An egg yolk the color of a Texas sunset perches atop a voluptuous twirl of Asian wheat linguine. Beyond a scattering of diced green onions and the glowing centerpiece, the dish looks deceptively simple. The taste is anything but. The al dente noodles exhibit a creamy sheen packed with umami from oyster, soy, and fish sauces that have been slowly infused into a lush garlic butter. A final showering of parmesan pushes the dish toward the sublime.
Similarly, a bowl of pho—with thinly sliced rib-eye and brisket bathing in a fragrant broth brimming with star anise, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, and fennel—carries deep flavors that are a testament to time and attention.
Get lost in these offerings and you might think you’re at one of the best mom and pop Vietnamese restaurants in the Dallas metroplex. But look up from your captain’s chair at the geometric horseshoe bar inside this dimly lit lounge—a tabletop Ms. Pac-Man arcade game blinking in the seating area below—and you’ll be hit with some serious cognitive dissonance. Because the tiny kitchen responsible for these culinary revelations is located in the back of Cosmo’s Lounge, a retro East Dallas bar colored with vintage light fixtures, mismatched furniture, and a wall of VHS tapes that are screened on televisions above the bar.
“I just wanted a lounge that served great food, where people could come in and talk, and it wouldn’t be a sports bar,” says co-owner Gerald Stogsdill, who opened the business with his sister Debra Peña in 2000. “That’s why I show movies.”
The food served in these unlikely surroundings is not a gimmick, nor a pop-up. It’s the creation of chef and lead bartender Jackson Tran, who’s worked at Cosmo’s for 25 years.
Originally limited to French bread pizzas and bar snacks like tater tots, Cosmo’s menu was injected with some unexpected Asian flair when Tran randomly popped into the lounge shortly after its debut. Stogsdill was already aware of his background, as he’d been a regular at Vietnam Restaurant in Casa View, owned by Tran’s mother, Thua Tran, for almost 20 years.
A veteran of several restaurants in Dallas, Tran was offered a job as a bartender and eventually given carte blanche to upgrade the menu. Over the course of the next decade, Tran delved into his family’s arsenal of recipes—and his regular travels to Vietnam—to craft a menu prepared in the bar’s pizza oven. Small runs of bánh mì sandwiches filled with pork belly and caramelized shrimp paved the way for noodle dishes and soups like bún bò hu, a spicy beef stew from central Vietnam.
Once Stogsdill upgraded the ping pong-table-size kitchen in 2012, Tran rolled out his full menu to acclaim from the Dallas Observer and D Magazine, which ranked it as one of the 50 best restaurants in the city. The one vocal critic just happened to come from his own family.
“My mom critiqued the hell out of it,” Tran laughs in regard to his first efforts at her pho recipe, which takes 15 hours to prepare. “She was always willing to give pointers and tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
In addition to staples like chicken wings, pho, and the various bánh mì, Tran rotates in specials like khao soi with crispy chicken thighs and congee crowned with pickled mustard greens. And while it may not be a sports bar, you can even find the occasional hot dog—though the Cosmo’s Fourth of July special is a link sprinkled with furikake and sticky caramel fish sauce.
The chef, who sources daily from local Vietnamese grocery stores, says he’s proud to be a trailblazer in bringing his unique point of view—one shaped by his family’s heritage—to a milieu not known for serving quality food of the unfried variety. Meanwhile, Stogsdill is just thrilled that the Vietnamese food he fell in love with back in the ’90s near Dallas’ White Rock Lake is undergoing a second life inside his bar.
“I’m always surprised when things work for the best,” Stogsdill says. “But it was just one of those deals. It was fate.”
