Here’s one for the didja know file. In doing some research for an upcoming story, I came across one of Stanley Marcus’s old guest columns in the Dallas Morning News, where he’s talking about the “notable Dallas restaurants of the midcentury period”.
In the 1996 column, he says there wasn’t much to write home about on the Dallas culinary scene in the 40s and 50s. But he notes that the first “upscale restaurant” in Dallas was here in Oak Cliff, in what is now known as the Belmont Hotel.
Check it out:
“Tony Zoppi, the best authority on Dallas night life of the midcentury period, reminded me that Jim Vouras’ Chateau-briand was the first upscale restaurant in Dallas. It began in the old Belmont Motel in Oak Cliff before moving across the Trinity, where it became the flagship of the McKinney Avenue restaurant row.”
