By Madelyn Edwards| August 6th, 2025 ADVOCATE LAKEWOOD/EAST DALLAS
If you don’t know how to eat bone marrow properly, Gustavo De Los Rios can walk you through the process.
Photography by Jessica Turner
Photography by Jessica Turner
Photography by Jessica Turner
Photography by Jessica Turner
He and Dallas native Tim Goza opened the Mexican steakhouse Las Brasas in Lowest Greenville in March, and bone marrow, or tuétanos, is on the menu. It comes out on a little grill to your table, not too dissimilar to fajitas, in two halves that look about a foot long or less. Of course, the outer perimeter is hard, but the center of it is edible.
A long spoon is included, and Goza says some people stand the bone up on one end and slide the spoon down it to scrape out the bone marrow in one fell swoop. The order comes with a sauce traditionally made in a molcajete and tortillas, so you should put the bone marrow in the tortilla, squeeze lime over it and salt it before taking a bite. The bone marrow can be ordered as a shared plate ($15.99) or with the Brasas Sirloin Flap ($28.99) or rib eye steak ($32.99).
“It’s kind of buttery,” De Los Rios says. “It’s really, really good, so it’s very popular. But you have to tell the people, if they haven’t tried it, ‘You gotta eat it this way. Otherwise, you’re going to end up not liking it.’”
He’s not wrong. In a steak soft taco with cooked onions and mushrooms, the bone marrow adds just a hint more richness.
In 2014, Goza opened Palapas The Original Seafood Bar, which is next door to Las Brasas, and De Los Rios picked up a job there. De Los Rios has worked in the restaurant industry ever since he was young and living in Mexico. He continued this work when he immigrated to Dallas at age 25 in 1996.
“I got here, and then I ended up working every single position that you can imagine, from being a dishwasher all the way to manager, assistant manager, even a DJ,” he says with a laugh.
De Los Rios corrected himself — he hadn’t worked on the expo line before Las Brasas.
“There’s always room for learning,” he says.
In contrast, Goza had a career in technology for decades before coming out of retirement to open Palapas. He says he’s always been fascinated with being in the food and beverage industry, though he didn’t quite know what he was getting himself into and had to learn things the hard way.
“I didn’t realize I was buying myself into a lifestyle change, and that’s really what the restaurant business is, but it’s been a lot of fun,” Goza says.
Before working at Palapas, De Los Rios had opened a restaurant in Crowley, but he eventually sold it when his commute from Mesquite became too much for him. Then, he joined Palapas as a “bartender/manager.” He turned down the chance to become the official manager, but he didn’t mind stepping into that role occasionally to help Goza.
De Los Rios worked there for a year and admired the Palapas concept of bringing Mexican flavors (specifically from Sinaloa on the country’s west coast) to seafood.
“They were the pioneers of that kind of seafood,” he says.
De Los Rios went on to open two East Dallas locations of Mami Coco, which made Yelp’s 2023 Top 100 Places to Eat in Texas list, the first on Bryan Street in 2018 and the second at the Samuell-Grand intersection in 2022.
Goza and De Los Rios stayed friends, and then they decided to work together on Las Brasas.
“I told him, ‘Hey, you were a pioneer. … Let’s be a pioneer here with this Mexican steakhouse,’” De Los Rios says. “You’re going to see dishes here that you’re probably not going to see in a lot of places.”
Indeed, Las Brasas food sticks to some steakhouse traditions. Main courses are served with buttery garlic mashed potatoes, the grilled beef is juicy and flavorful, and you can order sweet cornbread for dessert. With the eatery’s name translating to “the embers” in Spanish, emphasis is placed on the selection of grilled meats — beef, pork and chicken.
Las Brasas looks like a chuckwagon steakhouse, complete with a wagon wheel on the patio, antlers hanging from the walls and saddles straddling planks above the bar. Except it’s more colorful. One of the walls inside is a blue shade somewhere between turquoise and robin egg, and light fixtures are red. There are three brightly painted hummingbirds, one inside on the wall behind the bar and in a mural on the patio, courtesy of De Los Rios’ wife Gaby.
De Los Rios says the restaurant is meant to resemble an old hacienda. The building itself is over 100 years old. Goza says it was formerly an auto mechanic shop, and everything other than the walls had to be rebuilt over the course of eight or nine months.
As with any restaurant, it’s important to get people in the door.
“When you come to a restaurant, the experience is what you remember,” he says. “If it has the vibe to it, and you have good food, then it gives you all the rhymes and reasons why you’re going to come back, and you’re going to tell all your friends, and that’s what we try to do.”
Las Brasas, 1418 Greenville Ave., 972.803.3616, senorbrasas.com