Dinner last week at Craft Dallas, including halibut with a light broth and chorizo; swordfish with Cerignola olive tapenade and a heritage pork chop (Leslie Brenner)
The W Hotel in Victory Park will close its four-star restaurant, Craft Dallas,?and replace it with Cook Hall, a gastropub from Culinary Concepts, Jean-Georges Vongerichten?s restaurant group. Teresa Gubbins has the story on Pegasus News, and I just received a press release that confirms, as I waited for a confirmation call-back from the W Hotel. According to the release, Craft will close at summer?s end and Cook Hall will open in early fall. Ghostbar will close too, later this month.
?Reminiscent of a chef?s gathering place,? says the release, ?Cook Hall will be reconfigured to allow for more social dining with a focus on quality food and drink. The restaurant will add a new bar and flow?more openly into the hotel?s Living Room (W?s take on the traditional hotel lobby) as well as offer shareable small-plates to encourage the social experience. Cook Hall?s pricing will be moderate to upscale.?
I have mixed feelings about the change. As coincidence would have it, I dined at Craft last week, and much of what I ate was terrific, even if it wasn?t up to the impressive level of cooking when Jeff Harris (now at Bolsa) ran the kitchen there. I loved a starter of cured hamachi (yellowtail) with a gorgeous, velvety texture, paired with tiny cubes of delicately flavored Champagne grape gel?e and tiny Champagne grapes, and quite liked some spinach-filled mezzaluna pasta with preserved lemon. Chef Tim Bevins gave rabbit rillettes a fresh interpretation rather than going rich and fatty as is traditional and pairing it with an assortment of house-made sweet pickles ? carrots, onions and such. The best dish was a superb heritage pork rib chop, beautifully cooked and festooned with smoked bacon; I loved a tomatoey gratin of okra topped with bread crumbs (Bevins kept it light by doing without cheese in the gratin).
I did notice that the wine list offered far fewer interesting choices than it used to, and it was extremely pricey.
The dining room, on a weekend night, felt a bit deserted. There were diners, but all were tucked away in the round booths lining one side of the restaurant, with few, if anyone, in the center. It made me sad: such good cooking, and so few there to enjoy it. I think Dallas diners are moving farther away from wanting to eat in hotel dining rooms.
It is a consolation that Vongerichten?s group is bringing in a restaurant; from what I?ve experienced at Spice Market in New York, the company does a good job. (Vongerichten?s flagship New York restaurant, Jean Georges, is wonderful too, but that?s not part of the Culinary Concepts group.) Perhaps it?s a smart thing to put in something more casual there. But I hope Gubbins is wrong about the TV ? huge screens are distracting from good food in dining rooms all over town.
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