Stackhouse Burgers to open in neat old house near Baylor

Soon, each and every one of us will have our own burger restaurant.

Stackhouse

DALLAS — While it may seem that we are swamped by burger places and could not possibly need another, there are people who feel that we still don't have a good burger. People like Randall Kienast, a house builder who always harbored a dream of having his own restaurant. His dream comes to fruition at the end of the month, when he opens Stackhouse Burgers on Gaston Road, with his wife Nikki, and friends Ben and Mary Spies.

"I always wanted to do a burger joint," he says. "Once I found this property on Gaston, I decided, 'I can do this'."

The property is a decades-old house up from Baylor and Elbow Room and Metro Diner. In its renovation from house to restaurant, Kienast made sure to respect the fixtures and recycle whenever he could.

"I took the old siding off the building and used it for wainscoting inside, and the bar tops come from the roof," he says. "We re-used as much stuff as we could. I tried to give it that good feel, that old style."

Stackhouse

While Kienast doesn't have recent restaurant experience, his family had a catering operation which gave him some early exposure to the food & beverage world. And while he likes the burgers at Maple & Motor, there remained his conviction that the perfect burger still did not exist.

"I can count on one hand the great burger joints in Dallas, there's just not that many that you leave saying, 'Wow, that was incredible'," he says. "I felt like I could do it better, and I think we have.

"We have an incredible chef, James Rose, who was formerly at Bob's Steak & Chop House. Our French fries are going to be house-made, the real deal. Not many people do it right. Our meat tastes beefier. We have an independent baker who's doing a brioche bun custom-made for us. He made special pans to make our buns."

There will also be salads, chicken sandwiches, a fish sandwich, a couple of veggie options including portabella mushrooms and eggplant, and daily specials such as a meat loaf sandwich.

"Metro Diner is gone so we want to have a place if the hospital people need to come eat every day," he says.

"I've eaten every burger in town," he says. "Ours is very simple. No cornball names. A cheeseburger, hamburger, and you can add avocado, onion strings, but it’s basic."