If you’re a frequent visitor of Trader Joe’s or the Truck Yard on Greenville Avenue, chances are you’ve seen a shady little building with a not-so-shady sign that says, “COMING SOON: BLIND BUTCHER.”
“What’s in there?” you wonder. “A butcher shop with a blind person? A creepy haunted house that runs year-round? Or, worse, one of those traps in scary movies where people who disappear are never seen again…”
Wrong. All wrong. It’s a restaurant.
The same guys who brought you Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House are bringing their laid-back/casual style to this part of Dallas. Matt Tobin, Josh Yingling, Ryan Chaney, and chef Oliver Sitrin have all buddy-buddied up for a project that will bring even more foot traffic to 1919 Greenville Avenue. If you thought this area was crowded enough, well, just wait until the Blind Butcher opens.
As construction continues on this bar-restaurant, Ryan Chaney shows me the bathrooms with sinks installed from the ’20s. “We’re trying to stay period with the building,” he says. “It’s a mix of Art Deco meets industrial.”
The place, which used to be Service Bar, has been completely patched up to look like the inside of a mysterious, secret hideaway. It’s dim and dark inside, and feels wickedly underground. “Everything is as authentic as can be,” says Chaney, as he points to original Art Deco lights from the ’30s.
Inspiration for the look comes from old mercantile stores. The back wall of the bar will look like the back wall of a general store, but it won’t be. The big meaty plans they have for this restaurant (house-cured meats, house-made sausages) don’t include an actual buy-it-here, pack-up-your-meats, and take-it-home component. Everything you buy, you have to eat inside the restaurant.
This shouldn’t be too hard of a rule to follow, given how bad@$$ the Blind Butcher’s patio will turn out. The 1,875-square-feet interior is smaller than the 2,100-square-feet patio. “It’s so big you can’t measure it,” Tobin kids, right after he’s given me the exact numbers. Everything that’s served indoors will be served outdoors. There are 24 different draft beers. 48 taps. Cocktails. “Lots of meat,” says Sitrin. It’s everything a beer-drinker, meat-eater could want in one location.
The guys won’t say when the Blind Butcher will be open, but they guarantee it’ll be ready before 2013’s over.
