A dish at Rapscallion
Rapscallion
As its name suggests, Lowest Greenville’s Rapscallion—a collaboration among siblings Brooks and Bradley Anderson and chef Nathan Tate (also the trio behind the Bishop Arts bistro Boulevardier)—doesn’t play by the rules. Tate and chef de cuisine Jonathan Peters mix up down-home cooking with unexpected modern touches for dishes including Nashville-style hot chicken smothered with Szechuan mala sauce; a grass-fed burger with three-cheese pimiento, house pepper bacon, creole mustard and spiced sweet-potato chips; and coriander-cured yellowtail with green tomato, corn bread and scallion oil. There’s also a raw bar, packed with a rotating list of oysters and other seafood specialties.
Just as the dinner menu uses select products from Tate’s family farm, the libations stick close to home with a list of all-American wine and beer as well as an ever-changing array of cocktails. In fact, it’s those beverages that helped earn the eatery its name. “Lowest Greenville is famous for being a bit of a boozy entertainment district full of rapscallions,” Brooks Anderson says, “so it all just worked.”
2023 Greenville Avenue; dallasrapscallion.com
Matt McCallister, chef and owner of Filament
Filament
Matt McCallister’s Filament is all about Southern roots. The menu at the Deep Ellum eatery highlights the diversity of the region’s cuisine, something McCallister knows plenty about. “I grew up eating a lot of preparations my mom drew from the cooking of her grandmother,” he says. So thank his forebearers for dishes like fried sepia tacos with green papaya slaw and a hot catfish sandwich on Pullman bread. And don’t miss out on a spot at the 24-seat bar, where you can sample from Filament’s 100-plus bottles of wine, craft beer on tap or selection of seasonal cocktails.
2626 Main Street; filamentdallas.com
Café Momentum
Café Momentum
Six years ago, Chad Houser visited a Dallas County juvenile-detention facility and taught eight young men to make ice cream for a competition at the Dallas Farmers Market. Three years later, he left his job and began pursuing Café Momentum, a restaurant that offers post-release paid internships for juvenile offenders. The program now has a full-time brick-and-mortar home, and during a 12-month period, the young men work through five stations in the restaurant, each with an attached curriculum that covers basic culinary duties along with applicable life skills.
“So many important lessons can be learned in washing dishes, waiting tables and everything else in between,” says Houser. There are nearly 6,500 kids who enter the Dallas County juvenile system every year, and Houser says, “I hope we build enough restaurants to work with all of them.”
1510 Pacific Street; cafemomentum.org
