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Food

4 new downtown Dallas restaurants, all right in a row

You're in downtown Dallas -- maybe you work there, maybe you're signed up for jury duty, maybe you're dressed in a goofy costume and attending a convention at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. In the corner of the Central Business District nearest Union Station, your dining choices used to be seriously limited.

Cafe Herrera, the last of four restaurants in front of the Omni Dallas, is now open.
Cafe Herrera, the last of four restaurants in front of the Omni Dallas, is now open. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

The 1,000-room Omni Dallas Hotel changed that when, as of just a few days ago, all four of its new restaurants are now open in a standalone building on the hotel's lawn. The 16,000-square-foot project means the Omni has nine eateries total: five inside the hotel (Bob's Steak and Chop House, Southern restaurant Texas Spice, sports bar the Owners Box, coffee shop Morsel's and a lobby lounge), plus the four newcomers below.

Ed Netzhammer, general manager of Omni Dallas, says he hopes the restaurants serve two kinds of people: those who live or work downtown, and those visiting Dallas or attending a convention. And are there enough of those people lurking in downtown Dallas on any given day? Netzhammer thinks so.

"There's plenty of business to go around for all of us," he told The Dallas Morning News a few months ago.

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Here's a look at each of the four new restaurants:

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Biergarten on Lamar

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  • What is it: a German restaurant with beer
  • What's popular: wurst. Biergarten's menu is tough to read because half of it is in German. (We appreciate the authenticity. But your eyes might cross when you're ordering at the counter and trying to decipher what hühnchen, sonnengetrocknete tomaten, basilikum is. It's a chicken sausage with sundried tomato and basil.) Our tip: Order bratwurst or kielbasa sausage with fries or potato salad.
  • Price range: $12 for a brat or sausage and a side. German beers can get pricey -- up to $18 for a liter, which is about 2 pints.
  • Anything else? Biergarten on Lamar has a notable owner in the Dallas restaurant scene. Joseph Palladino runs this place; he also has a hand in pizza place(s) Coal Vines, see-and-be-seen steakhouse Nick and Sam's, and a coming-soon bar in Uptown called Dos Jefes. Biergarten has a lovely patio and a private back room. Both are great if you're looking for a special spot to eat or drink in downtown Dallas.

Coal Vines

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  • What is it: a quick pizza place
  • What's popular: pizza. Dallas Morning News restaurant critic Leslie Brenner made a list of the best pizza joints in D-FW in 2014 and Coal Vines' existing locations didn't make the cut, but if you're craving pizza and you're in downtown Dallas, Coal Vines will give you what you need.
  • Price range: Most lunchtime pizzas cost $12.95. A wider selection of pizzas at dinner, in two sizes, cost $14 to $20. Other dinner items range from $13 to $22.
  • Anything else? If you've been to the other Coal Vines pizzas -- in Uptown Dallas, Addison, Southlake and Plano -- this one isn't the same. It's the only Coal Vines that serves personal pizzas, and it's much quicker eating experience than the others, which tend to lend themselves to date nights and chatting over a bottle of wine. Recently, I received a pizza and salad in less than 10 minutes.

Black Ship Little Katana

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  • What is it: a sushi restaurant
  • What's popular: bento boxes. They're a filling lunch portion of salad, half a California roll, rice or wasabi mashed potatoes, and choice of several meats or tempuraed veggies. Black Ship also has specials such as udon noodles and a wagyu burger, plus a long list of sashimi and sushi rolls, including several vegetarian options.
  • Price range: Bento boxes cost $13-$17. Dinner entrees go up to $58.
  • Anything else? Black Ship is larger than it looks. The woodsy place goes way back, then ends with a big patio that lets the sunlight in on pretty afternoons. If you're familiar with Little Katana on Travis Street in Dallas, Black Ship is part of the same family.
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Cafe Herrera

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  • What is it: a Tex-Mex restaurant from a famous family
  • What's popular: It's too early to tell what's popular, but the restaurateurs behind the project hope the "legados" section of the menu -- which means "legacy" -- are big items. Those six Tex-Mex dishes are long-time family recipes that you might remember, in part, from Herrera's of the past. (Some of the presentations have been reworked, however.) The Maple Ave '71, named for the Dallas Herrera's opened that year, is a chile con carne cheese enchilada and tamale, a beef taco and a bean tostada. The Denton Dr. '81 is a guacamole tostada, cheese enchilada topped with chile con carne, cheese taco and beef taco.
  • Price range: $12 for tacos, $12-$14 for dishes from the "legacy" section
  • Anything else? The Herrera's family has been making Tex-Mex in Dallas for decades. Cafe Herrera owner and operator Gil Bonifaz once ran restaurants by the same name in Mockingbird Station and Denton, now both closed. His family members operate unaffiliated Herrera's Tex-Mex restaurants in Dallas, too. With the opening of the new Cafe Herrera, Bonifaz made a point to bring back longtime recipes. "Some people might picket if we didn't!" says Gina Lynn, restaurant strategist for Cafe Herrera.

Eating downtown? Find a full list of restaurants in downtown Dallas here.

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