The Best Restaurants in Gainesville, Texas

Krootz is an independent brewery with a cocktail bar and a full kitchen rather than a taproom with a food truck parked outside, and that combination is why it is first. The Cooke County Record's dining guide puts it at a 4.7 Google rating across nearly 700 reviews, the deepest sample of any restaurant in Gainesville. Its own site publishes a clean day by day schedule, which almost nothing else here does.

The kitchen runs wings, nachos, burgers, pizzas and chicken and waffles, with a separate weekend brunch menu. The house cocktail is the Gainesville Flyer, built on rye from Ironroot Republic Distillery in Denison, which is as local as a drink gets in this part of the state.

The County Seat occupies a restored turn of the century building directly on the courthouse square and is the closest thing Gainesville has to a destination dinner room. The Cooke County Record's guide describes it as an upscale cocktail lounge with occasional live music and a $40 Saturday steak special that regulars plan around.

Reviewers consistently name the boudin egg rolls, which is a better signal than a generic nod to the atmosphere. It is a chamber member with a published address and phone, and it is the only entry here where the bar is as much the point as the plate.

Family owned and cooking in Cooke County since 2004, which its own site states plainly, and the Cooke County Record notes it was voted Best of Cooke County for home style cooking. The two things it is built around are the chicken fried steak and the all you can eat catfish dinner, both named on its own site rather than inferred from reviews.

This is the one entry on the list that shows up on effectively every Gainesville shortlist we checked, local and otherwise. Reviewers do push back on the breading on some of the fried items, so the steak and the catfish are the orders rather than the wildcards.

A chamber member and a fixture of the Cooke County Record's home cooking section, Main Street Pub describes itself as a steakhouse with made from scratch sides and desserts and a full bar and wine list. The dishes that recur across listings and reviews are the 16 ounce ribeye, the chicken fried steak, the roasted rosemary chicken and the peach cobbler.

It is the mid priced steak option against The County Seat's upscale room, and it is closed Sunday, which matters in a town where several of the best kitchens take the same day off.

Goodies is the brunch answer downtown and one of only two entries on this list that open at 8am. The chamber listing and the Cooke County Record agree on the signature dishes, which are eggs benedict and a bananas foster French toast, with gourmet paninis, salads and loaded potatoes on the lunch side. Delivery listings show a Saturday brunch menu running 8am to 4pm.

The hours are unusually consistent across the chamber, the delivery platforms and the review sites, which in Gainesville is worth noting. Closed Sunday, which is the one catch, because Sunday brunch is exactly what you would want this room for.

Fuku is the only sushi kitchen in Gainesville and it carries a 4.3 Tripadvisor rating in the Cooke County Record's guide, which also credits it with fresh fish and generous portions. It is a chamber member with a matching address and phone across every source we checked, which is more than several better known names in town managed.

The thing to plan around is the split service. Most listings show it closing in the middle of the afternoon and reopening for dinner, and closed outright on Tuesday. Turning up at 3pm is the classic Gainesville mistake.

Los Mariachis has been family owned in downtown Gainesville since 1998, which its own site states, and it is on both the chamber directory and the Cooke County Record's downtown square section. Fajitas and quesadillas are the house orders. It is the cheapest sit down meal on this list.

The important detail is the schedule. Its own site publishes a lunch only operation closing at 3pm, while Tripadvisor, Yellow Pages and the delivery apps all still show a 9pm close. We are going with the restaurant's own published hours, but this is the entry most worth a phone call if you are planning dinner.

The Cooke County Record calls it a Gainesville institution of more than 44 years and credits it with a 4.7 Tripadvisor rating, and the chamber carries the same address and phone. Meats and cheeses are sliced daily across about 25 sub, sandwich and salad combinations, and the order everyone names is the Hippo's Delight.

It is a counter rather than a restaurant and it keeps counter hours, weekday lunch and a short Saturday. If you are in Gainesville on a weekday at noon and want to eat something that has been here longer than anything else on this list, this is it.

Trails Inn has been serving breakfast on the 82 corridor since around 1980 and it opens at 5.30am, three hours before anything else in Gainesville. The reviews are strongly about breakfast specifically, with the biscuits and gravy and the waffles named repeatedly, and several note large portions at low prices.

It is ranked last for two reasons we will state rather than hide. Published phone numbers disagree between directories, so we have left the number off rather than print one we cannot confirm. And the review spread is wide, 4.5 on Yelp and Restaurantji against 3.8 on Tripadvisor, with complaints about a dated dining room and one account of poor front of house behaviour.