There’s culinary action brewing in Dallas’ West Village with an award-winning chef turning out some amazing Mexican food. It’s a new restaurant pop-up called Mexican Test Kitchen, located at 3699 McKinney Ave. #307, and it stars Matt McCallister, one of Dallas’ most high-profile chefs.
Mexican Test Kitchen is the working title for a new concept in the works between McCallister and restaurateur Mike Karns, who recently took ownership of the West Village. It occupies the space that was previously Honest Tacos (and before that, Taco Diner); Honest Taco closed in April.
For now, they are doing a pop-up, with a menu that McCallister has designed, featuring tacos, bowls, and salads, plus inventive margaritas.
“I didn’t want to see the West Village get hurt with the closure of a restaurant, so we mobilized our team and opened Mexican Test Kitchen as a pop-up,” Karns says.
Their plan is to be open this summer with an interim menu of dishes they are developing, while they reconcept and redesign the space.
“It’ll still be Mexican but leaning a little more healthy than Tex-Mex — more like healthy Mex, with a lower price point and a little more casual,” Karns says. “We feel like it will bring some energy to West Village.”
McCallister is the award-winning chef who at age 31 founded FT33, an acclaimed restaurant in the Design District. It earned numerous accolades both locally and nationally in magazines such as Bon Appétit and Food & Wine. He followed that up with Homewood, a restaurant he opened on Oak Lawn Avenue in 2019, which made Texas Monthly’s Best New Restaurant list in 2020, and Best New Restaurant in CultureMap’s 2020 Tastemaker Awards.
McCallister is now working with Karns’ Local Favorite Restaurants group (El Fenix, Snuffer’s, Meso Maya, Taqueria La Ventana, Tulum, Village Burger Bar, Jalisco Norte, Twisted Root) full time. He joined following the untimely closure of Homewood in February.
