Local residents are already quite familiar with Dat Bar, easy to spot on a day-to-day basis during a commute down River Road in Luling. But not everyone may be aware of the home cooking that can be found next door.
Dat Bar owner Larry Sweeney recently opened the doors to Dat Grill, attached side-by-side to the aforementioned bar at 13527 River Road, serving food from 5 a.m. until the final customer of the day has ordered – “We’ll stay open as long as it takes,” Sweeney said – seven days a week. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, with lunch specials five days a week.
“It’s homestyle cooking,” Sweeney said. “We make our own stuff. I use sauces and recipes that come from other people, but we put it all together. We buy the chicken, the roasts, the steaks, marinate it and prep it our way. We’ll do breakfast, lunch and dinner … we usually stop breakfast around 10:30, but if someone walks in during the afternoon and they want breakfast, if we’ve got time we’ll make it.”
Dat Grill opened in mid-January and has been evolving its menu and offerings since. If you’re hungry, chances are there’s something to fit the craving: the menu has a wide range from seafood to shrimp and grits to fried seafood, red beans and rice, jambalaya and pastalaya.
The most popular items, Sweeney noted, are the hamburgers and the roast beef.
“We’re bringing back quality food,” said Sweeney. “You’re getting an eight-ounce black angus steak burger when you’re here. For the roast beef, we bake a 20-pound roast, we slice it, mix in the gravy and it comes out real good. It’s about serving quality food at what we think is a reasonable price. We try to keep it here as much as we can (in terms of buying from local food vendors). Local stuff.
“We’ve got a little of everything. You can come in and get almost anything you want.”
The lunch specials begin with red beans and rice on Mondays and spaghetti and meatballs on Tuesdays. Wednesdays are a wildcard – the dish changes week to week, with jambalaya and barbeque baked chicken among the recent items. Thursday is hamburger steak and Friday is a seafood dish or white beans with fried chicken.
“And we will deliver,” Sweeney added.
The restaurant also does night-time specials, like steak night on Thursdays, with chicken wing and taco night specials also in the works.
Otherwise, there’s a full-service menu full of tasty items to choose from.
Sweeney said everything in the restaurant, equipment-wise, is brand new and the building has been remodeled.
“We want people to come on over and try us out,” Sweeney said.
