Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House

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Stackhouse Randy Kienast is a successful home builder. One of his best friends is Ben Spies, a world-class MotoGP rider. You’d think the twosome would be happy to spend their spare time knocking back a few beers and talking about guy stuff like crashing a motorcycle at 190 mph (which Spies has done) or installing a new shower pan. But that would be too easy. So Kienast found a rickety one-story house built in 1925, and together they turned it into Stackhouse, a gourmet-ish burger bar on Gaston, near Baylor Hospital. Thankfully they had the sense to hire someone who knows something about cooking meat, James Rose, the former chef at Bob’s Steak & Chop House on Lemmon Avenue. The people of the surrounding neighborhood are grateful to have a new place to hang. They lost the 47-year-old Metro Diner a year ago, and Stackhouse seems to have picked up Metro’s customer base. At lunch, the dining rooms and patios swell with hospital staffers and construction workers. In the evening, couples and families meet for drinks and dinner. Later, the tattooed Deep Ellum crowd stops in for buckets of beer. The menu is straight down the middle: burgers, sandwiches, salads, sides, and desserts. The meat patties are 6 ounces, and you can order a single or a double and customize your burger from an extensive list of items such as avocado, grilled onions or mushrooms (or both), chili, and fried egg. We ordered one “pink” with smoked Gouda, and it was delivered “done,” but the hot cheese added the necessary moistness. Another burger we ordered “done” with bacon, grilled onions, and cheddar cheese, and even though it was “pink” we fought over the last bite. Rose also puts together a nice Cuban sandwich by pressing Canadian bacon, ham, Swiss, thinly sliced pickle, and mustard between two pieces of a brioche-style hoagie roll. There is a wonderful rush from the horseradish Rose adds to his house-made mustard. Onion rings are thin, concentric circles of sweet onion gently battered and fried. They are almost too thin, a problem I remedied by consolidating a fistful and stuffing it into my mouth. Ugly approach but same effect. The house-made potato chips are thin and perfectly salty-crispy. They are a must for beer drinkers. A warm chocolate chip walnut brownie served with two scoops of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream and chocolate butter nut sauce is a must for chocolate freaks.The upstairs patio is a great place to sit and shoot the breeze as you watch the sun set behind the Dallas skyline. If Spies or Kienast happens to be in the house, you can talk motorcycles with the former or shower pans with the latter. They can’t quit their day jobs yet: Stackhouse is within spittin’ distance of Adair’s, Twisted Root, and the Angry Dog. Liberty BurgerThree cheers for Mariel Street for breathing new life into the dull Forestwood Shopping Center at the corner of Inwood and Forest. She resuscitated the worn-out space that once housed Marshall’s Barbecue and Roma’s Italian and created a vibrant, gourmet burger joint with “tree-free” compostable packaging and a reduce-reuse-recycle state of mind. Mariel is the daughter of Dallas veteran restaurateur Gene Street, a man who has tried to chicken-fry every animal on earth. But Ms. Street’s chicken-fried burger is better than anything I’ve ever tasted in a Gene Street restaurant. It’s thick and juicy, and the batter doesn’t drip grease, so the shiny buns remain relatively firm. The menu offers more than a dozen options, ranging from bison to beef to lamb to turkey. Vegetarians will be pleased with the Woodstock. The patty is made from chopped vegetables, chickpeas, and grains, and it’s topped with Swiss cheese, avocado, and tomato, all served on a wheat bun spread with basil garlic aioli. After multiple visits, two beef burgers stood out, both made with ground brisket, chuck, and tenderloin: The Napa, with gorgonzola cheese, arugula, tomatoes, onion, and big chunks of green olives; and The Nooner, a messy (in a good way) concoction of American cheese, applewood-smoked bacon, ham, and hash browns covered with a fried egg. I can’t blame the bread for breaking down on this wobbly yet delectable creation. Side dishes include fresh-cut sweet potato fries ($2.50) that are thick and salty. Regular fries are the skinny variety. I’m not a fan of skinny fries anywhere. It doesn’t matter if they are fresh or frozen; they get cold and mushy too fast. However, I am a fan of large, thick-cut onion rings, and Ms. Street puts out excellent battered, peppered rings fit for a high-end steakhouse. Except she charges only $4. Liberty Burger has been a hit since it opened in early November. The lines at lunch snake out the door, and the crowds at night are an interesting mix of well-dressed Preston Hollow families, older couples, and kids in pajamas. The beverage list takes care of parents and children. The shakes, made with a vanilla custard base, feature the basic chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, but I recommend one of the more sophisticated blends such as the caramel and sea salt or the Nutella and graham cracker. If you need something stiffer, Ms. Street offers beer, wine, frozen margaritas, and a small but stately stock of spirits.=-=I will warn you: when crowded, the place can be a bit frenetic. The order-at-the-counter-and-seat-yourself concept with a touch of table service creates a whirling pattern of patrons trying to fill their own drinks while runners with plates of food scout for table markers. Plan your route before you leave your table, and be prepared to bump into someone. You’ll recognize Ms. Street if you bump into her. She’s the sassy blonde with the headset delivering food, chatting with customers, and perhaps on the verge of creating a successful Mariel Street concept. Knowing her father, I’d guess he’s just a tad envious. GoodfriendMatt Tobin is a big, friendly bear of a guy with tattoo ink that turns his arms into comic books and a bushy black beard that could, one suspects, serve as a fine bird’s nest. The bird would have to tolerate profanity. “When we leased this building, we didn’t know what the f--- we were going to do,” he says, explaining why it took him and his partner, Josh Yingling, 11 months to open Goodfriend Beer Garden & Burger House. Yingling previously managed the bar at Vickery Park, on Henderson, which Tobin also owns. After signing the lease, the guys took a trip to see the Mavs play the Bulls. In Chicago, they ate at Kuma’s Corner, a renowned restaurant that serves burgers named after rock bands. That’s when they knew. “We didn’t want to rip them off,” Tobin says. “But it was just the idea of doing a badass beer, badass burger joint.”Cooking those burgers fell to Jeana Johnson and her partner, Colleen O’Hare. The two run Good 2 Go Taco and were the ones who talked Tobin into signing the lease on the space next door, with the idea being that when the Good 2 Go kitchen finished breakfast and lunch service (at which point it closes), it could then cook for Goodfriend. They pass the food through a window cut into the shared wall. What comes through that window is, indeed, badass. It is so badass that I personally know a couple who were looking to buy a house in another neighborhood but, after eating the great burgers and drinking the craft beers at Goodfriend, instead bought a house down the street so they could walk to all that badassness. There is a lot to recommend Goodfriend—a spacious, dog-friendly, pergola-covered patio; a funky, comfortable interior designed with a lot of reclaimed wood; hip music played at a volume that allows conversation; 16 well-edited draft beers (plus many more in bottles)—but the highlight might be the meat, the provenance of which Johnson was still tinkering with as D Magazine went to press. After taste-testing beef from 26 farms across the country, she initially bought her beef from a farm in Missouri. In late January, though, she switched to McKinney-based Local Yocal, which developed what she calls a proprietary blend of beef ground to her specifications. Some of it comes from grass-fed cattle raised at Sloans Creek Farm, in Dodd City, Texas, using no hormones or antibiotics. Some of it comes from wagyu cattle raised by Genesis Beef, also in McKinney. The wagyu are fed ground fruits and vegetables, barley malt sprouts, and brewer’s yeast. Why brewer’s yeast? I can’t tell you. Johnson had no idea when I asked her.But I can tell you that the burgers themselves are something special. If the term “grass fed” connotes dryness to you, then it shouldn’t. These are thick, juicy patties held firm by a salt-and-pepper-seasoned crust. The buttered and toasted white bun is stout enough to keep The Coop—made with lettuce, tomato, thick-cut bacon, Brie, and an over-easy egg­—from turning into a complete mess. The Fungus Among Us is another good option, with its Emmentaler cheese and hen-of-the-woods and oyster mushrooms. Burgers ordered the recommended medium usually arrive with a faintly pink center. In my experience, slight inconsistency here will sometimes produce a rarer patty. All burgers are served on parchment-lined aluminum baking trays. The napkins—good cotton towels intended for polishing glassware—are free, but the sides cost extra. Excellent waffle-cut sweet potato fries are $4. Cabbage feta slaw runs $3.50.If, on principle, you refuse to pay $10 for a sideless burger; if you are in a hurry and don’t like crowds; if you want food before 5 o’clock, when service begins; if you are affronted by salty language, then Goodfriend isn’t the place for you. The rest of us, we’re pretty happy that Tobin, et al. finally figured out what the f--- they wanted to do.