Our Food Issue is still on the stands, but here’s some news since we went to press last week. And it concerns a Dallas icon and the new efforts of its former proprietors.
Snuffer’s on Lower Greenville was an institution for decades, venerated for its loaded cheese fries and decadent hamburgers. Then a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing early last year turned the restaurant, the name, and the other branches over to Firebird Restaurant Group, the same company that owns El Fenix and Meso Maya. The site of the original restaurant was bulldozed, and Firebird opened a new Snuffer’s on the same spot earlier four months ago.
But Pat Snuffer isn’t out of the restaurant game — though it appears the family may be downplaying the cheese fries. Pat and his son Mike Snuffer just announced plans to open Pat & Mike’s, a new restaurant concept at 18101 Preston Road in Far North Dallas (home of the now-closed Battuto Italian Kitchen, which I enjoyed), later this fall. And while they will have hamburgers on the menu, that won’t be the focus. “The last thing this town needs is another burger joint,” Pat said in a release. While there will be a few burgers available, the focus of the new place will be hand-crafted pizzas and Tex-Mex, as well as a full-service tequila program. And it will be open late, for those after-hours munchies.