Dallas is enjoying a boom in restaurant tasting menus. If you want to put your trust in a gifted chef and let them hit you with five to 12 courses of surprises, you’ve never had more options.
Funnily enough, this trend is independent of the arrival of the Michelin Guide. Michelin is notorious for its preference for chef-driven upscale dining; it’s almost impossible for a restaurant to earn or two or three stars without a long chef’s-choice tasting menu. As new tastings arrive on the Dallas market, you’d be forgiven for guessing that Michelin is the cause of the trend.
That’s not so. Georgie planned to change its “Taste of Georgie” from a tour of the main menu’s highlights to off-menu specials even before Michelin announced its arrival in Texas. Rye was plotting the same move. Our omakase sushi wave reached Dallas before Michelin did, and Marcello Andres Ceramics began hosting private dinners before we knew about the Guide. Maybe Dallasites are simply ready to splurge on culinary adventure again.
Guided by a selfless sense of civic duty, I’m in the middle of trying all these multi-hour tastings. We’ve already published our omakase comparison guide. I want to take a moment, now, to praise an 11-course dinner that’s tremendous fun from first bite to last: Rye’s.
Talk to Rye leaders Taylor Rause, Jay Vopatek, and Tanner Agar afterwards—you probably will; they offer tasting menu guests a visit to the kitchen after dessert—and you will understand just how seriously they take this assignment, and how they use the menu to push their own limits. But the experience as a guest is pure fun. This is Rye’s game: serve sophisticated food that’s well outside the Dallas canon, but do it with such whimsy and lack of ego that diners will happily tag along for the ride.
You’ll recognize this style at work starting with the first bites of the tasting menu. First, a server will offer you tiny black hand towels. A few finger-food nibbles later, the hand towels will be back—only this time, they’re edible, made from rice paper and rolled up around a filling of grana Padano cheese and porchetta rillettes. At times like these, you’ll remember that Rye’s sister bar, Apothecary, spent several months serving a through-the-looking-glass Alice in Wonderland menu.
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Now let’s rewind to those finger-food bites. With equal cheek, Rye’s first salvo is “dessert for dinner,” three little savory snacks made to look or sound like dessert. Pecan cheesecake! (But it’s blue cheese.) Cannoli! (But the filling is crabmeat and it’s topped with caviar.) What can I say? I’m a sucker for a culinary magic trick.
Several of the larger courses have elements of trickery, too. Rye plates what looks like a classic steak tartare, complete with raw egg yolk in the center—only the “tartare” is a vegan blend of carrots, beets, and fava beans, plated on a round slice of challah and topped with a spherified yellow coconut milk “yolk.” The result is a light, refreshing plate, creamy without containing cream.
A few courses after that “tartare,” a bloody slab of meat will land on your table: a long, thin, marbled cut that tapers toward one end. But it’s not meat; it’s lasagna, intentionally untidy and made with beet Bolognese and thinly-spread goat cheese. On the side of the plate, dots of goat cheese emulsion and pea puree add touches of richness and freshness that complete your bite.
It’s not all pranks and trickery. At least half of the food on Rye’s tasting menu is what it appears to be. No deceptions with the miniature beef cheek taco: the meat is braised for six hours, topped with an emulsified beef tallow and mezcal sauce, and served on a tiny butter-grilled tortilla. (It’s served on a beautifully-carved stand made by local woodworker Grace Tudor.) No mystery about the half quail served over a stuffing made with cornbread and rabbit chorizo. And there’s certainly no hiding the star ingredient of “corn-ucopia,” a dish that stacks an ultra-flavorful tamal, huitlacoche, grits, a scoop of corn ice cream, and blue corn tortilla chips.
If I could make a tweak to the present format, I’d reduce the size of the meaty mains; right now, it’s genuinely hard to save room for dessert. And you need to save room for dessert. Especially the last one, which seems calculated for the holiday season with its flavors of candied rosemary and spruce. Yes, that’s a tiny pinecone garnishing your chocolate espresso cake, and yes, you should eat it.
Since I first dined at Rye—more than a year after it opened, which I confess here so you know your narrator can be slow on the uptake sometimes—I’ve been infatuated with its creativity and the way it democratizes high-end cooking. There were times in the past when Rye’s imagination exceeded its technique in small ways; maybe a texture wasn’t as crispy or smooth as intended, such as the mushroom crepe topped with a broth that turned the batter into mush. This summer, as a vacation-themed pop-up, and this fall, with its new tasting menu, the kitchen has matured in its technique and resourcefulness, and is doing the most finessed work it ever has.
In fact, this tasting fits comfortably alongside one-Michelin-starred meals I’ve had around the world. It’s adventurous, whimsical, and stubbornly individualist in a global fine dining landscape that tends toward homogeneity. It is executed with a technical skill and refinement that may not be in the two-star ranks, but doesn’t need to be, either. I don’t know if Rye will get its star this fall, since the Michelin inspectors likely didn’t have time to try the new offerings, but I know the judges will return.
Now let’s stop talking about Michelin. With taxes and the pre-paid, built-in tip, Rye’s new tasting menu is almost $250. That’s a special-occasion price, yes. And it is a special occasion. Look at your calendar and pick a random weeknight to celebrate soon. You have pinecones, edible towels, caviar cannoli, and mezcal sauce to go try.
1920 Greenville Ave.
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