Behind the green velvet curtains lies Dallas' next hideaway, Bakari Tub.
Restaurateur Julian Barsotti signed a lease on Lemon Avenue and near the Dallas North Tollway five years ago. This is a forever contract in terms of bar years. What's happened during the COVID-19 pandemic and up until now is Barsotti's obsession with building a small music venue and an Italian restaurant in one. And Jazz pays homage to his bar, Strictly Tabu, which served pizza at the same location in Highland Park for decades.
Barsotti's family feels a connection to the former bar. Barsotti's mother's catering company began cooking at that address in her late '90s after Strictly Tabu closed. Ten years later, Barsotti opened Nonna, an Italian restaurant in the same shopping center.
While Nonna is classy and reliable, Bakari Tabu is loud and wild. Floral wallpaper is black, orange and pink, and curved booths open to a secret stage that folds into the wall, allowing for more dinner seating before live music starts at 9pm on weekends. .
Forget about the busy street outside or the big grocery store nearby. Bacari Tabu is a unique world where you and your 75 friends will feel like you have stepped onto a movie set.
“For me, it feels like boogie nights Here it is,” Barsotti said, as a funk song played from the speakers. The best table is in the back corner, where the master of the room can eat and drink, listen to music and hide from what is on the other side of the velvet curtain.
It's worth noting that this modern version of Strictly Tabu doesn't have an upstairs area like the original bar. There's also pizza, which is part of the former bar's DNA and now includes white clam pie, sausage and onion pizza, and pepperoni with Calabrian chiles, to name three.
The rest of the menu is a feast of Barsotti and Executive Chef Garrett Ferguson's favorite bar dishes.
Some dishes are cooked on a binchotan grill that Dallas chef Teiichi Sakurai purchased for Barsotti in Japan. please stay by my side. All of the Italian dishes in that section of Bacari Tabu's menu are cooked over charcoal, which creates smoke. In the clam dish, the spigarello and broccolini are scented with binchotan charcoal smoke and served in brodetto (stew) with a small penne he pasta.
Other grilled dishes include quail scarpariello, spicy calamari, and Gulf shrimp.
All dishes are shareable. Appetizers include fried blue point oysters; Gnocchi with brown butter, sage and palm. Spaghetti with red pesto inspired by a dish from Barsotti's closed restaurant, Sprezza.
For hearty dishes, we offer baked pasta such as lasanet with white bolognese or cappelletti with crumbled spicy meatballs and mozzarella.
If you still don't think it's clear, I recommend making reservations for dinner and then staying while listening to some music. The owners want risotto with Venetian ragu to be the star of the menu.
“Risotto is sacred,” says Barsotti. Many restaurant chefs cook half their risotto in advance to speed up cooking time for busy dinner service, but not at Bacari Tabu. “Other restaurants turned me down.” [Nonna, Fachini and Barsotti’s] Because I want to do it the right way. ”
Risotto orders require at least 25 minutes of additional time, and servers prefer that the entire table order risotto. But anyway, you're going to stay for a while, right?
Bacari Tabu is located at 4113 Lomo Alto Drive, Dallas. Opened on December 18, 2023. Live music starts around 9pm on weekends and continues until around 12:30am.Upcoming acts will be listed in Bakaritab.com. Closed on Sundays. It can be purchased. Reservations recommended.
