A few days after we left 2020 in the dust, two farms in North Texas sprinkled their soil with tomato seeds. In Argyle, Misty Moon Farms’ Ross DeOtte seasoned the tilled dirt with heirloom seeds in the diffuse light of his 1,500-square-foot greenhouse.
Marylinda Jones and her husband Steve Jones, owners of Our Farmlet in Collin County, did the same. Marylinda likens heirloom seeds to vintage cars. If the seeds predate the commercial production of tomatoes, if they span back, say, five decades, then they’re really worth something. In January, she dropped her seeds into beds raised off the ground. She then insulated the tomato plants with water walls, a sort of “air mattress” to shelter them during the monstrous February freeze.
Now, the tomatoes Misty Moon Farms and Our Farmlet are ready. In DeOtte’s greenhouse, cherry tomatoes plump up carnival red, yellow and black. Misty Moon’s heirlooms, the grandpappy seeds from Napa, Calif., have grown into their final form: Solar Flares. They are stunning, fresh and sweet tomatoes that appear painted: They have streaks of red sunbursts and wild pink-orange churnings like colors you’d see swirling in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
“The sweetness is the number one thing,” DeOtte says. It’s what separates his tomatoes from the stuff you’d find at chain stores. “It’s indicative of the nutrition in the produce. They’re not some watery, mushy thing.”
For years, Misty Moon has been nurturing the soil with life — time spent sparking microbial things, bacteria and fungi, into the dirt to impart into the nightshades. Texas tomatoes, it turns out, party pretty hard in the soil.
As Marylinda says: Tomato plants extend their roots into every part of the ground that will open to them.
“Tomatoes are fairly promiscuous,” she says. “They’re happy to be pollinated by anyone.”
Months after the seeds speckled the dirt and survived blizzard and bog, Jeffrey Bednar of Profound Foods in Lucas built the perfect bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. As a farmer himself who built a local food hub to network with other local farms, he has the best goods to work with.
Bednar’s BLT is the ultimate expression of Texas: He built one version with Empire Baking Company white bread, bacon from Blackland Prairie piggies, and microgreens and Romaine lettuce from his own farm. In other versions, he glows it up with an everything-seasoned bagel from Lenore’s, if it’s that kind of day. Maybe a fried egg draped on it from Cedar Ridge’s hens.
The BLT is the Rembrandt of sandwiches, rich-applied oils of darkness and golden light, salt and breezy-sweet, host to the eternal chiaroscuro of pepper and mayo. It’s one of the best sandwiches in the world for which to pull out all of the stops: A short list of ingredients means you can rock the heavens with tomatoes and godly bacon. Some add avocado. Others top with grilled chicken, and basil goes into the mayo for a few.
Farmlet’s Marylinda’s home BLT is heartachingly simple: “Mine starts with really good sourdough bread, really good tomatoes, and mayo.”
A casual Google search will detail how popular the sandwich has been since the mid-1990s. Why? There’s something about a thick-sliced tomato, laid over good mayo, cracked with pepper and salt, that could end an intergalactic war.
So how do you make the ultimate bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich happen in Dallas if you’re not growing heirlooms yourself? The truth is that the most memory-stirring BLT is probably the one you make at home. Maybe you have bread from Kuluntu Bakery in Oak Cliff, in-house bacon from Brown Bag Provisions, and Hellman’s mayonnaise? That’s a good start. This summer, an order from Profound Foods can get you Misty Moon Farms’ cherry tomatoes at your doorstep (the heirlooms are sold in smaller batches at farmer’s markets), as well as multiple bread and bacon options.
But if you want to have a sandwich made for you, Dallas has options that are just as good as your home version:
The Deli and Diner BLT
Magic is imbued into the griddle at Maple and Motor. Bacon hisses and pops like a vinyl LP, thick-cut and pressed until it’s extra crispy. Toasty bread, a generous layer of mayonnaise, and good tomatoes.
Goodfriend Package’s BLT shines. They’ve constructed each layer with precision — it’s layered from outside-in with bacon (bread-bacon-tomato-lettuce-bacon-mayo-bread). This build makes for a cool, clean eating experience. You get salty crisp, then the rainy burst of tomato and lettuce, then that tang of good mayo.
Sometimes you don’t want to leave the car: For some couch-cushion change, Keller’s Drive-In will drop you a triple-napkin BLT, featuring old-school bread that gets crunchy with that unearthly buttery sheen, with bacon and store-bought lettuce and tomato. There are zero frills to be found. Dairy-Ette, East Dallas’s drive-in legend, will give you the same experience and an icy mug of root beer to boot.
A frosty bottle of black cherry soda, a bag of chips, and a BLT at New York Sub is another misty spritz of nostalgia. Get a BLT, a booth, a homemade cookie, and you’ll be in pure heaven.
The Going-Out BLT
Haywire (Uptown and Plano’s Legacy Food Hall) features the heirloom tomatoes from Misty Moon Farms: They’ve pressed together shards of arugula, sharp-pickled red onion, garlic aioli, and pepper jack cheese.
The brunch-time BLT has been on the menu at Nova, Oak Cliff’s stellar bar, for at least a decade. A slice of brioche is loaded with smoked bacon, a cooling ranch dressing that’s speckled with chopped dill, and a crisp spring mix. The kicker is a drizzle of honey.
The “Nizbit” at Brown Bag Provisions employs some mad science: chef and co-owner Brent Gilewicz has fused a grilled cheese to a BLT. An old-fashioned beefsteak tomato meets kewpie mayo, smoked bacon, and gem lettuce. Dressing the veggies lets the sandwich shine: Gilewicz gives it a splash of Texas olive oil, brightened with lots of lemon, sea salt, and lip-smacking shio koji (a sweet-sour Japanese-style marinade).
