The Best Brunch in Bishop Arts District

Encina is chef owner Matt Balke's restaurant, opened in October 2020 in the building Bolsa occupied for years, where Balke had been executive chef for four of them. He runs it with co-owner Corey McCombs. The name is the Spanish word for holm oak, which was the original name of Balke's hometown of Uvalde, and the cooking is New American with Texas, California and Southern pulls rather than one fixed cuisine.

The dish to know is the blue corn pancake with cajeta. PaperCity reports it got well known enough that the mix is now sold at H-E-B, which is a fair measure of how far one brunch plate can travel. Note the shape of the week before you plan anything. Brunch exists on Saturday and Sunday only, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the kitchen is closed Monday and Tuesday, and the burger is a brunch-only item.

This is the other Bishop Arts room worth building a weekend around. It opened in 2021 and the Dallas Observer describes it as Michelin recognized, which puts it in rarer company than anything else on this list. The kitchen is seasonal American with a light Asian accent, and the dishes that stay on year round are a focaccia, a wild mushroom plate and a grilled shrimp and avocado salad. The house approach is sharing rather than one plate each.

Two practical notes. It takes bookings through Resy, which is the sensible way in on a Saturday. And it is the same ownership as Tribal All Day Cafe further down this list, so if you cannot get a table here, the cheaper sibling is a two-minute walk away.

Oddfellows is the answer to the problem that makes brunch here awkward. The two best kitchens in Bishop Arts serve weekend mornings only and both want a booking. Oddfellows opens at 7 a.m. every single day, runs a daytime menu straight through, and states plainly on its own site that it does not take reservations for brunch.

That combination makes it the default rather than the compromise. If you are in the district on a Tuesday morning, if you did not plan ahead, or if you are a group of six that nobody will seat, this is the room. The trade is the queue, which is real on a weekend late morning and worth dodging rather than enduring.

La Reunion is a coffee shop, a kitchen and a bar in one address, and it is named for the French utopian colony that settled this part of Oak Cliff around 1855. Coffee starts at 8 a.m., which makes it the earliest proper cup in the district, and the kitchen comes on at 10 with breakfast tacos, kolaches and avocado and egg toast rather than a full sit-down brunch service.

Treat it as the light end of the list. This is where you go when you want a very good coffee and something in your hand in twenty minutes, not a two-hour table. It also keeps some of the longest hours of any business on the street and shifts to wine and cocktails at night, so it is the rare room that works at 8 a.m. and at 10 p.m.

Tribal opened on North Bishop in 2019 and shares ownership with Written by the Seasons up the block, which is the clearest signal of why it is worth your morning. The menu is all-day breakfast rather than weekend brunch, and it leans healthy in a way the rest of this list does not, with superfood oatmeal, avocado toast, a breakfast burrito and migas.

One honest caveat, and it is the reason we have published no street number here. The Dallas Observer reported in May 2026 that Tribal was leaving its original room, one of the smallest in the district, for the former Tejas space across the street at Bishop and West Ninth, with the move expected the following month. Most directories still carry the old address at 263 North Bishop. Both doors are inside the same block, so walk to the corner and look rather than trusting a pin.

Cafe Brazil is a small DFW chain rather than a one-off, and we are telling you that up front because it changes what the listing is for. It is not here to beat Encina. It is here because it serves breakfast from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. on a weeknight and until midnight on a Friday, which no independent in Bishop Arts does.

The Bishop Arts location serves chilaquiles and banana bread French toast off the all-day menu, pours alcohol, runs a happy hour that puts mimosas at half price, and has a covered patio. Chain or not, a plate of eggs at 10 p.m. in walking distance of the theatre is a genuinely useful thing, and this is the only address on the street that offers it.