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Food

New Highland Park restaurant Tulum joins 'foodie zone' on Oak Lawn Avenue

Dallas restaurateur Mike Karns calls the quarter-of-a-mile on Oak Lawn Avenue between Armstrong and Avondale avenues a "foodie zone." He's right: In that short jog in Highland Park, there's Sachet, Carbone's Fine Food and Wine, TJ's Seafood Market, Al Biernat's, Eddie V's Prime Seafood, chef Matt McCallister's much anticipated restaurant Homewood and Karns' new restaurant Tulum.

It's also Karns' neighborhood, which means new restaurant Tulum is literally near and figuratively dear to his heart.

Mushrooms and salsa verde are one of the expected menu items at Tulum.
Mushrooms and salsa verde are one of the expected menu items at Tulum.(Shaban Athuman / Staff Photographer)

Tulum opened Oct. 25 in the space where French-Mexican restaurant Madrina used to be, at 4216 Oak Lawn Ave.

Karns and his wife Valerie Karns named the restaurant after their travels to the Mexican coastal city of Tulum, which has beaches on one side and jungle on the other. The restaurant reflects that: Walking in, customers will find a wall of white driftwood leading into the restaurant on the left, a bar with jungle wallpaper on the right.

Executive chef Nico Sanchez's menu is small — about four appetizers and eight entrees — and makes use of a new wood-burning oven they installed in the open kitchen. The menu will change, and over the next few weeks it's expected to include New York strip steak with cipollini onions and jalapeno chimichurri; baby-back ribs with salsa negra and charred pineapple; and mushroom ceviche (cured with orange and lime juice) and served with plantains.

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Sanchez calls the menu "rustic and elegant." He's also the executive chef for Firebird Restaurant Group, the company that Mike Karns owns and which operates El Fenix, Snuffer's Restaurant & Bar and Meso Maya. After growing the upscale Mexican restaurant to seven locations so far in Dallas-Fort Worth, Sanchez and Karns turned to Tulum, which they consider a side project.

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"I believe we set the standard for Mexican food," Sanchez said of Meso Maya as he stood inside Tulum early this week. "We've been looking for the next opportunity, and I think we've got it here."

Beets, roasted in the wood-burning stove, are served atop goat cheese at Tulum.
Beets, roasted in the wood-burning stove, are served atop goat cheese at Tulum.(Shaban Athuman / Staff Photographer)

Despite the obvious geographical tie of the new restaurant Tulum, Karns and Sanchez say it isn't really a Mexican food restaurant. Karns describes the city of Tulum as "bohemian, arty, off-the-grid — but it's got this unique contrast with culinary excellence and this really rustic, jungly, beachy environment. We were fascinated by that contradiction." He took inspiration from that city, which he says has "all kinds of great, high-end restaurants that exemplify culinary excellence, but in this laid-back environment. We wanted to create a getaway in Dallas."

The restaurant's front windows are almost all blacked out, providing no glimpse of the shopping center nearby. Diners can sit at the bar and order a margarita or frozen skinny margarita (among other cocktails like an old-fashioned), sit in the living-room lounge behind it, or dine in the 100-seat restaurant.

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Valerie Karns hopes the intimate space becomes a neighborhood hangout. "It's a place we want to eat on a nightly basis," she says.