Every Wednesday beginning at 1 p.m., Mark Murrell, a judge in Dallas Municipal Court and a pastor at Victory Baptist Church, hears cases involving alleged code violations. Some involve high weeds; some, standing water; some, derelict properties.
And some cases involve restaurants the city alleges are really bars in disguise. And by some cases, I mean a lot of cases. Dozens, best I can tell after talking to attorneys, consultants and venue owners. Piling up like dirty dishes.
That’s how two managers from Más Chingón Cantina on West Davis Street ended up in Murrell’s court Wednesday for brief pre-trial hearings. Because, beginning on June 11, they were cited at least three times for violating the certificate of occupancy that allows it to operate as an eatery.
By all accounts, 12 people showed up to the Bishop Arts venue late that night from the Dallas Fire Marshal’s Office, the Dallas Police Department’s Vice Unit, Code Compliance and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. And they wrote a ticket after seeing two people dancing next to a table.
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That turned into a very legally mumbo-jumbo’d complaint alleging that the managers “unlawfully and knowingly” violated the certificate of occupancy that lets them run a restaurant by turning the place into a bar, a violation of Dallas City Code.
Más Chingón, which opens at 11 a.m. and has an all-day menu and a brunch menu and a late-night menu, gets pretty good reviews, especially for the tacos and aguachiles. Four stars, according to more than 300 Google reviews. A lot of fans. Just not at Dallas City Hall.
I called the co-owner of Más Chingón, Jesse Botello, but he didn’t want to talk about any of this. He said only that he wants to do the right thing, “trying to work with the city.”
Botello wasn’t alone in declining an interview. Other venue owners also tangling with city attorneys didn’t want to talk on the record. That’s understandable. Because this is their livelihood. And, as one owner told me, they’re worried about further retaliation by a city they fear is looking for any excuse to put them out of business.
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“City Hall is making everyone doubt their ability just to keep their businesses open, ones in which they’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more,” said attorney Robert Miklos, the former state representative who once worked as an attorney for the city.
Miklos represents more than a dozen venues wrestling with the city, and most of his clients would only talk on background. But the attorney confirmed what I’ve been hearing for weeks, from venue owners all over town, from Oak Cliff to East Dallas.
LadyLove Lounge & Sound owner David Grover had a question for Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert at the Halloween 2025 media event announcing the Hospitality and Nightlife Task Force. It was held at Revelers Hall, around the corner from Grover’s venue.
Staff photo/Dallas Morning News
The stories all contain the same echo: Long after dark-thirty, one or two or a dozen folks from code and other departments will show up unannounced to see if a restaurant’s really serving food to the late-night crowd. And if they see anything suspicious — like, say, a DJ or more drinks than food on the table or two people dancing by a table — they’ll issue a citation to the manager on duty, who then has to hire an attorney and go to muni court.
The tickets aren’t cheap — $2,000 at most if a defendant’s found guilty. And just getting three citations can lead to a place being branded a habitual nuisance.
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“There’s a disconnect between code compliance, the city and the people of Dallas,” said David Grover, co-owner of LadyLove Lounge & Sound and Spinster Records, both in Bishop Arts.
LadyLove’s been cited repeatedly in recent months — first for operating over capacity, most recently for being a bar rather than a kitchen, though just a few months ago the Dallas Observer included LadyLove on its list of the “10 Most Underrated Restaurants in Dallas,” in part because of a late-night menu that includes a pork-belly banh mi that takes three days to prepare.
“It just seems like instead of checking in with a couple of bad operators, they’re taking a sledgehammer to the whole city, which is unfortunate,” Grover said. “And the risk is what they’re about to lose. It’s harder to come back if they scare off all the operators who want to try new things.”
Everyone says the same thing: This all started within the last few months — sometime after Assistant City Manager Robin Bentley issued a lengthy memo in May to the City Council titled “Updates on Nighttime Entertainment Enforcement” in advance of a council committee meeting. Bentley’s in charge of economic development. Which appears to be the opposite of what’s been happening here.
Her memo basically reiterated the longstanding language in the Dallas City Code, which, go figure, defines a restaurant as “an establishment principally for the sale and consumption of food” and a bar, lounge or tavern as a place that “derives 75 percent or more of gross revenue on a quarterly basis from alcohol sales or service for on-premises consumption.”
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Bishop Arts seems to be favorite target of code enforcers out writing tickets for venues that say they’re restaurants but the city insists are really bars that serve food.
Staff photo/Dallas Morning News
Bentley wrote that “a cross-departmental team has been evaluating ways to better support the City’s enforcement teams.” That became necessary, she said, after that team “identified multiple establishments with restaurant certificates of occupancy that operate as bar, lounge, or tavern uses, dance halls, or other entertainment-oriented operations inconsistent with the approved certificate of occupancy.”
Miklos and others told me that rather than the city sitting down with venue owners to discuss their menus and booze sales and figure out how to hit the right math, they’re just getting cited. Again and again and again. Being treated like bad actors rather than revenue generators for a city that keeps claiming it’s so broke it has to move out of the family home.
Just using the word enforcement rather than, say, education is problematic enough. Especially when it appears enforcement is not exacted equally.
“None of my guys are being told, ‘You’re doing this wrong and that wrong and you should be doing this instead,’” Miklos said. “None of it makes sense. There’s no consistency. It’s all over the place, subject to the whims of a particular code enforcement officer and community prosecutor. Some people are hit and some are not for the exact same things. Every restaurant in town that serves alcohol is at risk if a code enforcement person in a bad mood walks in that night.”
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I asked the City Attorney’s Office what led to the recent crackdown and how the Office of Community Prosecution went from chasing drug houses to sending code officers to eateries where there’s drinkery and vice-versa. To which Jill Haning, the deputy chief of the litigation division, responded by informing me that community prosecutors are “responsible for ensuring compliance with the city’s zoning regulations.” She said that businesses with restaurant COs “are expected to primarily sell and serve food,” and that those who “wish to operate differently have a path to compliance by obtaining the appropriate certificate of occupancy, which may require obtaining a specific use permit or zoning change.”
The Dallas City Hall that guest-starred in RoboCop remains the most accurate depiction of the building (or, what happens inside it, anyway) all these decades later.
Orion Pictures Corp.
A few operators told me they’d reached out to attorney Abel Mulugheta, a government affairs consultant who represents the Greater Dallas Chapter of the Texas Restaurant Association. He told me more than 30 owners have contacted him in recent months — those who’ve been cited and those who worry they’re next.
“It’s absolutely subjective,” Mulugheta said. “They lick their index finger and put it in the air. What may be a restaurant to you may be a bar to another person may be a nightclub to another person may be a restaurant to another person. That is the crux of the issue. We’ve been fighting for objective standards, predictable standards, rules that are consistent throughout the game.”
Grover asked me a question before we hung up Wednesday.
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“Dallas says it’s business-friendly, right?” he said. Sure, I said. “I just wonder: Is it small-business-friendly or just big-business-friendly?”
Which we should all ponder over a stiff drink. With, of course, something to eat.