5 North Texas restaurants where famous (and infamous) DFW sports moments went down

DALLAS — It was the Tex-Mex meal that launched a trifecta of titles. But at the moment, the picture told a different story: An out-of-town Arkansas oilman conspiring with his college buddy to dethrone a man who sat just south of God in the eyes of North Texans.

That infamous meeting between Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson — revisited in the new Netflix documentary, “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys”  — went down at Mia’s, the longtime still-standing Tex-Mex restaurant on Lemmon Avenue in Dallas.

The next day, Jones, the new Cowboys owner, announced Johnson’s hiring — and Tom Landry’s firing — and a photo of the Jerry-Jimmy meeting at Mia’s, taken by a hustling Dallas Morning News photographer, was etched into Dallas sports history.

The Jimmy-Jerry photo might still be the most famous dinner in Dallas history. But Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison might have topped it in the infamy department when he met up with Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka at Ascension Coffee this January, laying the groundwork for the Luka Doncic trade. We didn’t know about the meeting at the time, but an eagle-eyed coffee drinker recognized Harrison and snapped a quick photo — one that became much more relevant a few weeks later, when Harrison shipped Doncic to Los Angeles.

Anyway, it got us thinking. What other monumental Dallas sports moments have unfolded at North Texas restaurants? 

Nothing can compare to the drama hatched at Mia’s or Ascension. But North Texas diners have had their fair share of brushes with big sports moments over the years, whether they knew it or not.

Here are a few restaurants where the meal was only part of the story:

Jerry Jones held his first press conference as Cowboys owner on Feb. 24, 1989. But he had already made his grand entrance to Dallas that morning on the front page of the Dallas Morning News, which featured a picture of Jones and Jimmy Johnson dining at Mia’s on Lemmon Avenue.

Dallas Morning News intern J. Mark Kegans snapped the famous photo — infamous at the time, given Jones’ heavy-handed arrival in firing Landry — after Morning News staffer Ivan Maisel spotted Jones and Johnson having a celebratory dinner.

Neither man was very well known in Dallas at the time. Jones was an out-of-towner, and Johnson’s closest connection to DFW was his stint as the head coach at Oklahoma State. But their relationship — which perhaps was at its best that day — has dominated DFW sports talk ever since. 

For better or for worse, and mostly the latter.

The Dallas Mavericks shocked the world on Feb. 1, 2025, when they traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers. As Nico Harrison would later say, he got the ball rolling on the trade talks in a meeting over coffee with Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka. Well, it didn’t take long for the location of that coffee meeting to be traced to Ascension Coffee in the lobby of the Hotel Crescent Court in Uptown Dallas, presumably where the Lakers were staying in Dallas in early January.

WFAA did the story on Ascension’s newfound infamy and asked if they had any surveillance footage of the Harrison-Pelinka conversation. No dice.

But not long after our story aired, we heard from a Dallas man named Asad Munir, who captured the moment in a photo. Munir, an avid Lakers fan, recognized Pelinka, so he took a photo without thinking much of it.

Until a few weeks later, when the trade of the century went down.

This one reads like a “Fake Nolan Ryan” bit on The Ticket, but bear with us: Back in 2012, the Rangers — fresh off back-to-back World Series appearances — were trying to sign Darvish, a Japanese sensation coming to Major League Baseball. Part of this courtship, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported, involved team president Nolan Ryan hosting Darvish at the stately Del Frisco’s in Downtown Fort Worth. 

The meeting between the two strikeout artists — one from Alvin, Texas, the other from Habikino, Osaka, Japan — apparently went well. Darvish signed with the Rangers on a six-year, $60 million deal.

The day the deal was announced, the veteran Star-Telegram columnist Randy Galloway managed to procure the best quote you might ever hear from a buttoned-up team official.

“The kid had the onion rings, followed by lobster,” Ryan said. “Then, when his steak came out, that thing was so big Secretariat couldn’t have jumped over it. Pretty dang impressive.”

Welcome to the league, kid. 

The Dez Bryant era started with a bang in 2010, when the Cowboys’ rookie receiver rebuffed some traditional rookie hazing before ultimately paying his dues. Bryant refused to carry Roy Williams’ pads after practice during training camp, as ESPN reported, so Williams made a concession: Take us out to dinner.

Bryant and his teammates went to Pappas Bros. Steakhouse, near I-35E and Loop 12, where the Cowboys ran up a $54,896 tab. Bryant had to pay for the whole thing.

“They got the young fella,” Bryant’s adviser, David Wells, told ESPN. “What could he say? He had to pay it unless he wanted to wash dishes for a month.”

Long before he traded Luka Doncic, Nico Harrison met with Mark Cuban, Michael Finley and Jason Kidd for lunch at Mesero, which has multiple locations including one near the Mavs’ arena. This was as the new Mavericks brass was convening in the wake of Donnie Nelson and Rick Carlisle exited Dallas.

No drama here (finally). Just a celebration. Al Biernat’s, the longtime Dallas steakhouse and a celebrity favorite (up there with Nick and Sam’s), hosted the Texas Rangers for their 2023 World Series celebration among players and their families.

Tom Brady and Jamie Foxx have also dined at the Dallas institution on Oak Lawn in recent years, among many more high-profile guests, we’re certain.