Before food trucks and pop-up dining spots and liquor-delivery-with-your-meal became fashionable, once and future neighborhood residents could count on one place to eat, drink and be merry: The Country Club at the Village Apartments.
Before food trucks and pop-up dining spots and liquor-delivery-with-your-meal became fashionable, once and future neighborhood residents could count on one place to eat, drink and be merry: The Country Club at the Village Apartments.
Nestled on a huge patch of green space between Skillman and Greenville near Northwest Highway and surrounded by a 9-hole golf course and lots of spots to be seen while exercising, the Village Country Club wasn’t fine dining or a neighborhood bar or a great place to take the family.
But if you wanted to be “seen,” that’s where you went.
“It was so much fun,” says neighbor Rhonda Clifford. “It was the rare time in life with few responsibilities except for going to work. I actually worked two or three jobs at a time to pay rent and car.
“Thursday night was Ladies Night at the Country Club. Weekends were spent by the pool, and we walked to Mariano’s in Old Town Shopping Center (Lovers and Greenville) and the Oasis on Greenville for breakfast.
“Then one day, Joe (her husband) and I calculated how much we had spent on rent and started house-hunting. We looked all over and ended up back in LH, where we both grew up.”
As Dallas and The Village have grown, the housing community has built out portions of the old golf course. In its place, a new food hall has entered The Village scene.
The Roundhouse Food Hall is open to anyone and offers eight separate dining and drinking concepts under one roof.
Options range from specialty cocktails and a raw bar at The Jetty to burgers and fried chicken at Fowl Mouth and Boss Cow. There’s also pizza, fresh greens, noodles, tacos, pastries and coffee.
The food hall is part of a large-scale project in the works for several years. Thirty-four acres of the rental community’s 307-acre space are being reinvented into walkable experiences such as a small neighborhood market, pet and people grooming shops, a resort-style pool and bar, and a hotel with a restaurant and venue space. A sports field, putting green and rooftop bar all expect to open this summer.
Nestled among all these attractions is a commissary and culinary program that provides many of the products Roundhouse eateries use, including all of the bread products.
“A burger bun made fresh in house, that’s the difference that you’re going to taste,” says Rebekah Wright, senior vice president and “experience ambassador” for the The Village.
The names of the various eateries and shops took some time, Wright says, with many coming from bouncing ideas off each other in the office. Doughregarde’s, the pastry and coffee spot at Roundhouse, came from a misheard echoing of an idea. And the name “Boss Cow”, for the burger joint, came from off-hand research about cow hierarchy.
“The boss cow is the heifer that gets to trough first, and she gets to eat first,” Wright says. “They actually call it the boss cow, like on the farm. I was dying — how did that not exist already?”
The food hall recently shifted into its planned hours of operation after a few weeks of soft-openings. The Roundhouse is open from 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m.
“I think opening to daytime hours is going to be our home-run here,” Shoemaker says.
Next door to Roundhouse will be Over Under, a rooftop bar and restaurant that should open soon. Over Under will have a unique drink and food menu, even while sharing a kitchen with Roundhouse, Shoemaker says.
Another selling point, Shoemaker says, is pricing. Options start from as low as $2 for a la carte tacos at Taco Cara, with items such as Garlic Tofu priced at $7 at GNGR. The Meat Lovers pizza at Oak & Ash is $13, and a Chicken Salad Bowl costs $9 from Tomato Tomato.
“We were really wanting that (lower pricing), because on the other extreme, we have Meridian, the fine dining and modern Brazilian restaurant,” Wright says. “We have all these variations so that you can have whatever kind of experience you want.”
Roundhouse has seating for 180, including space on the patio, where lawn games and hammocks are also integrated.
“The bottom line is connecting people,” Wright says. “So I think when you see people coming here, it’s usually because we gave them a reason to connect with people.”
And that’s exactly what neighborhood resident Kathleen Thompson remembers of her experience at The Village in 1974, when she lived at The Corners apartments.
“Everyone just hung out by the pool, and there weren’t any kids around,” she says of the days before “adult only” complexes were legally prohibited by fair housing laws.
“In May, we had a party called ‘The Village Idiots Memorial Day Shindig.’ We charged everyone $5 and got handstamps to show they’d paid. We bought kegs, and a bunch of guys barbecued chickens and did oysters on the half shell.”
“We gathered by the pool late at night and played charades. It went on for hours. Everyone talked to everyone — it was the best place to be. I know of three couples that met by the pool and got married.”
