The United States’ first Dick’s Last Resort, an irreverent restaurant that opened in 1985 in Dallas, has closed.
For 40 years, the restaurant’s sassy servers slung drinks and bar food in Dallas’ West End. The purposefully rude service — meant as a joke, for those who can take one — made it one of the few places in town where the customer was almost never right. Dick’s most iconic feature is its hats, scrawled on by servers and handed out, with slogans like Future Teen Mom, Football Team Booty Call and other insults, as shown on the Dick’s Dallas Instagram page.
More recently, Dick’s ran a “big meat challenge” for $79.99, where customers were dared to eat two large steaks, “Dick’s huge 12-inch weiner,” a Macho Nacho appetizer, salad, two sides of cheddar mashed potatoes and two orders of broccoli in an hour.
“If you die in the process,” reads the website, you still pay. (If not? Dinner’s free.)
Restaurant News
Miami Heat fans were in for a surprise at Dick’s Last Resort, a restaurant a few blocks from the American Airlines Center, when a 2011 sign suggested they pay double.
Star-Telegram/Paul Moseley
CultureMap reported the news first of this longtime Dallas restaurant’s closure.
Dick’s occupied an area on Dallas’ Lamar Street considered sordid by some, as Dallas’ first Hooters restaurant opened around the corner in 1989. Hooters just reopened after a fire.
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We want to know: What will they do with all the stuff on the walls at Dick’s Last Resort in Dallas?
NAN COULTER / 111209
It isn’t known yet what will become of the nearly 5,000-square-foot restaurant space near the American Airlines Center and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. According to CultureMap, the restaurant closed because sales in Dallas were declining and rent was expected to go up.
The company grew across the United States for decades, though only one remains in Texas, in San Antonio.
Other Dick’s Last Resort restaurants exist today in Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Indiana and Nevada.
It’s goodbye to “a true embarrassment to the West End District,” as The Dallas Morning News said of Dick’s in its inaugural year. The narrative softened a little by 1990: Dick’s became “that West End pocket of human curiosities.”
Dick’s Last Resort was at 2211 N. Lamar St., Dallas.