A venerable destination in the downtown Dallas area has closed: Dick’s Last Resort, the notoriously saucy restaurant and bar at 2211 Lamar St., has closed permanently, after 40 years.
According to a representative from the Nashville-based chain, the final day for the Dallas location was November 30.
“Business at that location had been declining, and they were facing an increase in rent, so they made a decision to close,” the representative said.
Dick’s Last Resort was founded right here in Dallas in 1985 as a winking, impudent good-time spot with good bar food and cold beer, at a time when leg warmers and mullets were the rage.
The concept was hatched by bon vivant “Buffalo George” Toomer and Richard “Dick” Chase, centered on a saga about a bad boy named Dick whose big-league plans had failed and who pivoted to open a laid-back bar full of attitude and dick jokes. The restaurant featured gruff staffers and a Southern-style menu in a rowdy roadhouse environment.
It became a huge success, with customers coming eagerly to be insulted, get pelted with napkins and straws, and wear paper hats with crude comments and insults written in a sharpie such as “I’ve nailed more wood than HGTV.”
Although the food took a backseat to the atmosphere, the menu — written on the wall — featured ribs, chicken, wings, and burgers, served casually in paper and buckets. In its heyday and for many years, it remained lodged on the TABC Top 10 list for beer sales in Dallas.
Originally located in Dallas’ West End, the restaurant relocated to its current location close to American Airlines Center in 2005.
Chase was ousted for embezzling by the financial backers, who went on to grow the concept into a national chain, with locations in Boston, Chicago, and London. There are currently a dozen locations, mostly across the southeast in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, as well as Las Vegas and a longtime location in San Antonio on the Riverwalk.
Dallas restaurateur Mike McRae, who currently owns restaurants such as Dodie’s Cajun Diner in Rockwall, Stan’s Blue Note, Table 13 in Addison, and McRae’s Bistro in East Dallas, worked for Dick’s for 23 years and owned the Dallas location for 12 years.
“I was hired as their general manager 18 months after it opened,” McRae says. “Richard Chase was kind of a hothead. He would fire people on the drop of a pin. We had a pink plastic flamingo with a light inside behind the bar, and he was adamant that the light be on all the time. He once fired a GM because the light was off.”
Dick’s was owned by Steven Schiff, a Dallas entrepreneur who owned the Dick’s Last Resort restaurant chain until he sold it in stages between 2008 and 2017.
McRae purchased the location in 2010, later joined by his partner Gabe Nicolella; they owned it for 12 years.