Bellaire Breakfast Spot Dandelion Cafe Opens Its Most Spacious Digs in Houston’s Heights

Dandelion Cafe, the Bellaire restaurant known for its homemade breakfast dishes, including its award-winning chicken and waffles, has officially opened its third and largest location in Houston’s Heights neighborhood.

Nestled in the Heights Clock Tower building at 611 West 22nd Street, Dandelion Cafe Heights will feature familiar dishes and diner favorites like its signature plate-sized pancakes and blueberry lemon curd French toast sticks, plus newer additions, like a lineup of paninis for lunch.

Becca Wright

The most significant change to the new location of this all-day breakfast cafe, however, is the space. The 3,500-square-foot restaurant seats 75 people indoors, with a wrap-around coffee bar, a private room that seats around 25, and a shaded, dog-friendly patio that seats 20 — a stark contrast from the Bellaire location, which fits 40 indoors and 18 on its patio. Executive chef and co-owner JC Ricks estimates that Dandelion’s kitchen, which is six times the size of the one in Bellaire, could likely fit the entire Bellaire restaurant — a testament to its expansion. The additional space will be used wisely, he says. The new kitchen will offer space for a commissary for all three of Dandelion’s locations. It will also allow for double the food production, which will include a line of grab-and-go items and market goods, including jarred jams, pickles, salsas, granola, and sausages.

Sarah Lieberman, who owns and operates Dandelion Cafe alongside Ricks, her husband, teamed up with Garrison Design Office to incorporate the same playful, sunny atmosphere of the Bellaire cafe, with dandelion-themed tiles, large industrial windows to let in natural light, and dandelion-stamped plates and mugs Lieberman crafted herself. Still in the works are an Instagram-worthy wall of dandelions, live plants, and an indoor logo made of moss.

Becca Wright

Becca Wright

Lieberman calls the central Houston location a “dream come true” and part of her and Ricks’s long-term vision for the homey cafe. The couple opened its first location in Bellaire location in 2016. The restaurant was recognized for its fried chicken and waffles in a Good Morning America breakfast competition in 2023, during which it beat out Midtown’s Breakfast Klub. Owners were featured on Good Morning America again in July when they were given $14,800 in combined funding from the Southern Smoke Foundation and Cash App after it faced $50,000 worth of damage following Hurricane Beryl.

The restaurant opened its second location on Rice University’s campus in its engineering science building in January.

Dandelion Cafe’s Heights is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays. 611 West 22nd Street, Suite 1B, Heights, 77008.

Becca Wright