Alexander's Cantina & Cocina has opened at 4805 Frankford Rd. #105 in North Dallas, bringing a bigger bar, room for parties and a weekend salsa night to a family-owned Mexican restaurant that first made its name in Plano. The new spot serves up Tex-Mex staples alongside street food from Mexico City, and it's already leaning into happy-hour deals as one of its calling cards.
The Dallas restaurant is a larger spinoff of Alexander's Mex Cuisine, the Plano restaurant Bernardo Garduño and his family opened in 2023, according to CultureMap Dallas. Garduño, who came to Dallas in 2015, crafted the menu drawing on his restaurant experience and his mother's recipes, per the same report. The Plano location, he said, is doing very well but is small and has no room to expand — a gap the new North Dallas space was built to fill.
That expansion sits within a large, locally rooted industry: a National Restaurant Association estimate for 2025 put Texas eating and drinking places at $141.4 billion in direct economic output and about 1.44 million supported jobs. Full-service restaurants alone were projected to account for 554,382 direct jobs statewide, underscoring the scale of the market in which family-run operators such as Alexander's are growing.
Per the outlet's reporting, the Dallas location underwent extensive renovations that added a bar as well as room for parties and entertainment. Garduño told the publication the renovations included the addition of a bar and space for parties and entertainment. The site has changed hands before in the neighborhood's restaurant rotation: it most recently housed Casa Don Luis Tex-Mex and, before that, a Corner Bakery location.
Mexico City Street Food Meets Tex-Mex Comfort
The menu leans on dishes Garduño brought from his hometown. There's pambazo — Mexican bread dipped in chili sauce and filled with potatoes, chorizo and queso — alongside alambre made with steak, ham and bacon folded in with onion, peppers and cheese. Bistek a la Mexicana rounds things out with steak tips, onion and bell pepper simmered in a spicy tomato sauce, the outlet reports.
Alexander's is not the only Dallas-area concept drawing on Mexico City street food. Tacos El Metro built its menu around Mexico City street tacos, with its founders describing a goal of bringing the city's street food to Dallas while bridging cultures. The comparison is not one-to-one: Tacos El Metro focuses on street tacos, while Alexander's pairs Mexico City dishes with Tex-Mex standards, extending the concept beyond a taqueria format.
Other crowd-pleasers include chicken mole, brisket tacos, birria, fajitas and enchiladas, plus a large seafood selection that includes salmon tacos and coconut shrimp. Vegetarian diners get options too, including veggie fajitas and spinach enchiladas. Chips arrive with both salsa and black bean dip, a small touch the article singled out as distinct from the usual chips-and-salsa routine.
While the Plano and Dallas menus are basically the same, the North Dallas kitchen has added a few dishes of its own. Mojarra frita — a whole tilapia fried and served with rice — joins carnitas and a handful of extra taco options not found on the Plano menu, per a report from CultureMap Dallas.
Salsa Nights and a New Bar Scene
With the extra space comes extra nightlife. The Dallas location now hosts salsa dancing on Fridays and Saturdays, giving the restaurant a bar-and-entertainment identity that the smaller Plano original never had room for, according to CultureMap Dallas.
Happy hour has become one of Alexander's trademarks, Garduño said, and the North Dallas location is leaning into it with $5.50 house margaritas, $6 flavored margaritas and $4 beer. Happy hour runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day at the Plano location, while the Dallas spot offers it Sunday through Thursday during the same hours, as reported by CultureMap Dallas.
The happy-hour schedule also sits within Texas rules for drink promotions. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission says discounted happy-hour prices must end by 11 p.m., though a retailer may offer certain drink specials from opening to closing. TABC also says sellers remain responsible if promotions contribute to excessive drinking or make it difficult to monitor alcohol consumption.
The Soft-Serve Margarita Experiment That Didn't Last
Not every innovation stuck. The restaurant recently dropped its soft-serve margaritas after the novelty wore off. Garduño said the frozen drinks did well for about a month before customers drifted back to the regular version, as noted by CultureMap Dallas.
The soft-serve margaritas ran $16 compared with $10 for a regular margarita, a gap Garduño attributed to pricier ingredients and equipment. He also described them as very sweet — a trait that, combined with the cost, apparently wasn't enough to keep them on the menu for the long haul, CultureMap Dallas reported here.
Alexander's Cantina & Cocina lists its address as 4805 Frankford Rd. in Dallas on its own website, which also notes that customers can order online for delivery or pickup.
