Rooftop restaurant at RH on Knox Street is the new, fashionable place to eat in Dallas

Dining inside RH Rooftop Restaurant in Dallas is like having lunch inside the city’s fanciest greenhouse.

When the sun peeks out from behind a cloud, the glassed-in restaurant fills with bright light, almost as if it’s time to wear sunglasses indoors. Here, that would really work.

RH Rooftop Restaurant is a fashion-forward eatery on the top floor of the new RH retail store on Knox Street. What was once Restoration Hardware is long gone, replaced with a posh, three-story new build called RH.

Some shoppers might wander upstairs, hungry after sitting on fluffy white couches and sifting through neutral swatches for area rugs. Others will make it a destination, making a beeline up two flights of stairs adorned with dozens of gold mirrors.

Whereas other upscale retail stores do have restaurants inside, RH’s staff says their brunch, lunch and dinner spot is more intentional. The colors and textures from the two floors below run through the restaurant, and the patio furniture on the terrace models its chic outdoor options — and it’s all for sale. (In fact, there’s no eating out there.)

RH chairman and CEO Gary Friedman describes the intention behind the look and feel of the new building like this: “Most retail stores are archaic, windowless boxes that lack any sense of humanity. There’s no fresh air or natural light, plants die in most retail stores, and I’m sure that’s not a good environment for humans, either. What we’ve created here is an inspiring and immersive experience that blurs the lines between residential and retail, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality.”

It’s easy to feel important inside this place.

Many RH diners will start with the $15 bellini, one of the restaurant’s signatures. Or — and this is the better answer — they should start on the third floor, grab a bellini, then walk back downstairs to shop. Drinking and shopping is allowed, but stick to just one so you don’t spill on the pristine couches.

For lunch or dinner, RH guests could spring for the prosciutto and délice board served with warm baguette and strawberry preserves. It’s $43, but you just walked through a retail store that looks like a European mansion, so you’re likely not here for a budget meal.

Another appetizer, the burrata with roasted peppers for $23, is just as good.

Salads are beautifully prepared and are bound to be popular. The gem lettuce salad comes with radish and feta cheese and has slices of avocado hiding in each leaf. It comes lightly tossed in zingy buttermilk dressing.

Of course, RH has a burger. But if you’re in a celebratory mood, the lobster roll ($30) fits the room better. Chefs are generous with luscious lumps of red lobster stuffed into a buttered roll.

Friedman recommends the shaved ribeye on charred garlic bread. He loves it: It “just might be the best sandwich on the planet,” he says in a statement.

RH Rooftop Restaurant in Dallas

11 images

View Gallery

On pleasant days, the staff can open the restaurant’s doors that face Knox Street from on high, bringing this already green space into the outdoors. But when the doors are closed, the restaurant feels like a bit of a secret: You’re on one of Dallas’ most fashionable streets, inside a 70,000-square-foot palace, but nobody can see you unless you peek over the railing, three stories above the noise.

It’s the only RH restaurant in Texas. It joins about 10 RH restaurants across the country, starting with the first one in Chicago in 2015 and the company’s first rooftop restaurant in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2017.

RH Rooftop Restaurant is on the third floor of RH at 3133 Knox St., Dallas. It opens May 7.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.