Aaron Franklin and Tyson Cole Are Opening a Dallas Restaurant

Loro, the South Lamar Asian smokehouse from the Austin powerteam pitmaster Aaron Franklin and chef Tyson Cole, is expanding into Dallas. This second Loro will be found at 1812 North Haskell Street north of the Deep Ellum neighborhood sometime in the late summer of 2020.

This is the first time Franklin’s food will appear outside of the Austin area on a consistent basis. He has often ruled out expanding his own restaurant, Franklin Barbecue, so this is the next best thing for Dallas.

However, Cole isn’t new to Dallas. He and his company Hai Hospitality opened a location of their Japanese restaurant Uchi in 2015, followed by the comparatively casual upstairs restaurant Top Knot in 2016, which was changed to Uchiba in 2018.

Dallas’s Loro will feature the same sort of menu as the original Austin restaurant: Texas barbecue with Southeast Asian inflections, like the brisket served with chili gastrique and Thai herbs; smoked turkey breast with apricot chutney, and prime bavette with shishito salsa verde.

The space is being designed by Austin firm Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, which will create something looking like a Texas dance hall again, with a big dining room and large patio.

Cole first opened Uchi in 2003 in Austin, and expanded with Uchiko (2010), and locations of Uchi in Houston, the aforementioned Dallas restaurants, and Denver, with another to come in Miami. Franklin opened his barbecue spot in 2009 as a trailer and then as a restaurant in 2011. He’s also working on a breakfast taco and coffee trailer to come too. They teamed up to open Loro in 2018.

• All Coverage of Loro [EATX]