“Remember Slider and Blues?” That’s what people of a certain age — mine — have said over the past month, ever since the Slider and Blues sign went up on Hillcrest Avenue in University Park, across the street from Southern Methodist University.
Slider and Blues was a kid-friendly pizza and wings restaurant with several locations in North Texas in the 1990s and 2000s, and in 2022, Hudson House CEO Hunter Pond told The Dallas Morning News he had purchased the federal trademark and would be revamping the brand in University Park.
His restaurant company Vandelay Hospitality Group has ambitions to open at least five new concepts nearby in addition to the already-open D.L. Mack’s and East Hampton Sandwich Co. The company is involved in an employment lawsuit in which a previous employee says he was wrongfully terminated.
Slider and Blues opened June 3. It’s bursting with nostalgia, with baseball cards pasted up on the bathroom walls and wood paneling in the restaurant showing off Sports Illustrated covers and sports jerseys.
Slider and Blues is Vandelay’s seventh restaurant concept in a portfolio that includes high-end steak spot Drake’s, American restaurant Hudson House, Lucky’s Hot Chicken, newer eatery Brentwood and others. The company plans to open Anchor Fishbar, described online as a “vintage yacht club,” on Knox Street and at Preston-Royal, both in Dallas, in 2023.
Pond told The News in 2022 that he used to ride bikes to Snider Plaza with friends when he was in kindergarten. He liked the idea of opening his favorite restaurant arcade near his neighborhood shopping center, he told us back then.
The menu at Slider and Blues includes smashburgers, sliders, thin-crust pizzas and milkshakes, and games like Skee-Ball, Pop-A-Shot and air hockey. The restaurant bar menu includes frozen margaritas.
Slider and Blues is at 6309 Hillcrest Ave., Dallas. It opened June 3.
