Chef Matt McCallister plans to open a 22-seat restaurant named River Sing in Dallas’ Expo Park in November 2026. McCallister has been out of the spotlight for several years. Here’s what to expect in his high-profile return.
Anja Schlein/The Dallas Morning News
“Everything in here, technically, you could eat,” said Dallas chef Matt McCallister, plucking bites of herbs and eating them as he walks through an urban garden attached to his new restaurant, River Sing, near Fair Park.
McCallister is almost ready to host dinner parties at his tiny, new restaurant — an unusual location in Expo Park where guests will use a code to enter a former car shop built in the 1920s. The 22-seat restaurant promises to be equal parts creative and peculiar. Anticipation is building beyond Dallas, and Food and Wine called River Sing one of the most exciting new restaurants to open in the United States this fall.
No pressure, right? McCallister, 45, is one of Dallas’ best chefs, the brain behind modern Design District restaurant FT33 and the quietly complex Homewood, both of which closed. The chef took a break from upscale restaurants in the past few years to work with Dallas group Local Favorite, which operates chains like Twisted Root, El Fenix and Snuffer’s.
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Michelin moved into Texas during that time, and McCallister’s absence from fine-dining kitchens in Dallas was noticeable. Nobody in North Texas can obsess over housemade miso and explain an adorable thimble-sized gourd called a cucamelon in the same sentence, all while dropping several F-bombs, quite like McCallister.
Diners will get an updated version of the chef locals enjoyed for years, starting when McCallister was a protégé of Texas chef Stephan Pyles. McCallister struggled with addiction earlier in his career, something he’s talked openly about, and he has been sober for years now. He said he has a new focus on the financial piece of the restaurant business. It’s great to see he remains fanatical about farmers, ranchers and culinary technique.
Actually, the word is “maniacal,” McCallister said.
River Sing occupies a former car shop on Exposition Avenue in Dallas. One side is a high-walled garden; the other is an intimate dining room centered around McCallister’s open kitchen.
Anja Schlein/The Dallas Morning News
McCallister’s style is New Texas cuisine, a new-gen riff on the movement started in D-FW by Pyles and Dean Fearing. McCallister’s calling card is he makes nearly everything on — and around — the plate. Bread is made in-house, as are the roasted pumpkin miso, apple cider vinegar and smoked pear butter. The flowers on each table might be picked from the garden outside.
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When River Sing opens in November, it will serve at least four courses and a fixed menu. Launching a tasting menu in the age of Michelin in Texas is so on-the-nose, and other Dallas chefs have tried it, looking for Michelin attention.
For McCallister, the timing may be coincidental.
“My whole f—ing career,” he said, “I wanted to open a small tasting restaurant.”
River Sing’s menu priced at $139 per person (not including drinks) keeps nightly sales consistent yet allows the chef team to change courses at a whim.
Customers will traipse past the plants before entering a lounge with a West Texas sunset on one wall. Next comes the preservation room, where housemade vinegars and misos are displayed in jars next to drying herbs. After that is a modest wine room.
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The action happens in the back, where more than half the room’s chairs will be situated around a 14-seat chef’s counter that puts McCallister center stage. The kitchen will also star Belal Kattan, who owns Dallas fine-dining pop-up Bazaar and was hired as River Sing’s sous chef; and Chris Morina, former Homewood sous, now McCallister’s chef de cuisine.
Kattan and McCallister co-hosted a dinner in June, which cemented their interest in working together. Kattan plans to pause Bazaar dinners in October so he can work at River Sing.
Early menus are, no surprise, still being tweaked. But we have a peek at the opening snack: a doughnut filled with bone marrow custard that melts while it fries. Each doughnut is finished with sweet potato jam and topped with black truffles. Sounds like an interesting way to start dinner in Texas in the fall.
Behind the scenes, the restaurant was financed by Matthew Ciccone, an investor who co-owns Tatsu, another tiny Dallas restaurant and one of the region’s Michelin-starred spots.
Ciccone said he was looking for another Texas chef to partner with — someone who could tell “a true Dallas story.” The Matts talked for “three to four years” before the project took off.
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“I really mean this,” Ciccone said of McCallister, “there’s nobody else in Dallas I’d want to do this project with.”
River Sing is expected to open at 820 Exposition Ave., Dallas, in November 2026. Dinner only, five days a week. Reservations not yet available.
Dining and Cooking