Destination Dining: Knife Modern Steak

Cutting Edge

You've got to hand it to Chef John Tesar.  He is always tinkering and improving and reconceptualizing food in creative, unexpected ways.  After regaining the fifth star for the dining room at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, he started the craft burger concept in Dallas, opened Spoon Bar and Kitchen to national acclaim, and now has opened Knife Modern Steak at the Hotel Palomar, thankfully ending Central 214's hotel-restaurant-trying-to-be-a-contender's mundane approach to unfocused dining.  It never worked and I am glad it's gone, especially since Knife is so sharp on so many levels.  One note:  this is not just another steak house. Nope, Chef Tesar has invented something more akin to a Palace O'Meat.

We paid our first visit to Knife last night, and instantly noticed the modern touches to the restaurant design that made it relevant and exciting, not the least of which was a huge display of dry-aging steaks in a cabinet near the perky hostess.  It was sort of like those call girls in Amsterdam who pose in windows casting come-hither looks at lustful passersby.  As I walked by the case I swear one of the steaks whispered something naughty to me.

Front Row Center

We were seated at the Chef's Counter, an area reserved I guess maybe for two tops, and lucky for us it was like sitting in the front row of a Broadway Play, because we were practically in the kitchen we were so close to the action.  Dining As Theater!  It was fun watching the chefs man and woman their different stations.  One blonde in particular was fascinating to watch because she moved with such precision and self-assuredness.  All the chefs had little earphones and the expediter was whispering commands from the end of the line like a CIA operative.  (Hmmm...Culinary Institute of America is referred to as CIA too. I wonder if alongside knife skills and molecular gastronomy they practice at the shooting range and engage in Spy vs Spy games.)  It's a high wire act to allow guests this close to the kitchen since you can't always anticipate absent-minded nose-picking and the five second rule allowing food dropped on the floor to be wiped off and served is strictly verboten.  But the chefs were all scrupulous and disciplined and absolutely wordless as they went about their work producing food for this hustling, energetic restaurant.

Garden of Eatin'

I know Chef John from previous business shenanigans, and he thoughtfully sent out a platter of crudites artfully strewn over ice.  Tiny radishes, endive, baby carrots, and lithe stalks of celery were presented with some house-made Green Goddess dressing. (I've always thought of crudites as something a suburban housewife would offer guests in her split level home along with a glass of chilled chablis in the 70's, but this was an elegant, sophisticated and delicious update that proved once again that I don't know everything.)

I ordered a watermelon and heirloom tomato salad (refreshing and cold, with a lagniappe of house-made beef jerky) and Don had the French Onion Soup with about 17 pounds of melty, gooey cheese burnished on top. Yum!  Our waiter brought over a towering stack of possibly the best onion rings I've ever had, and John sent over some cream of spinach that was delightfully light and not overly loaded with garlic and cholesterol.

Tower of Power

The menu is divided into unusual sections:  Raw, Soups and Salads, New School (a selection of less expensive, less familiar beef cuts such as Culotte, Chuck Flap, and Tri Tip), Slabs, Slices (including a five piece bacon flight--quite original!) Old School (Rib Eyes, Lamb Chops, Roast Chicken, Pork Chop) Sides, Pasta, and John's famous Burgers, including the Magic, which is brilliantly served on an English Muffin so the juices can race to and cuddle up in all the little nooks and crannies.  I had one of his Magic Burgers at Cedars Social as well as his late, lamented Commissary, and I still have the napkins I used to wipe my face and hands under the seat of my car as a sort of masculine, meaty sachet.)

We both had the Tri Tip--my favorite cut of beef because although it is lean it is so very flavorful, and when it is cooked right, as it was perfectly done at Knife, it is tender as well.  (In the hands of a lesser chef it can be chewy and stringy but still delicious.)  We were so stuffed we couldn't finish the steaks, which were modestly priced at $25, and the waiter put the remaining hunks of meat in a little brown box inside a giant white, logoed take home bag.  He also brought us a gift wrapped Madeleine since we hadn't had the stomach or inclination for dessert.

Even with a couple of drinks the damage was south of $100, an astonishing deal for food this good. Knife is cutting edge cuisine no matter how you slice it.  Do yourself a favor and get there--you'll get the point.

Unreal Reality

To Quote George Takei: "Oh My"

I'm not much of a reality TV fan.  Aside from watching our gal Bronwen Weber from Frosted Art slay any cake maker who gets in her way on the Food Network, I pretty much avoid the highly edited, non-scripted mutterings of people who need to actually get a life as opposed to being filmed in a pretend one.  Forgive me, Honey Boo Boo, but I am not at all interested in the goings on inside your trailer park.  Sorry, so-asinine-you-are-repulsively-laughable Donald Trump, you're fired.

That being said, I must confess to a weakness for the weekly kitchen drama of the hopelessly addictive Top Chef.  I'm surprised to say I find Padma incongruously sexy and I'd sort of like to water ski or go Christmas shopping with Tom Colicchio.  (Emeril, not so much, I worry his head is way too big for his neck to support it and one day it's just going to snap off.)  Season 10's installment, Top Chef Seattle, came to an end last week and I feel like I'm missing a limb.



Shoulda Been a Contenda

I know it's contrived.  That was made abundantly clear when Dallas chef John Tesar of Spoon Bar & Kitchen was told to pack his knives mid-season when he was obviously the most talented toque in the tea kettle. After they bumped off that Asian lady who couldn't bake potatoes and the smarmy tall guy for redefining the word irritating, they had to axe John in order to level the playing field, thus leaving a few distinctive characters in play to create feigned drama.  Braying Josie.  Snarky Josh. Satanic Stefan. Likable Sheldon, who naively didn't know the only prize a televised contestant from Hawaii can possibly win is second runner up in the Miss America Pageant, and only then  if she twirls the baton whilst performing as a ventriloquist.

Brains, Beauty & Talent

I don't believe there was a single fan of the show who didn't know pretty early on that it was going to boil down to a cook-off between Brooke and Kristen, two chefs in possession of mad culinary skills and obligatory forearm tattoos.  Even when The Unthinkable happened--Kristen getting booted for not tattling on the abrasive, gap-toothed Josie and instead, accepting responsibility for the failure of Atelier Kwan in Restaurant Wars--we all knew there'd be some kind of soap operatic return from the dead for her and she'd be in the finale even if she were portrayed as her own evil twin sister suffering from amnesia.  And sure enough, she emerged from Last Chance Kitchen in the penultimate episode, followed by handily beating Brooke in the finale title bout with just an immersion blender and a set of nested measuring spoons.

As Princess Padma intoned at the start of every show, Cheftestant Kristen Kish will now enjoy $125,000 cash (sponsored by Healthy Choice, grand prize winner in the product placement category), a feature in Food & Wine magazine and a showcase at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado.  If history predicts the future, somebody will then come along and put up financing for a restaurant of her own, hopefully not called Kish and Tell. (She is currently chef de cuisine at Stir, Barbara Lynch's restaurant in Boston.  I mention this because No. 9 Park in Beacon Hill was Barbara Lynch's first restaurant and that is where D and I had dinner the night we got married and remains as one of my top five meals ever.)

With her dramatic back story of Korean orphanhood, crazy kitchen wizardry, and fashion model beauty, Kristen might just one day land herself a television show of her very own. 

Now that would be unreal.

Fish Tale

I am a big fan of John Tesar.  The "most hated chef in Dallas" (the title in a D magazine feature about him last year) is actually a compelling, if complicated, guy.  He resuscitated the Mansion on Turtle Creek from two decades of stultifying, smoky Southwestern cuisine (now available at a Fearing's near you!) and opened Cedars Social to well-deserved gastronomic fanfare.  Though short-lived, his Commissary at One Arts Plaza boasted the best burgers in town.  After a too-early departure from this season's Top Chef (felled by the danged Curse of the Risotto) he opened Spoon Bar and Kitchen in swanky Preston Center late last year.  Last night, we had reservations and were excited to dine there.

Surprisingly mellow at 8:45 on a Saturday night (several empty tables and a twenty person bar with three people seated at it), we were none the less informed by the dim-witted, albeit perky, hostess that our table would be ready in a few minutes.  Although seemingly a ruse to force cocktail purchase in the bar, we happily complied.  FYI they don't have Skyy, Stoli, or Absolut, just Tito's, Grey Goose, and Belvedere.  (Not sure if this is vodka snobbery or just a limited imagination.)  There were 15 workers aimlessly milling about behind the bar like newly minted zombies and we were asked 4 times if we'd been helped--once even after our drinks had been served. After 15 minutes the hostess with the leastest came over and offered to seat us at a deuce three feet from the front door bathed in the unflattering light of a Payless Shoe Store.  We declined, saying we'd rather sit somewhere that didn't reek of Loser's Aroma. (I didn't actually say that, but I thought it really loud.)

5 minutes later she offered us a table closer to the center of the restaurant (which had been sitting empty the whole time we'd been there) and at last we were seated and watered.  Our very tall waiter came over and mumbled something without lowering himself to ear level.  ("What?" became the secret word of the night--though I never won a hundred dollars.)  It turned out he'd said he was going to bring us dinner menus.  We were thunderstruck by this unforeseeable pronouncement.

That menu is nine months pregnant with dollar signs and decimal points.  The a la carte entrees ranged from $38 to $75.  ($75?  My wallet tearfully whimpered and then threw up in its mouth a little bit.) Most of the offerings hovered in the high forties.  Reeling from sticker shock, I was relieved when a food runner plunked down a complimentary amuse bouche.  I don't know what it was but it tasted like fish armpits.  Since fish don't have arms I guess this was a minor triumph.

I ordered a fried clam salad thingy (oops, they'd just run out of that, sighed the Food Whisperer) so instead got the "market price" salade du jour, which turned out to be a $12 decent if tiny roasted beet and goat cheese number which cameoed on every menu in the Western Hemisphere last year.  D got the Rick Noonen Clam Chowder, which John had cooked to great acclaim on Top Chef.  It tasted like a liquified salt lick.

About this time I realized I hated the damned place.  I hated the decor (white on white on white), and the pretentious menu (it has two afterthought non-fish entrees, both exorbitantly priced and asterisked with a terse reminder that "we are a fish restaurant." Okay then.)  I hated our clueless waiter.  (What?  I can see your lips moving but I can't freaking hear you!  I finally asked him to just use American Sign Language or Pictionary drawings.  He replied "what?")  I hated the table next to us (botox and deep cleavage on the women and Dockers on the men.  (Dockers on a Saturday night?  Or ever? Seriously?)

$45 worth of tepid lobster agnoli (a total of 5 slightly undercooked ravioli) and $39 for four overcooked scallops swimming in a silky, salty broth with delicious baby carrots later, we were anxious to make like a baby and head out.  Our tab came in an envelope marked "The Damage" which I'd seen before and thought mildly amusing when it wasn't so true.

I still think you're a great chef and I look forward to your next venture, but sorry, John, I'd rather stab a knife in my thigh than fork over any more of my dough at your Spoon.