Neighborhood restaurant BarNone opens Dec. 4 in East Dallas, on the same corner as homegrown Dallas spots El Vecino Tex-Mex, Le Caveau wine store and The Green Spot gas station and taco shop.
Co-owners Todd Dickerson and Jennifer Rohde Dickerson have been dreaming of opening a neighborhood bar near their Forest Hills home since they were married in 2009. For years, Todd Dickerson has been perfecting dozens of recipes — and testing out cocktails on his wife and their neighbors — and BarNone’s final menu is an ode to their favorite dishes: “Stuff I can’t find in Dallas,” he says.
The menu is an eclectic list of bar bites, sandwiches and hearty plates. Items include East Coast dishes like clams casino, cioppino and Sunday gravy. That last dish comes with a story: Decades ago, Dickerson ate the last bites of leftover Sunday gravy that his fraternity brother’s mom made. He’s been trying to figure out the recipe ever since.
“I begged them for the recipe and they wouldn’t give it to me,” Dickerson says. “So I spent the next 25 years trying to recreate it.”
(For Texans who don’t know, this gravy is red tomato sauce poured over rigatoni and served with meatballs, sausage and cheesy polenta crisps.)
The heart of BarNone’s menu, however, is sandwiches.
“Sandwiches are man’s greatest food,” Dickerson says. “Sandwiches are easy and casual, and that’s what I want this place to be.”
Notably, BarNone will grind its burgers to order, which is a significant effort, in part because it requires that the grinder — and the chef — are inside the walk-in cooler. Dickerson was managing partner at Angry Dog for more than 20 years, a Deep Ellum restaurant known for its burgers.
But Dickerson gives credit to Houston’s for the idea.
“Owning Angry Dog for 22 years and winning best burger six or seven times, I thought we were only second best to Houston’s,” he says. “And they grind their own burgers.”
The restaurant pays homage to several other local restaurants that the family loves. The Front Porch cocktail is a watermelon vodka and elderflower liqueur drink with strawberry puree and lemon juice — just like the one at The Porch on Henderson Avenue. The Dickersons also say the design of the restaurant, with a long, comfortable bar on one side, booths on the other, took inspiration from The Porch.
Customers will be encouraged to dine at the bar but are required to socially distance.
“It’s more fun to eat in a bar than drink in a restaurant,” Dickerson says — a quote that’s also on the menu. That approach has been a guiding light since they started thinking about opening a restaurant some 10 years ago.
Beyond his work at Angry Dog, Dickerson was also one of the founders of Dallas Grilled Cheese, though he sold his interest in both restaurants in 2016. Rohde Dickerson and her family have operated a food distribution company named Bud’s Salads in Deep Ellum since 2001. Rohde Dickerson’s parents Karen and Jack Rohde are also co-owners of BarNone.
The family hired chef Michael Schueler, a fine-dining chef who formerly worked at Bob’s Steak & Chop House in downtown Dallas, the now-shuttered Roy’s Restaurant in Plano, and at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas.
The pandemic messed with their plans to open BarNone in mid-2020. It also has resulted in some costly upgrades to the renovated space, including a $30,000 air filtration system. The couple says they’re just glad to be working in restaurants again.
“Our philosophy right now is to baby-step everything,” Dickerson says. “We don’t have as a large a staff as I’d like, but we have a great staff. It’s really just taking one day at a time.”
BarNone is at 718 N. Buckner Blvd., Dallas. Takeout will be available starting Dec. 4, on opening day. The patio is not open yet. Delivery is expected to come soon. Dinner only, for now.
