Del Frisco’s Grille, Southlake TX

As the sister restaurant to Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, it’s no surprise that Del Frisco’s Grille takes food and atmosphere up several notches from your regular casual dining restaurant.

Last weekend I was in Dallas visiting my friends Joni & Tony. I don’t get to see them very often outside of football season, and I’m always up for a reason to go to Dallas, so I visit them every few months. I had a breakfast meeting at 8am Friday morning with one of our new suiteholders. When I told Joni, her first question was “who eats breakfast that early?” My answer “I do, so I can be ready for our lunch feeding”. We’ve been friends long enough that she shouldn’t need to ask that question.

Whenever Joni and I are together, our schedule is pretty simple: eat, drink wine, nap, repeat. By the time I got back to Joni’s house after my meeting, it was time to discuss lunch plans. After some back and forth, Joni recommended Del Frisco’s Grille. It’s the casual dining concept of  Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse. I had eaten at the steakhouse in Houston a couple years ago and it was an amazing fine dining experience. So trying Del Frisco’s Grille was an easy sell.

Del Frisco’s Grille has locations from coast to coast, primarily in Texas. Of course, nothing in Oklahoma, but a location in OKC or Tulsa would do really well. We went to the Southlake location, about a 20 minute drive from Joni’s house. Southlake is a high-end area, with great shopping and restaurants.

Joni will always opt to sit out on the patio. I usually will too, when the weather cooperates. It was blazingly hot that day (no surprise for summer in Dallas), but it was freezing inside. From the parking lot, the only patio we noticed was upstairs. However, the upstairs patio is more for the evening, so the hostess suggested we check out the other patio just beyond the bar on the main level. The patio has 4 big umbrellas covering the space, which provided shade. I still hesitated, because of the intense heat, but Joni wanted to try it out. The breeze was the only reason we toughed it out.

From the outside, Del Frisco’s Grille looks like a generic office building. The inside decorating, however, is beautiful and very inviting. There is a huge wall of wine as soon as you enter, going up the staircase to the second floor. The dining room on the main floor only seats about 60. But when you add in the inside bar seating, outdoor main floor patio, and upstairs patio, the seating space almost quadruples. I love the floor to ceiling windows on both floors, and that there is so much open patio space. The upstairs space is a combination of inside dining and a large open-air patio. I’m sure on nights and weekends the upstairs space is a major hot spot.

Joni picked up the drink menu first, but my first requirement was water. After 3 glasses of water in about 10 minutes, I asked the server if we could get a pitcher.  She looked at me kind of funny, as I’m sure that’s not a normal request. A few minutes later, our pitcher arrived

She even added a lot of ice so that the water wouldn’t get warm too fast. That’s great service.

We both wanted prosecco, so we got a bottle.

I love the presentation! The chiller was table height and very convenient. The prosecco was very light and refreshing against the summer heat.  The only down side to the patio is the construction across the street and the traffic. But once you get past that, it’s wonderful.

Del Frisco’s Grille serves lunch, dinner and brunch, and the menu for each city is slightly different. The lunch menu features daily specials, appetizers, lunch combos, flatbreads, burgers, sandwiches, and entrees.

We decided to start with the fire roasted artichoke

The artichoke was delicious, and very meaty. The hot plate also kept the artichoke warm the entire time.  Both the aioli and the lemon vinaigrette have a strong bite, but are not overpowering and work really well together. The challenge with artichokes is that it’s a lot of work for not a lot of “meat”, like when you pick crabs. But we pushed through and enjoyed every bite.

Joni got The Grille prime cheeseburger with fries

I didn’t try Joni’s burger, but she said it was delicious. The sloppy sauce in the little squeeze bottle is such a great presentation.  I did try a french fry and they were hot and crisp and delicious. Perfectly cooked, exactly the way I like them.

I went with the steakhouse salad

This salad is outstanding. The steak is high quality, incredibly tender and flavorful.  Deviled eggs is a very unique twist for a salad, and provides a great presentation. I could literally eat a dozen deviled eggs in one sitting, so I savored every bite. Our server said the eggs were the same as the appetizer (which we briefly considered getting) except for the truffle-chive vinaigrette.

After we ate, we still had prosecco left so we paid our bill and moved inside to the bar to finish our drinks. As we sat and visited, a gentleman sat down next to Joni.  She will talk to anyone, so she struck up conversation when we saw the delicious food he ordered.  Come to find out he played football at OSU and his daughter will be an incoming freshman this fall! I went to the restroom, and by the time I got back she was trying to sell him on buying season tickets on the club level. We ended up spending another hour with him. Had we not needed to finish our drinks, we never would have met. What a small world!

Will I go back to Del Frisco’s Grille? No question.  The food was fantastic, the service was excellent, we now have a new friend who works just minutes away, and we really want to sit at the upstairs bar next time

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Green Door Public House, Dallas

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