Barsotti’s Is Everything We Loved About Carbone’s, Dressed in Fancier Clothes

A quick recap for those who don’t keep up with Dallas dining drama. Carbone is the big-money-backed New York red-sauce Italian restaurant that opened here a year ago with a reservation waitlist as long as your arm. The problem was, Dallas already had its own red-sauce Italian standby, Carbone’s, which was a staple of our Top 100 restaurants.

Confusion naturally ensued, including a lawsuit from Carbone’s asking for some relief. Big-money Carbone paid Carbone's owner Julian Barsotti to undertake a remodel and a rebrand.

Good, we're all caught up. Barsotti’s Fine Food and Liqueurs is the new name of the former Carbone’s, which reopened two weeks ago in the same spot on the corner of Oak Lawn and Wycliff avenues. Naturally, we were curious to see the changes for ourselves.
The new Barsotti’s (no lie, it’s going to take us a while to stop saying Carbone’s) trades in the former’s minimalist and bright decor with an interior that speaks in more Italian restaurant tones. There’s a new tile floor, tin ceilings, rich wallpaper along the back wall and a small bar that wraps around the edge of the kitchen. A banquette divides most of the dining room, upholstered in a rich burgundy.

Menu-wise, many of the classics remain. We couldn’t resist ordering the vodka tortellini ($26), which tasted better than we remembered. The vodka sauce is phenomenal, and the tortellini are filled with a bit of savory pork that we didn’t remember in the original. And the Sunday gravy ($26) tops a dish of perfectly al dente creste pasta. There’s ground beef, sausage and more tiny globes of pork, and you can taste the hours of simmering in each forkful. If you can’t get enough Sunday gravy on your plate, Barsotti’s still sells containers of the stuff to go.

We opened our meal with an order of asparagus ($15), perfectly cooked and topped with Calabrese chili oil and Parmesan. And since our beloved Dallas Stars were facing off against the Kraken up in Seattle, we couldn't resist an order of calamari ($17) to get in the spirit. The calamari is crispy and light, not even the slightest bit greasy. But that crispy batter hides much of the seafood flavor. That didn’t stop us from eating the entire plate, alternating dips in the sweet and tangy marina and a remoulade.
Barsotti's still has that textbook cannoli on the dessert menu, as well as a carrot cake topped with caramel, but we opted for a chocolate layer cake ($15) topped with a chocolate ganache. The cake was moist and light, not too sweet, and a perfect end to our meal.

The morning of our visit, the only reservation we could find for two was at 8:30 p.m., just 30 minutes before Barsotti’s scheduled closing time. And when we arrived about 15 minutes early, the restaurant was still packed wall to wall on a Sunday night, which speaks to the pent-up demand from people who missed their Italian fix from their neighborhood favorite for the last four months.
Perhaps it was a byproduct of being so busy, but the service seemed a touch out of practice. Our waiter was helpful enough while we picked appetizers, but we were halfway through those plates before the waiter reappeared to take our entrée orders. As the dining room thinned out around us, the pace of service seemed to pick up.

For the first two weeks, Barsotti’s was open only for dinner while the team worked out the kinks. As of May 8, lunch service has resumed seven days a week. Over at Carbone, a meal is a theatrical production, and reservations are still tough to come by (especially if you’d like to sit indoors). Meanwhile the resurrected Barsotti’s brings back all the Italian classics we’ve missed, dressed in slightly fancier clothes, but with less pretentious flair. There’s space in Dallas for both options, and we love that the latter has finally returned.

Barsotti's Fine Food and Liqueurs, 4208 Oak Lawn Ave. Monday – Wednesday, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. and 5–9 p.m.; Thursday – Sunday, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. and 5–10 p.m.