Longtime restaurateur Paul Mangiamele’s plan to resurrect iconic Dallas chain Steak and Ale is still alive, he tells The Dallas Morning News. But his hope to open a Steak and Ale in Grand Prairie in 2024, as previously reported, is not likely.
CEO Mangiamele, who is based in Dallas, doesn’t have a new timeline for when his Grand Prairie restaurant on a 5-acre plot of land off of Interstate 30 might open.
“It’s taken a lot longer than anyone could have imagined,” he said. He hopes they break ground this year. WFAA noted the postponement in late April 2024.
Mangiamele and his team are now focused on opening a Steak and Ale in Burnsville, Minn., in summer 2024. It’ll be the first resurrected Steak and Ale since the iconic restaurant closed in 2008. Mangiamele is keeping fans updated on a spirited Facebook page called Steak and Ale’s Comeback, which has more than 54,000 followers.
Steak and Ale was one of Dallas’ best-known chain restaurants, which is saying something, as D-FW is also home to La Madeleine, Chili’s, TGI Fridays, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Maggiano’s Little Italy, On the Border, Pei Wei and many more.
Steak and Ale started near Lemmon and Oak Lawn avenues in 1966 and lasted until 2008, when the company filed for bankruptcy. Mangiamele wasn’t involved in Steak and Ale during any of its 42-year run, but he has a love for nostalgia. Mangiamele is also bringing back sibling restaurant Bennigan’s, the classic chain that also floundered in 2008. He and his wife bought Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale in 2015 and have slowly made plans to relaunch them under the parent company Legendary Restaurant Brands.
“Everybody loves a comeback story,” he told The News in early 2023.
Indeed, 2024 is the year of the reinvented restaurant in North Texas. The News detailed seven notable spots that are expected to make a triumphant return. Steak and Ale would have been eighth on the list, but its future was uncertain at press time in late 2023.
The comeback of Steak and Ale resonates particularly with longtime Dallasites. It was launched by the late Dallas entrepreneur Norman Brinker, one of the country’s most successful chain restaurant creators. For decades, the family-friendly steakhouse served salad, prime rib and beer in a Tudor-style restaurant with stained-glass windows. It expanded to several hundred locations in its heyday.
Mangiamele said in 2023 that Steak and Ale was a pioneer of casual dining. “It’s the original,” he said.
The launch of the first Steak and Ale in Minnesota will test the restaurant outside of its first home, to an audience that may or may not have a relationship with the original.
Does the delay in Texas mean the expansion to D-FW might not happen?
“Not while I’m still alive and kicking,” Mangiamele said. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”
