocate publications are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the Publisher’s viewpoint. More than 180,000 people read Advocate publications in print each month; Advocate online publications receive more than 4 million pageviews monthly. Advertising rates and guidelines are available upon request. Advocate print and online publications are available free of charge throughout our neighborhoods, one print copy per reader. For information about supporting our non-profit mission of providing local news to neighborhood readers, please call 214-560-4212 or email aquintero@advocatemag.com.
STILL LOVED. STILL THERE.
Dealing with Dementia?
For Sufferers and their Loved Ones, There’s Hope
Here in Our Neighborhood
DEMENTIA IS VERY MUCH ALIVE and real in our neighborhood. But when it strikes a parent or spouse, navigating care and understanding options is universally overwhelming.
But there’s help — and hope — right here. Juliette Fowler Communities will be opening its new wing for early stages of dementia this fall, says Ashley Thames Brown, chief advancement officer at Fowler.
“Due to the high cost of residential memory care, we are also opening an Adult Day Program centered on mild to middle forms of dementia,” she says. “This new program will affordably serve 30 people a day, five days a week, doubling current capacity.”
Statistics show that 12.6% of Dallas’ population has Alzheimer’s disease. Across the United States, Alzheimer’s affects 5.5 million Americans age 65 and older. Texas ranks fourth in the country in the number of Alzheimer’s cases and second in the number of Alzheimer’s deaths.
In addition to independent living, assisted living and affordable housing options for older adults, Juliette Fowler is a certified “I’m Still Here” Center of Excellence in Dementia Care. This paradigm shift in dementia attention meets people where they are in disease progression.
Thames Brown says tenets of this program reach beyond our neighborhood through a “Continuum of Cognitive Care” that improves outcomes for memory care residents and their families.
A key issue for those living with dementia and their loved ones is a lack of understanding and education on the subject. Fowler staff undergo extensive training that is key to program success; the training is done through the Hearthstone Institute at Abe’s Garden in Nashville.
Additionally, family and community members can receive training at Fowler or online by Dementia Friendly Dallas, which is a group of individuals, businesses and organizations that want to create an informed, safe and respectful community for dementia patients and their care partners.
The need for increased dementia-friendly training is directly due to the increase in all forms of dementias. When communities better understand the disease process and experience, Thames Brown says people with
dementia experience a higher quality of life. Is dementia on your radar? Fowler pros recommend three important first steps: Attend free dementia-friendly training. Learn about what the person is going through and identify ways to help them.
Get a diagnosis. Symptoms and causes vary depending on the type of dementia.
Find a care-giver support group. Through a church or other organization, those ahead of you on the journey offer tremendous resources.
“We want Juliette Fower Communities to be the voice of dementia,” Thames Brown says.
“People with dementia are still there. They experience life differently, and we need to accommodate our behavior to
CELEBRATING The BEAUTY
You are not alone. Find help – and hope – today at Juliette Fowler. Visit fowlercommunities.org or call 214-827-0813.
ITALY NEXT DOOR
Get to know Via Triozzi’s Chef Leigh Hutchinson
Story by LILLIAN JUAREZ | Photography by KATHY TRAN
Chef Leigh Hutchinson, owner of Via Triozzi, has always been immersed in two things: food and family.
It began with Hutchinson’s grandmother, a Sicilian American who Leigh says embodied the stereotypical Italian household where everyone’s fed, lunches turn into large dinners and no one is a stranger, especially at the dinner table.
Cooking was a regular part of her upbringing, so it came as no shock when she left her bachelor’s degree in public relations and retail work to chase the chef life.
At 28, Hutchinson was working as an assistant buyer and manager at Nest — a lifestyle store that has since closed. Retail offered stability during a tough job market in 2008, right after she graduated from college.
For about a decade, Hutchinson had been “bothering her family” with a restaurant concept. With two uncles deeply rooted in the industry in Austin and New York, she felt inspired, and “life’s too short” not to chase the culinary itch.
At 29, she had an epiphany: “This isn’t where my heart is. I’m almost 30, I gotta figure this out.” She packed up her belongings and her dog and moved to Italy to take culinary courses at Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici and privately studied with Gigliocooking founder Marcella Ansaldo. At the time she only knew about three people, and she didn’t speak the language.
As an eager rising chef, Hutchinson was inspired to learn the dishes from all regions, and if she wasn’t in class she was on a train to a city, festival or harvest to learn something new. But the one genre she loved the most was always Italian.
When she moved to Dallas, her dreams turned to reality. Hutchinson’s family supported her idea and eventually, she opened an Italian restaurant that would maintain her grandmother’s legacy on Lower Greenville.
It’s Via Triozzi.
WHY DID YOU
CHOOSE THE LOWER GREENVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD TO HOUSE VIA TRIOZZI?
I remember having my first restaurant idea in 2006 as an undergrad when I was 20 and studying abroad. I was standing in the middle of Florence at a very known Piazza there, Piazza della Repubblica, and I was like, “You know what? Dallas, needs something like this.” Eighteen years ago when I moved back to Dallas I had no location in mind, but ideally, I wanted something over here because it’s close to where I live. Then one day our broker called and said, “Hey what do you think about Lower Greenville?” I said, “That would be a dream … but what’s available in Lower Greenville?” Then we looked at it and here we are.
AS YOU HIT YOUR ONE-YEAR MARK, WHAT ARE SOME THINGS YOU’VE LEARNED ALONG THE WAY?
Honestly, every single day you have to wake up ready for battle. When we were first opening we ran into so many different things and all management and staff kept saying, “Pivot and figure it out.” It’s a team effort here and all the gears have to work together to make the ship sail, the project work and the restaurant tick. Sometimes it’s smooth sailing and you look around the room and you see people cheersing and laughing while eating and I take a minute and remember this is why I do it.
WHAT STANDS OUT AS THE MOST REWARDING THING AS AN OWNER?
I promised my grandmother and my family that the legacy would keep going. Sometimes my dad would come in and make his way down the bar and look at what everyone is having. Most of the time he knows someone in here. Although these dishes may not be the same as my grandma or
anything she taught me, it’s just the experience of dining together that feels like I’m honoring my family.
WE SAW YOU WERE ON THE FOOD NETWORK SHOW CHOPPED . WHAT DID IT FEEL LIKE TO BE SELECTED FOR THE COMPETITION?
When I got the DM from a random person saying that she worked for the casting agency at Food Network, I thought it was spam. I asked my friends and family and eventually wrote her back and I had several interviews and questionnaires, it was sort of like a long job interview. Never in a million years did I think I would ever be on Food Network or that this restaurant would do what it has done. I’m just a girl with a dream who likes making pasta.
WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE LIKE ON CHOPPED ?
The show gives me anxiety watching it but when I got there I was in full survival mode. You just focus. Once I saw our ingredients for the Tuscany challenge my brain just started ticking. Honestly, I was so zoned in that I don’t even remember a camera being there. I’ve had times when I did private dinners where I’ve had to pivot because an ingredient wasn’t available but nothing where I had to make a dish in 20 minutes while being filmed. I mean I even did a run-through with my friends a couple of nights before I left. We were closed here for dinner and they came here and we ran through drills and I had them stand in my way so I couldn’t get to a cutting board or an ingredient. My goal was to not get cut first and I was able to figure it out and make a meatball from scratch in 20 minutes.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
are apart of the $19 All You Can Eat menu.
Spicy Miso Ramen and Shrimp Shumai
Opposite: Crispy California Rice comes out in pairs.
A J APANESE
S ECRET
Stay, drink, place at Mockingbird’s JingHe
Story by LILLIAN JUAREZ | Photography by KELSEY SHOEMAKER
The restaurant stands out in a city where authentic yet affordable Japanese dining is hard to find. They are known as JingHe.
Founded by Kangfan Jing and Gangchao Zhang, a husband-and-wife duo, JingHe feels like a step into Japan. Since immigrating from China around five years ago, the two have had one mission: to redefine the local dining scene and offer a place for neighbors to enjoy traditional food inspired by their heritage.
JingHe Japanese has been open for less than a year at Mockingbird Station
in the space formerly home to Urban Taco — which closed in March last year after 16 years.
The restaurant’s interior has been completely renovated from its previous Spanish-style look consisting of bright and bold colored Talavera tiles.
According to manager Larry Jia, not many restaurants in the East Dallas area offer affordable chef-prepared Japanese dishes. Because of this, Mockingbird Station felt like the right location for JingHe’s opening.
At JingHe, everything is intentional. From plates to artwork, the restaurant
blends traditional izakaya-inspired cuisine within its modern interior furnished in a color scheme of deep brown, dark woods and hints of red.
Izakaya, Japanese for “stay-drinkplace,” is an informal bar for drinks and unwinding with friends. Food at izakaya tends to be classic, simple, dishes with a broad appeal.
For now, the restaurant offers a fastcasual, dine-in experience. However, JingHe is in the works of transforming its next-door storage space into an upscale concept that will act as a speakeasy for the restaurant.
The visual design of JingHe is enough to satisfy the eye, but the real charm is through its food menu of more than 60 Japanese otsumami (finger foods).
Customers can dine on tapas like the takoyaki (stuffed octopus pancake balls) and gyoza, Wagyu and chashu (Japanese braised pork belly), sashimi, and mini ramen.
Additionally, JingHe offers an extensive selection of sake, Japanese whiskey, beer, and its signature drink, the “Mockingbird” — a reinterpretation of the classic Cosmopolitan, served in a bird-shaped cocktail glass.
Dessert offerings include Japanesestyle cheesecake, matcha tiramisu, ice cream and taiyaki, a fish-shaped cake stuffed with red bean paste topped with ice cream.
While the term “all you can eat” paired with Japanese food may raise an eyebrow, it’s not the typical buffet style you’d expect.
Here’s how it works:
Upon arrival, you’ll be seated and presented with two menus: one at $19 including staples like cheese wonton, California roll, spicy miso ramen and teriyaki chicken. The other menu at $39 offers premium options like sashimi, tuna tower, summer roll, beef tongue and yellowtail jalapeno. Both menus include “unlimited” food tastings.
Your server will give you a piece of paper — and time, to select dishes and their quantities. The quantity is not final — you can request more food.
Once ready, you’ll press a button on the table to notify the server via a watch, indicating your table number and readiness to order. This ordering method is common in Korean restaurants for efficiency.
The chef behind the bar will prepare your food and within less than 10 minutes you’ve got a table full of Japanese tapas.
“It’s an incomparable price tag for high-quality, all-you-can-eat Japanese food,” Jia says.
“[When you look at other places in this area] you can expect to spend over $30 or $40 for just one appetizer and drink. So in that way, all you can eat is kind of like you can choose your course by yourself, very flexible, everything is small portions so [you get more],” Jia says.
Japanese Restaurant 5321 E Mockingbird Lane, Ste. 105, 214.258.5700
JingHe
FARMER KIM
How a Little Forest Hills neighbor made school gardens cool
Story by JEHADU ABSHIRO | Photography by AMANI SODIQ
There’s a difference between native Texas milkweed and tropical milkweed. The former is where the monarchs that travel through our state lay their eggs. The latter breaks down the butterflies’ immune system, often killing them.
It’s the difference the average person doesn’t know when they walk into their Home Depot looking to create a butterfly garden.
Plant native milkweed.
That’s Kim Aman’s slogan.
She might actually have more than one slogan. Most of them probably have something to do with farming.
She’s Farmer Kim for a reason.
Aman helped launch Moss Haven Farms 13 years ago. The patch of grass
has become 23 raised beds, a farm field and the home to chickens that produce eggs worthy of ‘Best Egg’ at the State Fair of Texas on Harry S. Moss’ old ranch land. Now, almost every student at Moss Haven Elementary spends at least a day working with their hands.
School gardening isn’t a new concept. Programs up and down the West Coast, East Coast and Rocky Mountain states have long incorporated farming into their curriculum.
“They’ve been doing this for 30 years. We’re behind the curve,” Aman says. “We weren’t necessarily the first people doing it in Dallas, but we’re the first people that brought it to people’s attention that this was important and valuable.”
In Mansfield, Ohio, a town where
the population has been about 50,000 for the last 50 years, there’s land that’s been in Aman’s family for seven generations. A Rust Belt All-American farm harvesting corn and herding cattle. Her grandfather maintained a large garden for food and they’d store the excess produce for the winter months.
“It just taught me the value of the bite of a bright red tomato,” she says.
After living in Cleveland suburb Fairview Park as a child, her family moved to Richardson, Texas, back in the ‘70s when Dallas really started growing. But every summer, Aman would return to the family farm.
“We’d go to amusement parks, and museums and blah blah blah, but get me on the tractor on the farm and that was the best,” Aman says. “The woods whisper my name, and it sounds corny but you feel that your ancestors were there.”
The farming gene skipped a generation with her mom, whose interest in harvesting only went as far as an herb garden.
Aman went to the Pacific Northwest for a teaching degree and came back to Texas. As a special education teacher at Moss Haven Elementary School, where she taught for 22 years, she would take students outdoors and conduct class there.
“I noticed really improved behavior and learning and focus,” she says “So, I literally taught outside, and they could hardly ever find me.”
A few parents developed an interest in starting a garden at the school.
“And my principal said ‘Oh, you need to go talk to Kim. She’s never inside,’” Aman says.
The Moss Haven PTA provided initial funds to start the farm. A team of parents and Aman worked on getting RISD to approve plans. Somewhere in the planning process, somebody knew someone at the American Heart Association, which has a Teaching Garden Program, and they received grant money.
“And they asked us to be the first teaching garden in the state,” Aman says. “And we’re like, ‘Yes, please.’”
The farm officially opened in 2012. News outlets came to cover the opening. The first year, they had 24 children signed up for the after-school program. The second year 87 students and the
third year 220 students. There was some apprehension from the older grades.
“They were like ‘We need our screens and our paper and pencil and all these things,’” she says.
“ CONNECT WITH ROLLIE POLLIES & EARTH
WORMS & AN OCCASIONAL GARTER SNAKE & CHICKENS”
But then when students who had experienced Moss Haven Farm in the early years got to higher grades and would start course work about topics like erosion, they already understood concepts and experienced real-life examples. Science. Social studies. Health. Exercise. Social-emotional learning. Math.
“There’s so many things you can learn in one garden lesson that can tie everything together,” Aman says. “It’s really great for kids to get outside and connect with rollie pollies and earth worms and an occasional garter snake and chickens.”
A March 2023 study, The School Gardening and Health and Well-Being
of School-Aged Children: A Realist Synthesis , showed a shift to nutrientdense eating, increased physical activity and overall improvement in health in students who participate in programs like Moss Haven Farms. According to a 2017 Columbia University study, students with access to a garden increased vegetable and fruit intake up to three times as much during lunch. It provides more than triple the amount of nutritional education that students receive yearly and hands-on learning experience.
But programs need a lot of hands to be successful. Aman says the average lifetime is two years. The Eden Project, currently being conducted at the University of Texas, has mined data that shows success is directly connected to administrative support. You also need parental support.
“Moss Haven moms are a force of nature. They’re so helpful. They were so instrumental in starting that with their passion and their energy and their connections to other people,” Aman says.
Tiffany Walker, the PTA president in 2011, helped cofound the Moss Haven Farm.
Once there’s parental and administrative support, then there’s the issue of teaching people how to actually garden. Most people are disconnected from the food system.
“When you’re with a group of teachers, and you say, ‘How many of you have a garden?’ Maybe two or three raise their hand … But then you’ll say, ‘Well, how many of your parents?” Then maybe like six hands would go up. Well, ‘How many of your grandparents? Thirty hands go up,’” Aman says.
Then, there’s the issue of connecting people back to nature and showing teachers how to incorporate the outdoors in low-lift ways.
“Even if you’re doing language arts and it’s reading a book, go sit outside,” she says. “Some schools don’t even have windows for them to look out. It can heal a lot of things.”
Then there’s the issue of water. And most teachers don’t have time to water gardens between developing curricula and managing their classrooms. The team at Moss Haven was once quoted $18,000 to install automated irrigation.
That’s why you have to have more hands.
“When I was in school, I was a good
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note passer, and that’s all social media is passing notes around. So I did really well at that,” Aman says. They won a social media contest to go to the White House Easter Egg Roll where they got connected to other organizations and increased participation in the program.
PUB: Advocate Lakewood/ Lake Highlands CONTACT: Catherine Pate cpate@advocatemag.com
Release: 7/17/24
Insertion: August
“And then after a while, it was like this is so great for our kids. But what about the other kids in our city and our district and our community? And how can we help them?” she says.
She left the classroom and created a nonprofit. North Texas School Garden Network, founded in 2020, focuses on developing programs in schools where there’s not enough support naturally or located in food deserts. Becoming a nonprofit was the easiest way to access grants and donations without getting caught in school district red tape, mitigating vendor contracts and easier access to funds. Plus, people like Jack Johnson could donate. He actually did.
North Texas School is currently in four different school districts and works with about 7,000 children a month. Mockingbird Elementary, Solar Prep Boys, and Geneva Heights particpate in the program. Students who have experienced the program have started gardening experiences for other students. 100 Women of Lake Highlands donated thousands of dollars to gardening projects.
Aman spends less time planting these days. She writes grants, goes to meetings and does walk-throughs to see how lessons are going. Aman is still very much involved in Moss Haven.
“I thought teaching was my dream job. I felt like I was born to be a teacher … That was my jam,” she says. “People say corny things like ‘It just all falls into place.’ But it did, with a lot of work and sweat, and, you know, Texas heat. But the stars align and the rows were straight.”
She says she’s got nine more years in her. She’ll call it quits when she’s 70.
“I’ll put myself out to pasture then,” she says.
After all, she’s Farmer Kim.
infused classical Thai cuisine with a modern ambiance
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Chef of the underground
David Anthony Temple wanted to do fine dining, so he did it in his living room
Story by SIMON PRUITT
Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
Chef DAT cooks secret dinners from his East Dallas Home. Pictured:
Sous vide Waygu beef cheeks with chanterelle button mushrooms served with filet of beef eggplant ragot and Robuchon-style purple potatoes, cauliflower and parsnips.
No kitchen would hire a young David Anthony Temple. It was the late ‘90s, the teenage Temple was bussing down tables and working the frontof-house at restaurants in Louisiana. He garnered a reputation in the local culinary scene for his personality, knowing the regulars and recognizing food writers. But his eyes were always on the kitchen. If the restaurants wouldn’t hire him, he would have to figure it out himself.
“It was all ego when I was a kid,” Temple says. “You try to prove yourself when you’re not even proven to yourself.”
Nearly a decade later, Temple was living in Hawaii. He spent his days surfing and his nights learning to cook authentic Hawaiian cuisine.
In 2009, Temple was confident in his skills, but wasn’t experienced enough to jump into a high-end kitchen. He had to come at it sideways.
That December, Temple had an idea. An “underground dinner,” where you wouldn’t know what would be on your plate, where you’d be eating it, or who you’d be eating it with. It would be small, private and intimate. Just fleshed out enough for people to trust Temple blindly, but still edgy enough for that trust to feel like an adventure.
When the idea came to him, he was working at iconic Dallas chef Tom Spicer’s Spiceman 1410 storefront for cooking supplies. Knowing that the clientele for that business would appreciate his idea, Temple decided to start spreading the word there, printing out a small information sheet that outlined his concept.
“I passed out the paper to people that walked in,” Temple says. “It sold out, I could only seat 12 but I served 18 with some people standing and eating.”
The first underground dinner took place at Temple’s Little Forest Hils house on December 6, 2009, featuring an eclectic eight course dinner presentation for his guests.
It began with a BBQ duck tostada followed by a sashimi of flounder, each mixing elements of Mexican and Asian cuisine with traditional fine
2024 marks the 15 year anniversary of Chef DAT’s underground dinners.
Chef DAT incorporates Louisiana flavors into every dinner he cooks.
Above: Tulum-style vegan jambalaya rice with sequoia bark-smoked Creole tomatoes and honey butter cornbread.
Below: Gumbo with smoked duck, chicken, Tasso and ham hock.
dining aesthetics. Temple then flexed his Cajun muscles with a chicken and sausage gumbo, before serving a tomato salad, seared fish and truffles, an 18 hour braised short rib, blackened sea scallops and wild huckleberry ice cream for dessert.
The price? $45.
“That was the greatest deal ever,” Temple says with a laugh.
The dinner was a hit, buoying Temple to kitchen work at high-end Dallas establishments, Charlie Palmer’s Steakhouse and Aurora.
He continued to host the underground dinners, both from his house and after hours at local cafes. Now, his process, name and price have refined: ‘Chef DAT’ has a get-in price at $165.
“It used to be; introduce a dish, tell a dumb story and go back,” Temple says. “Now I’m cooking right in front of people. They’re in my kitchen, in my house. I’m talking to them while they’re watching me do everything.”
This year, Chef DAT’s underground dinners turn 15. He’s planning a celebration for it this fall, complete with multiple days of dining and surprise entertainment in-between. The mood will remain the same, but with a different outlook behind the counter.
“I don’t care any more about the finesse or the art of it,” Temple says. “Now it’s all about simple and delicious.”
ROSS AVENUE REVIVAL
How one restaurant turned a ghost town into a modern-day Cinderella story
Story by ADVOCATE STAFF
From Interstate 345 to Lower Greenville, Ross Avenue was a crucial part of early Dallas development from prominent family mansions to established churches. Today, however, nightlife and polished dining concepts look to redefine the area as a burgeoning hospitality scene.
But in order to understand how we got here, we have to take a look at where we came from.
More than a century ago, Ross Avenue was a street lined with some of Dallas’ wealthiest neighbors and most opulent mansions. Historic Dallas names like John C. Conway, the founder of Highland Park and William Henry Gaston, one of the city’s first millionaires, built their homes on Ross Avenue.
The mansions have since been demolished or used in more creative ways to house organizations and events. The Belo Mansion and The Alexander Mansion of Dallas, now the Arts District Mansion and the home for The Dallas Woman’s Forum, serve as living testaments to the transformation of Ross Avenue.
Through the rest of the 21st century, office buildings spread from Downtown into the East Dallas neighborhoods. But when office buildings began flocking to the suburbs in the ‘80s and ‘90s, they left the area empty and car repair shops abounded in their place.
A 1988 Planned Development District created by the Planning and Zoning Commission established that Ross Avenue would focus on very specific types of businesses: retail, restaurants and commercial services.
Though the PD was met with mixed reviews – causing some
long-standing small businesses to close to make way for the “progress” that it urged – the plan was accepted by neighborhood groups like the Bryan Place Neighborhood Association.
In came a slew of restaurants that had trouble staying in the area. Toad in the Hole is now XOXO Dining Room. Method Coffee is now Black Swan. Little Woodrow’s became Ross and Hall Beer Garden and Kitchen which became Dahlia Bar and Bistro which is now Bocado. Passport Nightclub became Sunset Lounge which became The Pretty Diver which became Bison Bar and Grill which is now Southern Classic Daiquiri Factory.
For decades, the strip had been overlooked as a hospitality destination– compared to its neighboring competitors like Greenville Avenue, Elm Street, Henderson Avenue and Main Street.
“[The neighborhood president believes that the PD in the area of Ross Avenue] has not produced the walkable friendly Ross Avenue that residents were hoping for,” the neighborhood association posted in 2018, when they attempted to amend the PD to push for more restaurant and mixed-use development. “While there has been some turnover of properties, most of the development has been ,apartment with no mixed use on the first floor, and the setbacks on Ross have not been such to produce a parkway like avenue.”
The amendment/overlay never came to fruition. In 2018, hospitality veterans Justin Kallhoff and Brian Rutt, collaborating on the Instagrammable pan-Asian restaurant Alice, aimed to change that. Alice is a conglomeration of Chinese, Japanese and Thai dishes, artisanal cocktails, ‘80s music and karaoke.
Rutt has been credited as a co-founder of restaurants and bars like The Standard Pour and has worked with This and That concepts like High Fives and Tiny Victories. Kallhoff has partnered with him on concepts like Columbian Country Club, Alice, Bad Chicken and Black Swan.
Back in 2018, when there weren’t a lot of dining options in the area, a new wave of multifamily development swept through and left the street with a plethora of “luxury” apartment complexes and townhomes.
“There was a small sports bar across the street that kind of was open and closed, but it was really just us on the block and that was
it,” Kallhoff says. “There was a coffee shop right next door that was open during the morning time. The great thing is that the whole corridor, as a general, just has incredible accessibility.”
As Alice gained popularity, Kallhoff and Rutt started thinking about opening an upscale cocktail lounge. By the end of 2023, Columbian Country Club opened a few doors down with a swanky atmosphere adorned in vintage décor.
“Anytime something opens in this area, we get busier. Like when XOXO opened down the street on Ross we started getting busier … and then when Dahlia opened up across the street people would go over there and have a drink then come have dinner at Alice and vice versa,” Kallhoff says. “So we thought adding a couple of more things to the block would just help synergize and give people a reason to never leave.”
And it’s true, sometimes people never want to leave, Bocado co-owner Jesus Almazan confirms.
Bocado opened in the former Dahlia Bar & Bistro in late December, offering an eclectic cocktail and food menu that pays homage to Mexican culture. Bocado’s owners purchased the Dahlia’s LLC, enabling a three-week turnaround. Though the turnover was quick, frequent openings and closings aren’t unusual on Ross Avenue.
After 10 years of operation, Deep Ellum’s Black Swan Saloon closed in 2020 with no intention of reopening, owner Gabe Sanchez says.
Three years later, Fiction Coffee on Ross Avenue closed.
That’s where Rutt came in, encouraging Sanchez to consider reopening on Ross Avenue. After touring the former Fiction Coffee space with Rutt, he was convinced to reopen.
From day one, customers included new faces welcoming the bar to the neighborhood and old regulars, sporting decade-old T-shirts, Sanchez shares.
“All of the new apartments and townhomes that have popped up [are] excited about having a place that is their own, which is rad because we want to be their own bar,” Sanchez says.
That 1988 PD aimed to preserve the historical facade of Ross Avenue while strengthening neighborhood identity and accommodating mixes of uses and growth. Perhaps the newest restaurants and bars lining the area are a step toward just that.
How The Shake Up empowers women in Dallas’ bartending scene
Story by LILLIAN JUAREZ
Photo courtesy of THE SHAKE UP
Photography by AUSTIN MARC GRAF
Every Monday in June, female bartenders from across Dallas gather inside the muralized walls of Ruins in Deep Ellum.
Among them are seasoned professionals who’ve been swinging drinks for years along with others who have only been bartending for six months. Regardless of experience, they each have one thing in common: the drive to compete for $1,000 and bragging rights as the best among award-winning bartenders.
Founded in 2018 by Rosey Sullivan, The Shake Up is an all-female cocktail competition created to promote talented upand-coming bartenders and strengthen ties within the female cocktail community.
“Dallas is actually understanding that bartending is about making beautiful drinks, but also about connecting with the guests… that’s a big part of Southern hospitality,” Sullivan says. “Dallas is kind of an underrated scene that has a lot of amazing things going on and a lot of really good cocktail bars.”
Female bartenders have continuously made up more than half of the bar industry, with over 56% of bartenders identifying as female, according to U.S. Census data from 2022. But six years ago, when Sullivan was one of 14 invited to a cocktail competition, she was surprised to see just one other woman competing alongside her.
After talking to other female bartenders she heard others follow the same cry: where were the competition spaces for women?
This was her chance, Sullivan recalls. She reached out to every female bartender she knew, each of whom recommended others to participate in The Shake Up’s inaugural competition.
“It was a pretty rough start, but it’s been wildly successful, wildly popular since the first year,” she says. “People [were] excited about it and they still are.”
Applications for female contestants open a month before the competition begins. Sixteen craft bartenders are selected and put into teams of two, many of whom didn’t previously know each other. Those with a stronger background are partnered with newer faces. Each week, for four weeks a pair is eliminated.
The competition started with the heart-racing speed round where bartenders race to make 30 shots as quickly as possible.
The next rounds are bespoke (bartender’s choice), and the
judges rate the drinks based on creativity, flavor and presentation.
Rachel Geene of Hoot & Annie and Lexy Batalla of LadyLove Lounge and Sound, Caira Hazey of Mike’s Gemini Twin and Micah Bernard of Goodwins, Keyla Lucero of The Woolworth/ La Reunion and MJ Freeman of Goodfriend Beer Garden & Burger House and, finally, Maddie Alcocer of Tina’s Continental and Sydney Coleman of Bowen House made it to the final week.
Last is the classic cocktails round, where bartenders face off in a timed challenge, preparing three random cocktails. One team member acts as a barback, setting up while the other prepares drinks, and then the two switch.
Judges are accompanied by a noisy conglomeration of family, friends and other mixologists cheering on the bartenders onstage.
This year’s winner was a unique case. The week two winners, Hazey and Lemus, were set for the finals when Lemus informed the judges that she would not be in town for the competition. The faster competitor from their opposing team stepped in, and Micah Bernard of Goodwins and Hazey won the whole event. In the collaborative spirit of the competition, Bernard split her winnings with Lemus.
In addition to highlighting female bartenders,The Shake Up has continued to donate a portion of proceeds towards Genesis Women’s Shelter. Over the past six years, Sullivan estimates that the competition has raised around $25,000.
“I was debating on doing it this year. And so I met up with my friend Libby and I was talking with her and just saying, ‘I’m thinking about not doing it this year … Do you think it has a purpose? … Do you think it matters?’”
A nearby bartender who formerly participated in the competition stepped in.
“I think it matters. It mattered to me,” she says. “I feel like that was the first time I ever felt like I was part of a community when I competed in that.”
“Whether or not you’re new or you’ve been in the industry for a while, [The Shake Up] is a great place to build confidence. It’s a great place to learn something new, and it’s the best place to make friends in the industry,” bartender Libby Flood says. “I’ve never seen anybody walk off the stage without a smile like they had the best time.”
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OUR NEIGHBORHOOD
By PATTI VINSON
I spy
A simple walk in our neighborhood is an adventure of the day.
Ithink my dog Dexter has been reading Henry David Thoreau. Early each morning, my little dog and I head out for a stroll in the neighborhood. Actually, he prefers more of a saunter, a mindful approach to walking which has deepened my connections to the people and nature around us in this East Dallas area we call home.
In his 1862 essay, “Walking,” Thoreau advocated not for walking or hiking but for sauntering, a way of walking with a mindset of presence rather than productivity--one foot in front of the other, no particular destination in mind. “The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours, but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.”
Before Dexter, a mixed breed from the SPCA, joined our family over a decade ago, my walks in the hood involved an unfocused forward gaze and earbuds filling my head with many an episode of This American Life. Don’t get me wrong: Ira Glass made great company and his stories always made me think.
But as I was listening, I was disconnected from the world around me.
Then Dexter happened and I was introduced to a new way of walking in the neighborhood. Each morning when he sees me getting dressed, he barks happily - and loudly - until we’re out the door. As we leave, it’s become my habit to say to him,
“Let’s go see what there is to see.” We’re off on our daily adventure.
It’s his walk, not mine, so he sets the pace, following his nose. With his 300 million or so olfactory receptors, the neighborhood must be Doggie Disneyland for him. These frequent pauses to sniff and to leave his calling card on fire hydrants and utility poles open up opportunities for me to do my own investigations. If I’m anywhere near flowers, I’ll break out my own 5 million olfactory receptors - Dexter pities me - to discover if it’s fragrant or not. The yellow roses at the lovely Italianate a couple of blocks away win best scent in my book. The magnolia blossoms down the block run a close second. And I can’t resist the simple pleasure of sniffing the wild and prolific honeysuckle covering the alley fence belonging to our friends Rose and Harry.
While Dexter checks out delectable crumbs at construction sites and scent markers left by his fellow canines, I tune in to birds. An admitted bird nerd, I’m delighted that our neighborhood is avian friendly. I spy Cardinals, Blue Jays and Red-bellied Woodpeckers all around us. I hear the loud caws of crows and speculate about their topic of conversation. It’s my turn to pause the walk whenever I see these big, crazy-smart corvids interacting and inspecting objects on the sidewalk.
I’m intrigued by bird behavior and thank Dexter for the slow pace which allows me to witness Blue Jays, another intelligent
corvid, mobbing (chasing and apparently cursing at) a Red-tailed Hawk, one that likely flew a little too close to the jays’ nest. And then there are the slightly uncomfortable moments when I see a hawk circling overhead, swooping, then emerging with a mouse that will be breakfast.
While Dexter’s sauntering style has connected me to neighborhood nature, it’s also led me to connect with humans I might not have otherwise. I see many of the same dog walkers each morning - creatures of habit to our creatures, I suppose. Some don’t look up from their phones, some nod or wave or give a smile. Many offer a sincere “Good morning,” with a warmth which does indeed make my morning good.
I look for others I’ve discovered on our walks: the elderly man who sits in his fenced backyard near the church with his elderly dog, who yaps at us as we pass while the man chuckles and nods to us; the couple who radiate happiness and always comment on Dexter’s cuteness; and my friend Louise who lives in the cool purple house a couple of blocks away and cultivates the most beautiful flowers ever. After exchanging dozens of good mornings, we finally met and now greet each other by name.
“The question is not what you look at,” said Thoreau, “but what you see.”
As Dexter and I saunter throughout the neighborhood on our daily adventure, we see its beauty.
Thanks, Dexter, for teaching me how.
Illustrations
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• Hot meal provided daily REGISTRATION IS OPEN NOW
SHADES OF SUMMER. BEAT THE HEAT! CITY VIEW ANTIQUE MALL
Shop with 65 dealers specializing in antiques, art, and collections in our Very “COOL” Venue. Find a one of a kind treasure to brighten your day!
6830 Walling Ln. (off Skillman/Abrams) 214.752.3071 • cityviewantiques.com
A Next-Level Real Estate Experience
