I like to find good brewpubs and local craft breweries during my travels. I had the Manhattan Project brewpub on my radar after having their beer on my first meal in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. But it turned out that my business travels wouldn't put me anywhere near their location south and west of downtown Dallas. However, I did find a brewpub that wasn't too far out of the way from where I heading to an appointment one afternoon - Bankhead Brewpub. I went there for lunch one day during my time in the North Texas Metroplex.
The Bankhead Brewpub is the outgrowth of the Bankhead Brewing Company located in Rockwall, TX, about 25 miles to the north and east of downtown Dallas. Kevin Lefere was a successful restauranteur in the town with his Italian/Mediterranean cuisine restaurant Zanata. It was at Zanata where Lefere met Oklahoma native and beer aficionado Ryan Pyle. Pyle bought his first home-brew kit when he was in his early 20's. From there, Pyle became a known entity winning home-brewing contests held in north Texas. Lefere liked Pyle's ideas on brewing techniques - primarily European-style beers - and the two began to talk about going into a partnership to have their own brewpub in Rockwall.
In 2015, Pyle met fellow home-brewer Chad Moshier at a home-brewing event in Irving, TX. Moshier was working in the tech industry in California, but was deeply involved with the home-and-craft brewing community in the area. He was a producer for the Brewing Network which produced podcasts and and other multi-media outlets pertaining to the craft and home brewing industry. Moshier also had a hand in the brewing process for some San Francisco area brewpubs and became a certified cicerone.
One of the reasons why Moshier was at the event in Irving also had to do with him looking to move back to the Dallas area for his wife's work and to possibly open his own brewpub. When Pyle told Moshier that he was working on opening a brewpub in the east suburbs of Dallas, the two began to collaborate on some of the German and English beers that Moshier was planning on for the new venture. Moshier became part of the team at the soon-to-open brewery/restaurant.
Pyle and Lefere found a spot in Rowlett, TX across Lake Ray Hubbard from Rockwall and it took some time for the building to get transformed into a brewpub due to construction delays. Opening in the late summer of 2016, they named the brewery after the Bankhead Highway, one of the first transcontinental paved roads across America. The road had begun to be built 100 years before and was completed in the 1930's linking Washington D.C. with San Diego. The highway branched off west of Little Rock, AR with the northern route going through southern Oklahoma, while the southern route went through north Texas - including right past Bankhead Brewing in downtown Rowlett.
But as many partnerships evolve, the collaboration between Lefere and Pyle soured within three years. With Moshier taking on more of the main duties in the brewery, Lefere and Pyle had a falling out that resulted in a lawsuit filed by Pyle against Lefere for squeezing him out of the business.
Enter former Pabst Blue Ribbon executive Vivek Rajbahak. Rahjbahak had climbed the ladder at Pabst's headquarters in San Antonio to become the Senior Director of Business Development, then Senior Director of Strategy. After leaving Pabst in 2018, Rajbahak became the Senior VP for Business Strategy for Wanu Water, an Austin-based company that marketed nutrient-infused flavored water products. When the founder of Wanu Water was forced out of his position due to misrepresenting the company's finances, Rajhahak became the CEO of the company.
But Wanu Water was barely holding on and by 2020 Rajhahak had started his own brewing company (in name only) - Sherpa Brewing - and was looking to acquire a business that brewed beer. With the situation between Lefere and Pyle reaching an untenable stage in 2019, Bankhead Brewing went up for sale. In late 2020 Rajhahak bought Bankhead Brewing Company and took over on January 1, 2021.
Immediately, Rajhahak was looking to expand operations and branch out to other areas of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. It turned out that an opportunity dropped into his lap when the Fort Worth location of Deep Ellum Brewery's Funkytown Fermatorium shut down in the summer of 2021. It turned out to be a turnkey purchase for Rajhahak as the brewery's operations were fully intact. And it turned out that by coincidence, the brewery was a block away from the original Bankhead Highway. The Fort Worth location of Bankhead Brewpub opened in October of 2021.
In the summer of 2022, Cedar Creek Brewery closed their Farmers Branch location due to poor sales. The location sat empty for about a year before Rajhahak purchased the building which still had the original brewing and kitchen facilities. Even though it could have also been a turnkey operation for Rajhahak, he oversaw an overhaul of the two-story building redoing the bar area's floor plan on the main floor, revamping the brewery with new equipment, and swapping out furnishings to give the place a 1920's speakeasy feeling. The Bankhead Brewpub in Farmers Branch opened in December of 2023.
It was around 1 p.m. when I pulled into the parking lot next to the Bankhead Brewpub. It was part of a complex of stores and restaurants along Valley View Road near I-35E in Farmers Branch. (see map) The large two-story building was easily visible from the street.
The main floor of the brewpub featured a five-sided center piece with banquette seating for the five tables. Old barrels were on a platform in the center below a circular LED light fixture. I guess you would call the decor modern industrial, but there were a few brick accents that made it look like the building had been a warehouse before. There was an elevator and a stairway to the second floor where there was an outdoor patio in addition to another dining area that could also be used for parties or private events.
I sat at the bar - I had the whole bar to myself. The brick back wall had a flatscreen television over a row of taps along square shelving that held the liquor selection. Windows off to the side looked into the brewing room. While I sat there, music by a diverse selection of artists such as The Beatles, Devo, Belle & Sebastian, and Australian alt-rockers The Sleepy Jackson played in the background.
The bartender that day was a young man who was a nice enough guy, but a little slow on the switch. I patiently waited for him to get me a food menu and to take my drink order. He seemed to be preoccupied during my visit, but I wasn't in a big hurry. They had one hazy IPA on the beer menu - the Mile Marker 10. And it was all right - maybe a little bland for my taste in hazy IPA's, but it was fine.
Bankhead Brewpub describes itself as a "chef driven" establishment in regard to their food. Some of the appetizers sounded pretty interesting to me. The stuffed avocado was one. It featured brisket cream cheese balls topped with cheddar cheese, pico de gallo, tortilla strips, and a chipotle aioli. The Texas Twinkies were prosciutto wrapped jalapeños that were stuffed with brisket and cream cheese and topped with a house-made barbecue sauce. My wife would have enjoyed the panko/beer battered fried pickles, and the Brussels sprouts that was served with maple-roasted butternut squash, candied pecans and dried cranberries, all topped with a maple glaze, grated parmesan cheese, and a balsamic vinegar drizzle. But the one that really caught my attention was the tikka masala poutine - chicken in a tikka masala sauce, cheese curds, and roasted peppers over fries. I came about 'this' far from ordering that.
The menu also featured salads, wood-fired pizzas, and entrees such as a Cajun shrimp risotto that sounded good, as did the triple grind meatloaf made with veal, pork and beef. The rigatoni with meatballs in a vodka sauce looked appetizing, as did the blackened red snapper caught off the Texas coastline. They had a wagyu cheeseburger on the menu and a Cuban panini that I thought about for a moment.
In the end, I decided upon the brisket grilled cheese sandwich. It featured house-smoked beef brisket with a liberal amount of provolone cheese along with a bacon marmalade served on grilled sourdough bread. Truffle fries and a house-sauce came on the side.
And the sandwich was - well, it was just OK. It didn't really have much of a pizazz in flavor - sort of like the hazy IPA beer. It wasn't bad, but it just didn't have a lot of flavor that I had hoped I would get out of an in-house smoked brisket sandwich. I dipped the sandwich into the sauce a couple times, but that really didn't do much to enhance the overall flavor of the sandwich. The truffle fries were good - they had a nice and crunchy outer shell with a soft potato inner core.
And that was my visit to Bankhead Brewpub. Everything about my visit was neutral. The hazy IPA was fine, but nothing special. The brisket grilled cheese sandwich was all right, but it was not exceptional. And the service from the bartender was also just OK. I couldn't tell if he was laid-back or if his "give-a-shit" factor was low, but his service was pretty lackluster, colorless and mundane. All that went into a pretty unforgettable visit to Bankhead Brewpub. Maybe I ordered the wrong beer, the wrong food and caught the bartender on a bad day. But my experience was as gray as the Texas skies that day.