Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth May 30

by Teresa Gubbins

The Bishop Arts district of Oak Cliff -- for now, the center of Dallas' restaurant universe -- is getting its own branch of Cafe Brazil. It'll take over the space just vacated by Cafe Italia.

This will be the 10th branch of Cafe Brazil, and isn't expected to affect the fortunes of any other Cafe Brazils, such as the branch in Deep Ellum, which is stoically holding on with steady lunch business through the neighborhood's current sputter.

The new Bishop Arts branch will be open "within 45 days -- maybe by July," said a Cafe Brazil employee.

Chicago style

"Chicago-style pizza" is one of the biggest foodie hot buttons, with ex-natives taking up large chunks of the worldwide web with their nostalgic waxings. Places that claim to serve Chicago-style pizza attract both an instant audience and careful scrutiny. Two such places have opened in Dallas' northern suburbs:

1. Rosati's is a small chain founded in Chicago in 1927. Franchising started in 1979, on a small scale. A branch with sit-down service opened in McKinney in 2007; a to-go branch just opened in Frisco, and another is slated for Plano, says manager Jon Poupko, who co-owns the local outposts, with a couple of partners based in Chicago.

"A third of my staff is from Chicago -- two moved down with me, they've worked for me for 10 years, and a third was here already," Poupko says. "I'm 31, and I've been working with Rosati's since I was 15. So it's all the real deal as far as Chicago-style goes."

Rosati's Italian sausage is a family recipe which Poupko gets shipped down from Chicago, a little spicy, and when he applies it to the pizza, he does so in chunks – "not crumbly like you see around here," he says.

If you want to meet Chicago natives (and really, who doesn't), Rosati's is the place.

"There's a lot of people from Chicago in the Texas area, we see them every day, they tell us which Rosati’s they used to go up there," he says.

2. Chicago's Gourmet Pizza just opened in April in Plano, taking over the space previously occupied by the ill-fated Pizza Boy.

Owner Lutfi Ghousheh learned the ropes of Chicago-style pizza after working for many years for a tiny California-based pizza outfit called Pizza Chicago before venturing out on his own.

He uses the Bonta brand of tomato products and pizza sauce, and Granda brand mozzarella cheese. Pizzas are made to order and come with clever Chicago-themed names such as the Al Capone (pesto, roasted garlic, black olives, mushrooms, and roasted red bell peppers) and the Jimmy Hoffa (BBQ sauce, barbeque chicken, red onions, cilantro, smoked gouda, and mozzarella cheese).

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