Gone, but not forgotten

The house was built in 1924 and almost made its 100th birthday. The house will be demolished due to fire and structural damage over the last few years and a new chapter at that address will begin. Luckily, current Perry Heights residents have purchased the lot and will be rebuilding in 2023.

However, for close to 70 years, the house was home to the Chantly’s who are best known as the owners of one of Dallas’ favorite seafood restaurants of the 1950’s and 1960’s on Lemmon Ave.

James Nicholas Chantly, the son of Nicholaos and Maria Tsantili of Terpsithea, Nafpaktos, Greece immigrated to the U.S. in 1909 when he was 17 and lived in Fort Worth, Texas with distant relatives. He worked hard and learned the restaurant business and planned to open his own restaurant. He returned to Greece to meet Vassiliki Panayotou of Patras, Greece (close to his hometown) and eventually married his young wife in Athens in 1945 and took her back to Texas. They opened Chantly’s Seafood on Lemmon Ave at Throckmorton in Dallas (where Taco Cabana stands today) which served mostly fried seafood. The restaurant was packed especially on Friday nights with patrons vying for a table. James and Vassiliki raised a family of two boys (Christos and Nicholas) and two girls (Maria and Pauline) in Perry Heights. The Chantlys were also involved members of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. The children went to T.J. Rusk and North Dallas High School with Chris on the football team and Maria on the Vikingetts drill team. The family lived in the Perry Heights home from the 1950s through 2022 when it was sold.

James bought the land and ran the restaurant from the late 1940s through the 1960’s. The restaurant had a huge second floor used for parties and groups where several special occasions in Dallas took place. James passed away in 1976 at 84 and his wife passed away in 1994 at age 85. In the years following, two of the three remaining children who inherited the home resided there. They died in 2019 and 2021, leaving only one surviving daughter who lived elsewhere in Texas to sell the home. The land where the original restaurant sat, is now a Taco Cabana and is still owned by the family.