The original Sissy’s Southern Kitchen in Highland Park opened in a space that had already outlasted three other restaurants. Nobody expected it to last either. That was 2011. It’s still there.
The woman most responsible for that is Ada Martinez, who has been the general manager since the second year. She is not the owner — that’s Lisa Garza — but if you walk in on a Tuesday afternoon and ask the staff who runs this place day to day, they’ll probably point to Ada. She knows which suppliers the kitchen trusts, which regulars take the back booth, and exactly how long the biscuits need before they’re right. She’ll tell you herself: “The biscuits are the thing people come back for. Not the fried chicken. The biscuits.”
She’s not wrong. The biscuits at Sissy’s are the wide, slightly irregular kind — not the uniform pucks you get from chains — and they arrive with honey butter that has more salt in it than you’d expect. That’s by design. The kitchen doesn’t oversweeten things here, which is a choice that separates Sissy’s from most Southern food restaurants that perform Southern food more than they cook it.
The menu is genuinely Southern in the way that term meant before it became a marketing category. Shrimp and grits with tasso ham. Deviled eggs served as an actual appetizer, not a novelty. A chicken and waffle that earns the dish rather than just offering it. The fried green tomatoes come with house-made remoulade, and they’ve been on the menu since opening day. Ada says they’d lose half the regulars if those came off.
Lunch on weekdays is the quieter time to go. The Highland Park location sits on Knox Street, and the crowd at noon leans toward people who work nearby and know their order before they sit down. Dinner picks up considerably on weekends, when the bar does real business — the cocktail list leans toward bourbon and sweet tea variations, nothing too complicated. A bottle of Lone Star is also always available, which Ada considers non-negotiable.
Prices land in the mid range for Dallas: most mains between $16 and $28, with the shrimp and grits toward the top. Biscuits come with entrees, but you can order them on their own for a few dollars if you’re going that route. The portions are not modest.
There’s a second Sissy’s location in Fort Worth, but the Knox Street spot is the original and feels like it. The dining room has exposed brick, dark wood, and ceiling fans that actually turn. It is not a loud restaurant, which is rarer in Dallas than it should be.
Ada has been offered management positions elsewhere over the years. She’s stayed. When asked why, she doesn’t give a speech about family or community. She says, “I know how everything here is supposed to taste. Starting over somewhere else takes years.” That kind of institutional knowledge is exactly what makes a restaurant worth returning to — and exactly what most people can’t see when they’re reading a menu for the first time.
