With the release of her debut album, Darlin, Here’s to You, and an upcoming audition for reality singing competition The Voice, Madison King’s star was on the rise in 2010. But after sailing through the first round of trials for the NBC show, the Dallas artist learned that she didn’t make the final cut in an especially heartbreaking fashion. “I was just standing out in the wings with my microphone in this studio in Burbank, California. That’s when I found out that the person right in front of me got the last spot,” she says. “I came home with PTSD, but that experience really propelled me and pushed me into what came next.”
Like many musicians, King had always supplemented her income by working in the service industry. Her first cooking job came in 2016 at the now-defunct pop-up dinner series in Dallas, Frank Underground, where she served as sous chef under the leadership of Jennie Kelley, Ben Starr, and Adrien Nieto. While helping to prepare some of the city’s most sought-after meals from the trio of industry veterans, King drew the attention of Fox reality cooking show MasterChef. A 2018 audition never led to a prime-time spotlight, but it came at a time of change for King as she began to shift her focus away from the stage and toward the restaurant world.
Soon even that transition was in peril. When the pandemic hit in 2020, King’s tenure at Twilite Lounge in Deep Ellum—owned by friend and former Slobberbone guitarist Jess Barr—came to a screeching halt. While on a yearlong hiatus, she went through a divorce, remarried, and became pregnant with her first child. Meanwhile, conversations with Barr about a new restaurant partnership came to a tragic end when he unexpectedly died from a heart attack in December 2022.
Amid that adversity, King forged a bond with Russell Kirk, Barr’s best friend, who provided emotional ballast and a way to move forward within the industry. “All our future plans involved Jess, and it took a month of Russ and I talking about the future before we finally decided to just try doing something together,” King says.
Starting in 2023, the two zeroed in on the Casa Linda neighborhood, close to King’s home, and found the perfect location for a new concept inside a shuttered burger joint. After struggling to secure investment funds, King took out a loan against her East Dallas house, cobbled together money from friends, and made sure the newly christened Be Home Soon became a culinary reality. The final piece was bringing aboard chef Joey Fink, formerly of New York City’s heralded Momofuku, to develop a menu where American comfort food and Asian influences collide. After more than a year of work, King opened her dream spot in late 2024.
Though the menu changes weekly—King’s current goal is to serve 52 different menus in 52 weeks—there are a few common threads. At lunch, diners can always expect a sandwich served on freshly baked focaccia and a bowl of soup, such as a miso iteration laden with soba noodles and leafy yu choy. Dinner, though, is where things get especially creative: miso-glazed chicken, Vietnamese-style duck wings, caviar-topped potato skins, and fried buffalo chicken oysters. “This is my home cooking,” she explains. “I especially love the way Vietnamese cuisine and Japanese cuisine manage to balance sweet, salty, sour, and savory. I want to bring that feeling of balance to all our dishes here.”
Today, Be Home Soon’s cozy-yet-cool dining room is packed with locals—and plenty of musicians who call East Dallas home. You might see country star Joshua Ray Walker eating some fish and chips or a meatloaf sandwich alongside producer John Pedigo, who’s best known for his work with Texas-born acts like the Old 97’s. “We’ve all been hanging out for years, staying out until 3 a.m. at the bar. But now we’ve gotten older, and our hangouts have gotten earlier and earlier,” Pedigo says. “So, it’s nice to be able to do that here, get to eat a great meal, and not wake up hungover.”
Although King is planning music-focused events at the restaurant, such as late-night DJ appearances, she considers herself retired from performing. Her kitchen staff is her new “band,” and every lunch and dinner service offers a new opportunity to win over a crowd. “It’s not as glamorous as singing for a big audience, and it’s a lot of hard work, but it really does feel like a performance in a way,” she says. “This is our stage now. This is the place where we get to be creative and make people happy.”
