Last Sunday Kim and I took the kids over to The Dixie House, a longtime established Dallas restaurant in the heart of the Lakewood area. They were well known for their chicken-fried steak ¹ back in the day, but then they got bought out by another restaurant chain, The Black-eyed Pea and were amalgamated into the fold, only retaining their name and little else. After adopting the same menu as their new owner they lost much of their signature character and they really became just another Black-eyed Pea.

Which is sad. For the past few years or so every time I’ve eaten at the Black-eyed Pea the service has been terrible. The food is *okay*, I suppose, and since there are few restaurants around that still serve the Southern-style food that most of us Texans grew up on it was like a half-assed oasis in a sea of Asian fusion and California Pizza Kitchen-type places. Like I said, the problem is the service is terrible. Several weeks ago we went in, again on a Sunday, and were sat fairly quickly, but then our waitress, who looked like she was charged with seven or eight tables, came by and said she’d be right back to take our drink orders. Five minutes, then ten minutes passed, no waitress, no drink order. We eventually flagged the hostess and asked if we could just have some water and rolls, since the kids were getting antsy and angry.

Ten more freaking minutes passed and no waitress to take our order. And so we left.

Jump back to last Sunday. We’re sitting at The Dixie House. It’s around 1:30 in the afternoon and there are probably eight tables full and three of the wait staff to shephard over them. Our waitress came, said she’d be right back with our drinks. Another table is sat in her section, they order drinks and then get them before we get ours. Five more minutes pass, no drinks. We finally flag down our waitress and ask where our drinks are and she stumbles over what we’d ordered. She then gets them out. The food is alright but still the service is incredibly lacking.

So we’ve made a pact: no more Black-eyed Pea. Ever.

We’re never going there again. I’ve wasted far too much money on a crummy establishment. I’m done with them.

So if anyone reads this and has a suggestion of where to find this mysteriously hard to find Southern cuisine in the Dallas area, leave a comment. If it’s good we might even ask you to go with us sometime.