In R2019a there is now readmatrix() for reading numeric values (not mixed data type).
Before that, you can use readtable() and table2array(), provided that you do not have mixed data types.
dlmread() is restricted to numeric values, with the exception that you can tell it how many leading rows and columns to skip, and those skipped rows or columns can contain text. Be careful when you give those parameters, as it is the number to skip, not the offset of the first one you want to read -- so for skipping 3 rows and no columns that would be 3, 0. It is not a starting row -- you would not specify 4, 1 to tell it to start reading from row 4 column 1 for example.
