Garrett will offer a warm welcome again this week, as Caffe Lucca hosts its first dinners in one of Dallas\u2019 most notable dining districts, the bustling Knox area, home to a fleet of new buildings financed by billionaire Michael Dell. <\/p>\n
But what made Garrett, a first-time restaurateur, want to co-own Caffe Lucca after spending decades as an athlete and coach?<\/p>\n
Restaurant News<\/p>\n
By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI love hanging out at restaurants. Some of the best times of my life [have been] with my pals over a great plate of pasta,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Caffe Lucca is on Travis Street. It shares a space with Grange Hall, the retail store and floral shop that remains open in the same building.<\/p>\n Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n When Garrett wasn\u2019t calling games on NBC\u2019s Sunday Night Football, he was learning about Sicilian culinary history from Barsotti or picking patio chairs that would feel welcoming to people coming off the Katy Trail. He didn\u2019t watch Caffe Lucca come alive from the press box; he stood on the 50-yard line.<\/p>\n \u201cIt reminds me a lot of being a head coach,\u201d he said of opening a restaurant. \u201cYou deal with personnel. But also with,\u201d he pauses, \u201cawnings. And how much salt is in a dish. … The art. The wine.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt has been so fun to watch people who are really good at it,\u201d Garrett said. \u201cAnd Julian [Barsotti] is really good at it.\u201d <\/p>\n History of Sicily<\/p>\n The two met at Nonna, the Italian restaurant where Barsotti started his culinary career in Dallas. Barsotti now also owns Dallas restaurants Fachini<\/a>, Barsotti\u2019s<\/a>, Odelay<\/a> and others. <\/p>\n At Caffe Lucca, the history of Sicily is at the heart of every dish. Barsotti took inspiration from the Byzantine, Roman, Greek, French and Spanish people who influenced the food in Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n A plate of Carte di Musica e Crudite is a light, bright starter for the table at Caffe Lucca.<\/p>\n Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Garrett, ever the coach, called Barsotti \u201ca master\u201d of connecting a centuries-old Sicilian culinary story to this Dallas dining room, where bouquets of sunflowers and tomatoes on the vine spill out of a vase. Food as art is everywhere. <\/p>\n For fish, Caffe Lucca offers branzino, a rotating fish of the day and snapper (pictured), with the choice of four sauces.<\/p>\n Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Caffe Lucca might be a place to spot celebrities, but neither Garrett nor Barsotti seem to care too much about that. They want to open a neighborhood restaurant that offers a taste of Garrett\u2019s favorite place to visit. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery time we plan a trip,\u201d he said, \u201cI ask my wife, \u2018Are you sure you don\u2019t want to go to Italy?\u2019\u201d He\u2019s been at least 10 times. <\/p>\n What to order at Caffe Lucca<\/p>\n Many customers will start with a pretty crudite plate \u201cper la tavola,\u201d or for the table, with hummus, olive-anchovy tapenade, poblano muhammara and more for $22.<\/p>\n Barsotti hopes the four styles of arancini are a good next step. The Tradizione ($19) are crispy saffron risotto balls with ragu and provolone on the inside, while the Sicilian American ($17) are stuffed with crispy spaghettini, marinara and mozzarella.<\/p>\n Busiate is one of two pastas on Caffe Lucca’s menu. It’s an ancient pasta shape that the new Dallas restaurant serves with the choice of four sauces. Here, it’s served with pesto Trapanese, made up of cherry tomatoes, pecorino, Parmigiano, almonds, mint and basil.<\/p>\n Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Then, it\u2019s travelers\u2019 choice. Go for a spicy Moroccan lamb meatball sandwich ($23) or for a New Orleans-inspired chicken-avocado-capocollo club sandwich with artichoke-pepperoncini relish ($22). Wait, how\u2019d we get from Sicily to NOLA? Many Sicilians who came to America at the turn of the 20th century entered at the Port of New Orleans, Barsotti said.<\/p>\n Dinner might call for yogurt-marinated butter chicken ($38), which was added to Caffe Lucca\u2019s menu because Sicily was on the trade route between Europe and North Africa. Barsotti\u2019s version of garam masala \u2014 the warm spices typically used in butter chicken \u2014 include cumin, garlic and almonds.<\/p>\n The saffron rice, served with shrimp, peas and calabacita for $30, is a nod to Spanish and Sicilian traditions.<\/p>\n In one of the pages in his journal, Julian Barsotti sketched the many inspirations behind Caffe Lucca.<\/p>\n Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n But if customers need one dish to consider, it\u2019s the busiate, a pasta served with the choice of four sauces for $25 to $30. Each ringlet of pasta is wrapped around a thin rod, just like the earliest pasta makers did, dating back to the year 1,000, according to Barsotti\u2019s research. He is proud to remake this ancient pasta in a modern kitchen, and a blurb on the menu explains its origins, for those interested in a short history lesson.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t quite feel ocean breeze from the Mediterranean Sea here in landlocked Dallas. But Garrett and Barsotti hope Caffe Lucca\u2019s cheery interior stirs up sunny memories of long dinners over seafood and wine with friends or family.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Dallas, we don\u2019t have Lake Michigan, we don\u2019t have Central Park. We don\u2019t have a beach. The Katy Trail is it here. It\u2019s the center of gravity,” Barsotti said. \u201cAnd it couldn\u2019t be a more exciting place to express this vision.\u201d<\/p>\n Caffe Lucca is at 4445 Travis St., Dallas. Open seven days a week, dinner only for now. Lunch is expected to be added in April 2026. Reservations recommended, and they open on March 27, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019d think former Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett had opened a restaurant before. Sitting inside Caffe Lucca, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,113,104,103,1265,5468,1623,1622,354,5391],"class_list":["post-221563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-highland-park","tag-italian-food","tag-restaurant-news","tag-restaurant-openings","tag-restaurants","tag-uptown-dallas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Delilah,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774537828_382_TFURNIS6GFFS3H2BB5XSG4C7NA.jpg\")
![\"Caffe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IJ5A34CQ6BECPLKA2YT524CBEQ.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IGYLCC5HLNELVINFZMHZ5O6SFU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"For](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/HWPRPY4G3NCNBGAW5HKB3F2NVU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Busiate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ZAZGKATFZNGIHCHMIYAQGQDH2Q.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/BQR7WRDGTFHZVCLP42NA25LXMM.jpg\")
<\/p>\n