The Mitchell is one of those bars where you might see a bartender knocking back a pre-shift shot—for research purposes, of course. Located on Main Street, behind Dallas’s oldest hotel, the Adolphus, the unrelated bar with date-night grub has been open since 2015. (Chef Jodi Carroll has been in the kitchen for much of that time, handling the menu of mostly French bistro classics.) We heard last month that new dishes had been added, such as a bone-in elk chop with cherry gastrique, so we made a visit to check things out. When we got there, though, we couldn’t resist ordering an old standby, cornmeal-breaded frogs’ legs with dabs of hot sauce paste. The six long, meaty legs came over a sauté of sea beans (AKA sea asparagus or glasswort), which—with their impressively savory, mildly salty flavor, enhanced with shallots and lemon purée—were as much a draw as the amphibian limbs. Being in a seafood mood, we next went with something new, Massachusetts barramundi with black rice and a mild coconut Vadouvan curry. The two buttery filets were accented with caramelized leeks and fennel. It was also a pleasure to have French (or French-ish) food in a room with chandeliers and dark woods but without the mannered service that is often part of the experience.