In a New York Times list of the United States’ “50 most vibrant and delicious restaurants in 2021,″ one Dallas-area restaurant made the cut.
Take a trip to the Dallas suburbs, the NYT says, to Farmers Branch restaurant Roots Southern Table. It comes from longtime Dallas chef and Top Chef contestant Tiffany Derry.
The newspaper is right: Roots Southern Table is one of the best restaurants in North Texas to get gumbo. And it’s a beautiful take on how Derry sees Southern food, which she calls a “rich” and “diverse” genre that’s so much more than mac and cheese and fried chicken, she told The Dallas Morning News before the restaurant opened in June 2021.
Derry’s food “speaks in loud exclamations,” the NYT story notes. The cornbread with smoked butter is like “a warm embrace”; the duck-fat fried potatoes are “a bear hug.”
The four other Texas restaurants on the list are Birdie’s, a neighborhood wine bar in Austin; Blood Bros. BBQ, a smoked-meat house playing with Asian flavors, outside of Houston; and two taco shops: Fish Lonja in San Antonio and Sylvia’s in Brownsville.
Roots Southern Table is at 13050 Bee St., Farmers Branch. Dinner only. Closed Mondays. Given the NYT praise, you should probably make a reservation.
Correction at 12:15 p.m. Oct. 13, 2021: This story previously listed four restaurants in Texas on the list. There are five! Sorry for missing you the first time, Fish Lonja.
