The Best Restaurants in Denton, Texas

Twenty four seats is the whole restaurant. That number explains the cooking here better than any adjective would, because a kitchen serving two dozen people a night can make the pasta by hand, change the menu with what is actually in season, and finish a plate the way it is supposed to be finished.

The focus is regional Italian rather than the red sauce Italian American that most Texas towns get. Reservations are released on the last Monday of each month at noon for the following month, which tells you how the demand runs.

Keiichi Nagano cooks for ten people at a time, in a house on North Elm rather than a dining room, and the menu is an unusual pairing of sushi and handmade pasta that works because one person is making all of it. Booking is by telephone only. There is no app, no online form, and no walk in seat.

This is the restaurant Denton people name when somebody from Dallas assumes there is nothing up here. It is also the hardest table in the county to get, so treat a reservation as a plan rather than a whim.

Fort Worth chef Tim Love opened Queenie's in 2013 and named it for his mother. The kitchen leans on Texas raised beef and game cuts rather than importing a Chicago steakhouse template, and the aged beef is what regulars order.

It is the only room in Denton doing this at this level, which makes it the default answer for an anniversary, a signed deal, or visiting parents who want a steak and a proper wine list.

Hannah's has been the grown up dinner option a block off the Square for years, running seasonal menus built on produce and meat from small farms and local purveyors rather than a single broadline supplier. Chef Anton runs the kitchen.

The structure is unusually flexible for Denton. You can use it for a weekday lunch, an extended happy hour, a proper dinner six nights a week, or weekend brunch, which is the busiest service of the seven.

This is the middle of the Denton market done properly. The menu runs from filet mignon and salmon and shrimp carbonara at the top to smoked gouda nachos, flatbreads and burgers at the bottom, which means a table of six can all find something without anybody compromising.

It is a block off the Square, so parking is easier than the Hickory Street blocks and you can still walk to everything after dinner.

Johnny Law, Alan Pierce and Morgan Hill opened Rooster's on Industrial Street in 2008, and it has been the everyday answer in Denton ever since. Pit barbecue, burgers, house made chips, booths, a bar, and none of the pretense that the newer places carry.

The King Brisket Burger is the thing to know about. It is not on the regular menu and has to be special ordered, which is the kind of detail a directory listing will never tell you.

Cartwright's is the Square's ranch house cooking, and it is the only place on this list you can walk into at 7 a.m. and at 7 p.m. and get a full plate either time. Breakfast runs all day, which turns it into the fallback when every other kitchen downtown has switched over to dinner.

The chicken fried steak is what it is built on, and it is the reason the room fills with the same faces every week.

Family owned and operated since 2000, Frilly's is the oldest independent kitchen on this list and the only real Cajun cooking in Denton. Gulf coast seafood, roux based plates, and a dining room that has never tried to be anything other than what it is.

It sits on Denison Street away from the Square, which is why visitors miss it and residents do not.

LSA stands for Lone Star Attitude, a phrase from Texas singer songwriter Jon Christopher Davis, and the burger menu is built around Texas music figures. The draw is the rooftop, a 2,700 square foot open air deck with a view of the Denton County courthouse and fans and shade for the summer.

Local musicians play Thursday through Saturday. It is the loudest room on this list and that is the point.

The cheapest entry on this list and the one with the longest hours. Guanajuato opens early enough for breakfast burritos and stays open late, which makes it the only place here that solves both ends of the day.

The birria is the order. Slow cooked meat, a side of consome, and a salsa that regulars mention before they mention anything else.