Destination Dining: Savor at Klyde Warren Park

We celebrated a birthday last night with dinner at the snazzy new restaurant Savor in Klyde Warren Park--you know, the reclaimed air space perched on a slab over the sunken Woodall Rogers Freeway that's been planted with grass and flowers and food trucks and bocce balls.  I think it was brilliant to connect uptown and downtown by bridging the carbon monoxide canyon below and creating an inviting play space for downtown denizens forty feet in the air.  During the sweltering, super hot months in North Texas (basically February through November) kids splash and laugh in the sprayground and sweaty attorneys from Jones Day munch on Easy Sliders in suits and ties while wild-eyed, craft-crazed women from Lakewood adorn all the trees with yarn bombs. KWP is a place for all people and attracts a wide variety of visitors, from misty morning tai chi classmates to retired policemen looking for an afternoon pickup game of checkers.  The park's programming is designed to appeal to a little something in everyone, resulting in a monster mash-up of activities and a crazy kaleidoscope of non-related special events. (BTW the outdoor park is also non-smoking and offers valet parking for $15.  Now that's Dallas in a nutshell.)

Waiting for Mr. Big

The restaurant is following the park's lead, resulting in a pleasant destination for dinner despite the fact that it has a multiple personality disorder so severe they should have named it Sybil instead of Savor. First of all, it calls itself a Gastropub, which makes one imagine a rustic tavern or a hipster dive with hand-crafted, high quality food.  Folks, this place is all Dallas dazzle and flattering lighting and sumptuous furnishings.  It is so freaking gorgeous it burns your retinas, like Sofia Vergara in a smoking hot red dress. A more appropriate handle might be Gastropalace but I don't think that's in the foodie lexicon.  All the exterior walls are glass so when seated in the dining room surrounded by the lighted trees in the park you feel like you're on location for the next Sex and the City movie shoot. There is a very sophisticated, Manhattan vibe to the place that makes you want to wear a Tom Ford tuxedo and swizzle champagne until the wee hours of the morning, trading bon mots with your friends while impressing diners at nearby tables with your unstoppable, chic urbanity.

The chef is reportedly a veteran of Ritz Carlton Hotels, and the food really is quite tasty.  But here's the heart of the personality disorder I mentioned before:  A city park with a glamorous restaurant and a talented chef who serves delicious food that is as homely as the loneliest wallflower at a singles dance.  The ingredients are just sort of thrown on the plate and shoved around with no regard to color or contrast. In a city as preoccupied with appearances as Dallas, this is unexpected, to say the least.

This is a flatiron steak with creamed spinach fritters, wild mushrooms and pearl onion.  That's exactly how it came out of the kitchen. Four shades of brown off center on an oblique, white plate.  The fritters were hot and messy, the steak very flavorful if a little chewy, which is to be expected with a flatiron, not my favorite cut of meat.  But oh, it looked so sad and self-conscious in that beautiful room filled with beautiful people, as if it were wearing a home-made sackcloth dress on prom night.

The Wedge Salad sounded unusual because it came with bacon and fried pickled onions instead of the expected diced tomato.  As you can see, this did not produce an inspired presentation either.  A baby iceberg lettuce head was chopped in half, thrown on a plate and then doused with pickled onions and blue cheese.  It would have looked fine in a roadside diner but in this sparkling space it was as drab as Miss Jane Hathaway at a funeral.

The four of us really enjoyed our meal. I had a short rib that was so tender it fell off the bone when I merely glanced at it.  Another plate was barbecued shrimp and grits, and the orderer of that dish is now a certified member of the clean plate club. We all shared some shrimp and calamari that were crispy with a slightly sweet chili glaze as well as some luscious lobster puffs with remoulade. I had a mild amount of sticker shock when the bill came because the menu is artfully constructed to appear moderately priced but it really is not.  I think people who can design that good of a pricing fake-out are geniuses.

Maybe the chef should ask whoever did that to help with the design of the plates...