Red Dog Right, new Southlake Sports Bar, Set to Open
Jimmy Fell, General Manager
Red Dog Right, an upscale, family-friendly sports bar in Southlake, opens this week. (The name refers to the audible signal used by the high school football team.) I took a sneak preview last week, and if you’re a fan of Whiskey Cake in Plano and the Ranch in Las Colinas, you’re going to like Red Dog Right.
Red Dog is the creation of Front Burner Restaurants (Jack Gibbons, Randy DeWitt and a few partners), which also owns Whiskey Cake, Ranch in Las Colinas, Twin Peeks and Ojos Locos, a Mexican sports bar that opened its third location–in Ft.Worth’s Sundance Square–a week before the Super Bowl.
As with the other concepts, the food at Red Dog Right is all housemade, from-scratch cooking. Chef John Franke, who oversees the kitchens at all Front Burner restaurants, designed the Red Dog menu, a blend of pizzas, burgers, wings, sandwiches, soups, salads and finger food. Franke’s soft pretzels get top biling here–a yeasty bread twist boiled than baked in the traditional German manner, then topped with course salt and sided with queso blanco. Wings get the Franke treatment, too: orange sesame, Coca-Cola bacon bbq, pineapple huli huli join traditionals like buffalo bleu and garlic lemon pepper. You can sugar up the kids on caramel corn (“just like at the ballgame, with roasted peanuts,” reads the menu) while you seriptitiously liquor up the in-laws with an adult s’mores (whipped cream flavored vodka and Frangelica).
Naturally, Red Dog serves a lot of beer; nearly two dozen selections are on tap.
The space is dazzling–dark woods floors, big picture windows, three dozen 50- and 65-inch hi def tvs hanging from exposed rafter beams, buttery leather booth seating. A set of original blue and silver metal seats salvaged from Texas Stadium soldier each side of the front door. A big bar stands right up front, sporting two dozen retro-style beer taps in avocado green, two large walls of windows that open onto patio seating, and wrap-around seating. The space is bright and airy. You’d never guess Red Dog inhabits an old Red Lobster restaurant.
Red Dog Right opens Thursday, February 17.
- Southlake, TX, 76092
- (817) 421-5795
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