Latest news with #QuarterAcre
Eater
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
The Biggest Dallas Restaurant News This Month, May 2025
Catch up on the most exciting food and dining news of each month in Eater Dallas's newest column. The most popular news stories this month: 5. A Tale of Three Tasting Menus at Michelin-Recognized Restaurants in DFW Tasting menus are so hot right now, and three that Eater Dallas is particularly interested in, either for their Michelin recognition or their Beard awards, have launched new options this year. The chefs at Quarter Acre, Monarch, and the Heritage Table shared with us the details on what's on the menu, why they're offering it, and how Michelin influences their choices. 4. Where Do You Think Tom Cruise Should Eat Barbecue in Dallas? We asked, and you answered. Our inbox was full of suggestions, most of which Cruise did not opt for, but they certainly prompted us to add some bookmarks to our Google Maps list of places to go. Here were a few of the suggestions, in case you'd like to make a list yourself: Mike Anderson's Barbecue House, Kafi BBQ in Irving, Slow Bone BBQ, Records Barbecue, Marty B's in Bartonville, and Meshack's Bar-B-Que in Garland. 3. Tom Cruise Went to Pecan Lodge and All We Got Was a Confounding Instagram Post Talk about a media clusterfuck. Tom Cruise visited Pecan Lodge on Thursday, and no one shared any details about his visit with the media, such as what he ate, until late Friday afternoon. In fact, the only way we were able to confirm it was with a random Instagram post from one of the owners of Tribal All Day Cafe in the Bishop Arts. Anyway, here's a photo of Cruise at Pecan Lodge without his sunglasses on but absolutely not eating. 2. Where to Take Your Dallas Parent for Mother's Day Based on What Kind of Mom They Are A whole lot of y'all needed help figuring out Mother's Day this year, it would seem. Thank god that's over, right? Hope we helped. The Michelin-Recognized Birria Joint That Used to Be a Hidden Gem Very happy to find out that so many of you were also curious about what made this particular spot Michelin-worthy. In case you missed it: Tiffany Derry Spills the Tea on Her First Season as a 'MasterChef' Judge This much-lauded Dallas chef became the first Black woman to serve as a judge on MasterChef on Fox. We talked to her about how that happened and how she broke the news to her mentor Bobby Flay that she wasn't going to be on Triple Threat anymore. The Coolest Underground Dinner Party Series in Dallas Is in a Ceramics Showroom We got the chance to attend one of these last summer, when RJ Yoakum from Georgie hosted, and it was a blast. The folks at Marcello Andres have only amped up the talent they're working with for one-of-a-kind Kiln to Table dinner since. The Best Restaurants in Bishop Arts Our most popular map this month? Of course, it was an update to the Bishop Arts guide. There are so many new and interesting places down there. Have you been to Pillar? Maybe Little Blue Bistro? How about Michelin-recommended Stock & Barrel? Well, what are you waiting for? Sign up for our newsletter.
Eater
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
A Tale of Three Dallas Tasting Menus at Michelin-Recognized Restaurants in DFW
A trio of Michelin-recommended Dallas restaurants — the Heritage Table in Frisco, Monarch, and Quarter Acre — launched tasting menus in 2025. Coincidence? Maybe not. Tasting menus have long been a staple at Michelin-starred restaurants, signifying a higher level of service, food curation, and creativity that seems to appeal to the secret Michelin inspectors who award its coveted stars. Fitting into the fine dining category is not a requirement, however. Michelin, the tire company and international dining guide publisher, remains notoriously mum about its rating process and contends that its awards are based only on food and not on service or decor. In Dallas, tasting menus have long been the playground of a certain kind of restaurant — an expensive one. Dean Fearing has served one at Fearing's in the Ritz-Carlton since it opened in 2007. The Mansion Restaurant, with its parade of well-known chefs, has long offered a tasting menu experience as well. Local in Deep Ellum was, for years, the only smaller, less pedigreed restaurant in town offering a tasting. But in the past few years, that has changed. A vegan tasting menu popped up at Maiden in Fort Worth, of all places. El Carlo Elegante created what it calls an 'experience menu' to highlight its best dishes. Rye in Lower Greenville launched an experimental tasting menu on which it somehow put kangaroo, buckle, and Trinidadian green curry together in one meal. Monarch, Quarter Acre, and the Heritage Table also threw their hats into the tasting menu ring. As D magazine dining critic Brian Reinhart wrote in a March 2025 column, tasting menus in DFW seem more popular than ever, and all wildly different. Diners and people in the restaurant industry were stunned, then, when Michelin only awarded a star to one restaurant in Dallas, Fort Worth, and the entire North Texas region: the omakase restaurant Tatsu. It led many commenters to examine why more places didn't measure up to its standards. The uptick in tasting menus now could be the Michelin boomerang effect, which has inspired some goal-driven chefs to go for a star. It could be an omakase effect, where owners are seeing seasonally shifting, chef-driven menus as their chance to take the reins and get diners to try things outside of their comfort zones. Or it could be a sign of changing appetites in Dallas diners, who may feel that a flat fee for a meal that says everything you need to know about the restaurant sounds just right. The last time a chef created a new genre of food in North Texas was probably in the 1980s, when Dean Fearing and Stephan Pyles became driving forces behind Southwestern cuisine. Chef Rich Vana at the Heritage Table in Frisco, Texas, decided to give coining a new genre of food a go when he curated a tasting menu around what he calls 'Blackland Prairie' cuisine — food from the Blackland Prairie of Texas, a strip that stretches down from North to Central Texas and is full of cropland and grazing land for animals. On Heritage's winter tasting menu from February 2025, Vana featured sourdough crackers and bread alongside butter infused with the extremely long green stems of the Greer Farms carrots and roasted garlic. (Two other butters feature beef tallow and salted sorghum with caramel.) Nearly every ingredient on the menu has a farm or ranch designation next to it: Diners know the red kuri squash in the soup served with Texas redfish comes from Comeback Creek Farm, the greens in another course come from Jubilant Fields, and the beets are from Stout Creek. The only things Vana doesn't source locally are onions and garlic, which do not grow abundantly in this region. 'What I want to do is take these nearby ingredients and apply some fundamental tenets,' Vana says. 'What are my farmers bringing me? How can I make it delicious now? And how do I make it delicious later?' Chef Rich Vana at the Heritage Table decided to give coining a new genre of food a go when he curated a tasting menu around what he calls 'Blackland Prairie' cuisine. For Vana, adding a tasting menu at the Heritage Table wasn't about appealing to Michelin, although it certainly couldn't hurt, he says. It was about sharpening his focus and further honing the type of food his restaurant has always served. 'What we wanted to do was figure out what it means to be 'Blackland Prairie cuisine,' and that name wasn't there when we started,' Vana says. The idea goes back to the restaurant's opening in 2017, when Vana wanted to create parameters around his menu. Sustainability is a priority for the restaurant, in which processes like pickling, fermenting, and using every part of the vegetable are vital. Sourcing local food was another hallmark. The fourth course — Windy Meadows duck pot pie served atop sweet potato mash with marinated chestnut mushrooms — represents what Vana wants to achieve: a dish that combines simple ingredients from a specific Texas region to add up to a complex, satisfying whole. The menu ends with some substantial proteins, including a pork chop from Knob Hill and a small wagyu strip from River Creek. Monarch, meanwhile, rolled out its new winter tasting menu in January 2025. Maple Hospitality Group's managing partner and chef Danny Grant and Monarch's executive chef Jason Rohan had their eye on a Michelin star this time around. 'Getting recommended last year gave us something to push toward,' Rohan says. Of the three tasting menus, Monarch subscribes to a more classical school of thought about food and service — and to that of chef Grant, the youngest chef to run a restaurant awarded two Michelin stars (at Chicago's now-closed French restaurant Ria, which was awarded stars in 2011 and 2012). Monarch's spring tasting menu follows a similar ethos, staying within traditional fine dining expectations, except for a few dishes that Rohan and the kitchen developed that color outside the lines. The first selection of bites feel emblematic of Grant's approach. Bruschetta gets topped with fava bean hummus and whipped feta that has a hint of Meyer lemon juice and zest. The idea originated when Monarch's pastry chef, Mariella Bueza, suggested making mini-briochettes with truffles baked inside. After Rohan tried to simplify the process, Bueza suggested baking the one-bite-sized toast with garlic butter. Rohan thought a single grilled lamb chop, which accompanies the bread, would pair well with fava beans as a Mediterranean-style combination. 'We make it with basil and olive oil, to keep in mind that we are an Italian restaurant, and add spinach to brighten it up, plus a little avocado to make it creamier,' Rohan says. The rest of the six-course meal veers toward classic choices — steak, branzino, scallops, foie gras, an on-menu rigatoni that Monarch diners know and love. Dishes are executed with precision and service is immaculate; its decor and sweeping views of Dallas from high in a Downtown skyscraper are predictably breathtaking. Other than a playful dessert called the Pearl (a Madagascar vanilla mousse, raspberry puree, and hazelnut sponge cake served atop a foam cloud that the diner cracks open), the food itself feels somewhat prescriptive. This is a tasting menu informed by an old-school set of rules that dictate what fine dining is, and it doesn't quite fit the mold-breaking format that many chefs in DFW are playing into. Down at Quarter Acre, chef Toby Archibald uses his new tasting menu to explore his personal history, touching on Texas favorites while showcasing family recipes and ingredients he grew up eating in New Zealand and the Asian influences on the cuisines there. According to Archibald, the team had already planned to launch a tasting menu in 2025, well before the restaurant landed a Michelin guide designation, but it took longer than he expected. 'Year one, opening the restaurant, was manic,' he says. 'Year two was solidifying and making sure we came up for a breather, to be honest. The goal for year three was to get better... This gives longtime guests something to be excited about. It is the next evolution.' The Quarter Acre tasting is a mix of long-running menu items, dishes Archibald is developing to serve as daily specials, and dishes that let him be himself on the plate, even when that means being a little maximalist. From the diner's point of view, there is no 'set' menu, and no two nights are guaranteed to be the same. Interestingly, there is no printed menu for the tasting, either. Instead, staff ask diners to trust the chef. 'It's taking things and perhaps pushing the boundaries a little on what guests are used to. Saying, 'Hey, you might not have ordered this on the a la carte menu, but try it for us,'' Archibald says. Diners won't leave this meal overfilled. It features appetizer-sized dishes like oysters with a passionfruit foam, smoked beef tartare that has been on the menu since opening day, cabbage served three ways (one is liquified), the debut of a carrot dish with scallops, and wagyu beef served alongside sweet potato and charred lemon. 'If we get to the end of the year and we don't win a Michelin star, I'm not going to say [the tasting menu] was a waste of time. It wasn't,' Archibald says. 'We already think we're really good, and we like the level we're at.' 'But if it leads to Michelin, awesome,' he adds. Sign up for our newsletter.
