How Restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth Survived and Thrived During the Pandemic
As restaurants collapsed across the country in the past five years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the numbers of restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth quietly grew.
But how? It’s a “fascinating” phenomenon, as one Dallas restaurateur described it. And it’s proof that although thousands of eateries closed, thousands more were added between 2020 and 2025.
Dallas-Fort Worth — and Texas at-large — saw at least three tactics employed by determined business owners. There’s the innovative outsider, new to Texas and ready to bend the rules. There’s the influential insider, bolstered by investor money and knowledgeable about where to build. And there’s the stubborn survivor, ready to reinvent a restaurant or die trying.
The Innovative Outsider
California chef Phillip Frankland Lee opens restaurants in places others wouldn’t.
(Michael Hogue)
His first D-FW restaurant, Sushi by Scratch, popped up in an eighth-floor hotel room at The Adolphus in downtown Dallas. Customers take the elevator up, as if they were staying the night, ring a call button, and then enter a renovated hotel room with a sushi bar where a king-sized bed should be.
It’s wacky. It’s exclusive. It’s expensive — dinner costs $165 per person, not including drinks, tax or tip. And it’s also innovative.
“The days of spending millions of dollars opening restaurants? They’re dead,” Lee said.
He now owns more than two-dozen restaurants across the United States. Twelve of them are in Texas, where Lee and his wife relocated at the start of the pandemic.
Whereas Sushi by Scratch is fancy, Lee’s second restaurant, NADC Burger in Fort Worth, is not. It’s tucked inside a Fort Worth comedy club, and burgers are served in to-go wrappers even if you’re eating on-site.
Sushi by Scratch and NADC Burger have one important commonality: They’re tiny. People who can’t get a seat at these so-called “microrestaurants” want one.
“We have 26 restaurants — it sounds like a huge number,” Lee said. “But the biggest one has 10 seats. Some have none.”
Need a visual? He could fit all 26 of them inside a 300-seat restaurant. Most didn’t require a permit from the city because they’re in unconventional locations.
Sushi By Scratch is a restaurant tucked inside a hotel room at The Adolphus in Dallas.(Jason Janik / Special Contributor)
Lee’s goal is to open a whopping 75 more restaurants one day. Some might be in a broom closet. Or an office. A hallway? Stranger things have happened.
Unlike nearly all of his competitors, Lee will rarely — if ever — work with a landlord or sign a lease.
“You must differentiate,” Texas Restaurant Association President and CEO Emily Williams Knight told thousands of restaurateurs struggling to resuscitate their businesses in the five years since COVID hit. Experiences bring customers back, she said.
Lee makes it look like a cinch.
The Influential Insider
Dallas restaurateur Chas Martin saw opportunity where others didn’t.
(Michael Hogue
