a 148-room Hampton by Hilton hotel<\/a>, as reported by Dallas Morning News real estate writer Nick Wooten.<\/p>\n![\"Here]()
<\/p>\n
Here lies several former Dallas restaurants at 3521 Oak Grove Ave. The vacant yellow home-turned-restaurant was bulldozed on June 2026 to make way for a hotel.<\/p>\n
Sarah Blaskovich\/Staff<\/p>\n
That piece of real estate is rich in Dallas food history. Here\u2019s a look at its last 40 years, as researched in\u00a0DMN archives.<\/p>\n
This old house<\/p>\n
Longtime property owner Mario Messina, now deceased, said he was sentimental about 3521 Oak Grove Ave. because of the unconventional story behind the old home. It was originally built in East Dallas and relocated to Uptown in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
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Restaurateur Jenni Messina, who owned a wine bistro called Jennivine a few streets over in Uptown, bought the house with her husband, Mario, when it was still located in East Dallas. It was scheduled to be demolished. They saved it and moved it to Uptown, where it would remain for decades.<\/p>\n
The Messinas added a 1,000-square-foot kitchen and a wraparound porch. The old home was cloaked in forest green and burgundy, The News\u2019 archives said, which \u201cturned the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jennivine\u2019s Culinary Centre\u00a0<\/p>\n
Messina named the old house Jennivine\u2019s Culinary Centre. Dallasites visited there for cooking classes, afternoon tea, private functions and wine tastings starting in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, it was also a chutney-making facility. \u201cBeing English and born in India, where chutneys originated, I\u2019ve always had jams and chutneys in the house,\u201d Messina told The News in 1988. She loved experimenting with them.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIs this woman crazy or just plain smart?\u201d The News asked in 1989 in a story about the British restaurateur \u201cbucking trends\u201d in Dallas. Jenni Messina told our restaurant critic Dallasites didn\u2019t need the convenience of the microwave dinners that had become so popular.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want to learn to cook from scratch,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Messina’s Restaurant and Culinary Centre<\/p>\n
In 1990, Jennivine\u2019s Culinary Centre got a new name, Messina’s Restaurant and Culinary Centre, when dinner was added. Classes continued for at least five years.<\/p>\n
Rooster<\/p>\n
By 1996, the little house on Oak Grove Road in Uptown had transformed into a Southern restaurant called Rooster. The menu included New Orleans-inspired jambalaya with blackened fish, biscuits, fried chicken, beef tenderloin with Jack Daniel\u2019s sauce, and some finer-dining bites like black truffle mousse p\u00e2t\u00e9 and pan-seared pieces of foie gras.<\/p>\n
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Restaurant reviews dove deep into the nuances of plantain-crusted snapper, rabbit boudin and fried frog legs but didn\u2019t mention the little old house much. Just that it had a \u201chomey\u201d interior with farmhouse prints of roosters and a \u201ccocka-a-doodle-doo\u201d red paint color.<\/p>\n
![\"Amanda]()
<\/p>\n
Amanda Tracy, co-owner of Rooster Restaurant holds entrees of mustard-lacquered salmon and grilled venison chops in this DMN file photo.<\/p>\n
Grace Saenz Dickson\/131313<\/p>\n
Guthrie\u2019s<\/p>\n
Next up, chef-owner William Guthrie opened a namesake restaurant with \u201cupscale, homespun\u201d food, The News noted in 2004. Smokers got their own entrance. A graffiti-ed patio gave the charming house an edge.<\/p>\n
Fish and chips were a common pick, made popular by Guthrie\u2019s first restaurant by the same name in downtown Dallas. But this second Guthrie\u2019s was fancier, with dishes like warm crab custard delighting our critic in 2004.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Manny\u2019s Uptown Tex-Mex Restaurante<\/p>\n
For the next 15 years, starting in 2005, the little yellow house became a Tex-Mex spot selling brisket tacos and chiles rellenos. Manny\u2019s was casual yet stylish \u2014 \u201cspiffy,\u201d one critic called it, \u201cwith imitations of Frida Kahlo paintings and bright Mexican pottery on the walls.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"From]()
<\/p>\n
Manny’s Tex-Mex was a casual, reliable restaurant in Uptown Dallas.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Manny’s Mexican Kitchen<\/p>\n
The patio was both a blessing and a curse, lovely on the right day and hot as heck on the wrong one. Regulars avoided it in the dead of summer. Or glugged frozen margs to try to stay cool.<\/p>\n
Remember the fountain? A few pieces of its rubble are still stacked on the empty lot.<\/p>\n
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Manny\u2019s is named for Dallas restaurateur Manny Rios, who is related to the team that started Mia’s and Mi Cocina, two other homegrown restaurants. After the success of the Uptown restaurant, Manny\u2019s expanded to other parts of Dallas-Fort Worth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The group is still pouring margaritas and serving enchiladas at Manny\u2019s restaurants in Far North Dallas, Lakewood, Heath and Sachse, but the Uptown Dallas restaurant is now but a memory.<\/p>\n
![\"Behind]()
<\/p>\n
Behind the former restaurant, remnants of the patio fountain at Manny\u2019s Uptown Tex-Mex Restaurante remain.<\/p>\n
Sarah Blaskovich\/Staff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manny’s Uptown Tex-Mex Restaurante in Uptown Dallas was open from 2005 to 2019. But the little yellow home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,88671,89729,88939,90037,89307,88946,88937],"class_list":["post-382326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-commercial-real-estate","tag-tp-east-dallas","tag-tp-historic-restaurants","tag-tp-residential-real-estate","tag-tp-restaurants","tag-tp-tex-mex","tag-tp-uptown-dallas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382326","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=382326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}