Dallas’ first Hooters restaurant reopens Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, after a fire left the once-controversial restaurant closed for a year.
At a ribbon cutting, Hooters will honor firefighter Ryan Caitlin, who was injured in a July 15, 2024, blaze that took more than two hours to extinguish.
Dallas Fire-Rescue confirmed to The Dallas Morning News that a cigarette butt outside the restaurant caused a fire in the wall. The fire was ruled accidental.
The restaurant in the West End had been open for 35 years.
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While the restaurant was shuttered, Hooters for America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas court in April 2025, leaving many to wonder whether the West End original would reopen at all.
Hooters of America CEO Sal Melilli said in April 2025 that the restaurants “are here to stay,” though CNN reported the closures of “about 30″ Hooters restaurants two months later in June. Two of those shuttered Hooters were in North Texas: in Arlington and in Fort Worth.
About 10 other Hooters restaurants are open in Dallas-Fort Worth today.
The West End location was one of the earlier Hooters locations, opening in 1989 after the company was established in Clearwater, Fla., in 1983.
Hooters’ vice president of operations Tim Baum said the return of Dallas’ oldest Hooters is “a celebration of resilience, heritage, and the incredible community that has supported us for over three decades.”
The restaurant is considered an “original” Hooters. Its servers will wear the “classic Hooters Girl uniforms,” the company reported: tan tights, orange shorts and a white Hooters tank. The menu includes the original wing sauce recipe and a “simpler” menu focusing on wings and fried appetizers.
Managers hired 100 people to work in the reopened Dallas restaurant.
Hooters is at 2201 N. Lamar St., Dallas. More than a dozen Hooters restaurants remain open in other parts of Dallas-Fort Worth.