New Meridian Room Owners to Tweak Menu

Expo Park's beloved bar food is back, with some dishes up for a cut

While we weren't looking, the storied Meridian Room reopened in the same spot in Expo Park after closing in September.

Many knew the dive for its Thursday "skaraoke"; the skanking party and its host, DJ Mr. Rid, moved to the Libertine Bar, as did the attentions of former Meridian owners Mike Smith and Simon McDonald, who now nurse the popular Greenville Avenue pub full-time. With Meridian's change in ownership, longtime fans of the bar's scrumptious menu wondered if their beloved sweet potato fries or gingerbread pancakes would go, too.

"Nothing was broken, so we didn't need to fix anything," new co-owner Vincent O'Keefe assured the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park on the eve of the Meridian Room's official Jan. 24 reopening.

So, menu stays as is?

Not quite, O'Keefe's partner Leonard "Lenny" Smith tells us Sunday.

"We're looking at a menu redo in the next couple of months ... not a vast overhaul," he says; a few items that "just aren't moving well" will be yanked. The pulled-pork plate (absent from the online menu that's long needed updating), for instance, Smith says, could be scrapped.

We're all for trimming the fat off the list, in every way that can be interpreted. But patrons, for the love of God, order the tuna steak sandwich. Half-price Wednesdays are still on.

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