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Kitchen Spy

In creating a namesake restaurant, exuberant Dallas chef Dean Fearing made “no rules” the one rule he follows.  Katherine Gregor reports.

“I didn’t want to go down any old roads, I wanted to blaze new trails,” drawls Texas chef-celebre Dean Fearing discussing the tabletop design for Fearing’s, the restaurant he opened in August at the newRitz-Carlton in Dallas.  That same excitement at blazing fresh territory defines the 18 month love fest he had creating his own place from soup to nuts and bolts.  The Texas maverick, who more than 20 years ago distilled Tex, Mex, and Lonesome Cowboy into a new Southwestern culinary idiom, is again pushing barriers at Fearing’s, and having a hell of a good time doing it.

On a hard-hat tour during restaurant construction, the gregarious chef with the big smile and booming voice raved about “reinvention,” “reinvigoration,” and a new menu diners would find “refreshing.”  After two decades at the helm of a corporate-owned restaurant – Dallas’ beloved Mansion on Turtle Creek– Fearing relished the opportunity to start over as a chef/owner with complete creative control and a lavish $6 million budget to design a restaurant from scratch.  Fearing’s concept: “It all starts with my personality and flows from there.”

It’s true.  What’s so appealing about Dean – everyone calls him Dean, from his dishwashers to high profile guests like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones – is his big heart, fueling a down-home authenticity that belies his sophisticated smarts.  Energetic, upbeat, big in stature, and people-oriented, Dean is a human campfire who draws others to his warmth, a key reason wealthy Dallasites stayed loyal to the Mansion all those years.  But the Mansion was a formal place, and Dean is a casual kind of guy.  His Texas schtick is both knowing and real-deal – the blue jeans, colorful Lucchese cowboy boots, and the vintage 1955 Fender Telecaster guitar he plays in his alternative country band, the Barbwires.  But just as authentic are the chef’s high ambitions, refined taste, and exacting attention to detail, all of which inform the complexity of his cooking.  That same provocative duality defines Fearing’s, the restaurant: two-stepping on the chef’s knife’s edge where unpretentious meets urbane.

Many had tried to lure Fearing from the Mansion on Turtle Creek during his 21 years there, but it took a dream deal to make him jump.  More than anything Fearing, 52, had yearned to break away from staid coat-and-tail elegance: “I don’t want to be a fancy restaurant in town, and I don’t care about critics and numbers of stars,” he explains.  What he did want was to get back on the radar of adventurous younger foodies and to give back to the Dallas food scene.

“I wanted to be free!” says Fearing.  He has made “no rules” the mantra of his restaurant – no dress code, no protocol, no reservations required to grab a stool and dine by the kitchen. “You want to order a five course dinner in the bar? Be my guest.”

In 2005, Denny Alberts, a longtime friend and former executive of Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, which owns the Mansion, presented the offer he finally couldn’t refuse: build a signature restaurant to his own design with Ritz-Carlton affiliation.  Alberts is president and COO of Crescent Real Estate Equities Company, the developer and owner of the new Ritz-Carlton Dallas.  The Ritz has 218 high-end hotel rooms, a huge full-service spa, and 70 exclusive residences.  Fearing knew well the advantages of being attached to a luxury hotel.  He negotiated co-ownership in the restaurant, with culinary and creative control and a 50-50 financial partnership.  “You are integral to every step of this operation,” Alberts told his new chef.  “You will be the final decision maker, in every area – purchasing, planning, interior design, kitchen design – this is your restaurant.”  Over the thump of his fast-beating heart, Fearing recognized the sound he heard: Opportunity, knocking real loud.

Fearing’s concept was compelling enough that Ritz-Carlton agreed to a space-licensing arrangement for its restaurant.  That ensured the chef would have not just ownership but his yearned-for freedom from any corporate master.  Fearing says it’s the first time Ritz-Carlton has agreed to house an independent chef-owned restaurant, a unique down-to-the wire deal that took 11 anxious months to negotiate.

It’s testimony to Fearing’s culinary stature that he could command such a chef’s dream of a deal.  Two decades ago, he rose with the first wave of region-defining American chefs.  In Texas, he enjoyed camaraderie with his rising-star peers – including Stephan Pyles and Robert Del Grande, with whom Fearing still plays in the Barbwires. (He used his time off between restaurants to cowrite and record 12 songs for a new CD, Bliss and Blisters; in addition to Houston’s Del Grande, the cookin’ band features honky-tonk saxophonist Johnny Reno from Fort Worth.)  At a time when few classically trained chefs knew a tortilla from a tea towel, Culinary Institute of America graduate Fearing electrified diners with his signature warm lobster taco with yellow tomato salsa.

During that heady era of creative culinary energy, Fearing rewrote the fine dining menu for nouveau riche Dallas.  He dared to use classical French techniques on Tex-Mex ingredients like serrano peppers, jicama, tomatillos, masa, cilantro, and avocado.  At Primo’s, his favorite after-hours hangout, he instituted a communal “chef’s call,” where, in a friendly spirit of kitchen solidarity, Dallas chefs and restaurant staff shared news and ideas and brought in visitors like Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, and Jacques Pépin to pep up the culinary cross-pollination.  But 21 years is a long time to sustain a reputation for creative cachet at any one restaurant.  Gradually, the Mansion fell off the hot-and-trendy map.  Still, Fearing sustained his own stature with cookbooks, magazine covers, three television shows, a line of food products (sauces, dressings, tortilla soup), and continued excellence in the kitchen.

For all his talk about casual dining, Fearing’s success will depend upon his continued pull with Dallas’ moneyed set – ladies-who-lunch in lavish Neiman-Marcus ensembles, oil-world investors who order $500 bottles of red wine to go with their $50 rib eye steaks.  For the adventurous and well-off, his menu offers maple/black peppercorn buffalo tenderloin on jalapeño coarse-ground grits and crispy butternut squash tacos.  Those with humbler tastes and pocketbooks can splurge on a $16 burger with fries in the bar.

Fearing’s has a separate entrance in Dallas’ new 21-story Ritz-Carlton, a buff brick and limestone tower reminiscent of a New York apartment building from a more gracious era.  Given the opportunity to select the restaurant’s interior designer, Fearing told Alberts to “get a guy who’s hungry to come into Dallas, then tell him it has to be the best thing Dallas has ever seen.”  Fearing selected fellow Southerner Bill Johnson; top restaurants designed by The Johnson Studio in its hometown of Atlanta includeRathbun’s, Aria, Jo?l, and Bluepointe.

In a melding of minds, kicked off by “three days going to the mountaintop together,” Fearing and Johnson developed a sophisticated luxurious vision for Fearing’s that hits the sweet spot between contemporary and timeless.  Predominant tones include dark chocolate, café-au-lait, terra-cotta, golden honey, and biscuit beige.  Lending the interior a stylish visual complexity are illuminated panels of glowing honey onyx, African mahogany paneling, and large-scale commissioned artwork with nontraditional Texas imagery.  Art glass reappears in chandeliers, panels, and glass tile, even in the gorgeous restrooms.

The restaurant’s entry hall doesn’t reveal the dining rooms, instead creating the anticipatory mystery of a stage just before curtain time.  As five different dining rooms (one outdoor) and two bars (indoor and outdoor) each possesses its own distinct décor and character, returning diners can have a repeatedly fresh experience.  Fearing sees the concept of a restaurant with seven different venues as a prototype that could go nationwide.  Three dining areas – the Gallery, Sendero, and Ocaso – each seats 44.  The Gallery is the one white tablecloth dining room, with a more formal feel.  By contrast, the octagonal Sendero (“path” in Spanish) is light and open with window-walls, patio views, and garden room furnishings.  Ocaso (“sunset” in Portuguese) offers outdoor patio dining enlivened by three waterworks and a miniature park.  The cozy, cellar-like Wine Room seats private parties of up to 16.

But the major space is Dean’s Kitchen, an L-shaped dining area that wraps around the kitchen, where up to 60 diners can view the culinary staff at work.  An eight-top chef’s table and a long counter with stools look directly onto the long gleaming stainless-steel chef’s counters and cabinetry of the display kitchen. One counter is granite-topped.  Diners get an eye and earful of final preparation and pickups, obliging expediters to keep their cool at all times.  Separating the front and back kitchens, and bringing the richness of the interior design right up to the Jade ranges, is a striking art-glass panel with a chocolate-and-honey willow pattern motif.  Fearing calls it “one of the most important design elements Bill Johnson did for me.”  He loves the way the semi-opaque panel partially reveals to diners the silhouettes of active cooks in the back kitchen.

Just as he partnered with Johnson on the interiors, Fearing worked closely with designer Sean Callnin from the Denver office of Ricca Newmark Design, on mapping out a 2,100-square-foot kitchen with $225,000 in equipment.  Ricca Newmark had already designed and planned a kitchen to the Ritz standard; when Fearing signed on, that was scrapped and a new kitchen was designed to Fearing’s specs, making it “a real stretch to keep the project on schedule,” according to project director George Perry. (The Ritz-Carlton also has a separate kitchen for hotel event catering and room service.)  At Fearing’s request, for example, the chef’s counters were custom-built by Florida Stainless Fabricators to a 39-inch height instead of the 33-inch standard.  “Oh Lordy! It’s so much better for my back!” explains the 6-foot-plus chef.

Giving a kitchen tour, he stops to admire his custom glass-front stainless-steel wall cabinets as another man might gaze upon his custom sports car: “Are these not beautiful?! I’m not kidding! I’m just in love!” His special sweethearts: custom-fabricated pull drawers built into the chef’s counter.  Across from the deep fryer, he points out a nifty pull-drawer breading station.  The dessert and pastry station has a handy pull drawer dedicated to just nuts.  Nearby, ice cream scoops have their own wells, handy when plating the mascarpone ice cream accompaniment to a caramelized peach/almond crisp with ginger/peach sauce or the coconut ice cream plated with another reinterpreted favorite, banana cream pie.

“After 21 years at the Mansion, to have my own kitchen with my own designs is really amazing.  So many long-time frustrations fixed!” he exclaims.  Details he loves include the extra-commodious garnish tops, spoon wells with tiny sinks for each chef, and “double-wide” pick up line that efficiently accommodates two 12-inch dinner plates across its width.

There’s also a separate fully equipped kitchen and pick up area just for bar food – lobster tostadas, quesadillas, yakitori, a cheese plate, and that ultimate burger.  “I didn’t want the bar food coming off the main line,” Fearing explains.  “It’s too confusing.  I did it for 21 years, but if you can separate them, it’s a wonderful thing.  This way, it helps flow and circulation.  On the main line we can concentrate on picking up the entrées, without getting crunched in.”  Over 40 staff work together in the kitchen each night.

For cooking equipment, he went with Jade ranges, cooktops, griddle tops, and ovens.  While for most stations he specified Frymaster fryers, he couldn’t resist the round sculptural form of a Cleveland lowboy kettle: “I bought it because I fell in love with it! I just liked the look of it!” he sighs.  A vacuum sealer on wheels provides portable airtight storage.  A small Cookshack smoker comes in handy for smoked salmon.  A separate sous chef box ensures restricted access to culinary valuables like caviar and truffles. A Fearing favorite is a giant walk-in cooler measuring 19 feet by 8 feet 4 inches.  “I’m lovin’ that!”

Critical to his menu are two Aztec mesquite wood-fired broilers.  They’re used nightly for mesquite-grilled mahimahi painted with browned butter flavored with red plum and basil, then plated over roasted candy-stripe beets and pole beans.  Another wood-grilled dinner entrée, lamb chops flavored with coriander, is served on sweet-and-sour eggplant alongside crisp red onion rings.

Onion rings are a recurring theme on the menu; dipped in a Shiner beer batter and deep-fried, they’re kissing cousins to the all-American drive-in food that Fearing also loves.  “I get more great ideas in dives, because you can see where you can spin it,” he says.  He’s been known to extol the pleasures of eating a Fletcher’s corny dog drenched in yellow mustard at the State Fair of Texas.  As a Fearing’s starter, three big crisp onion rings are served atop an heirloom tomato salad, crumbled with Vermont blue cheese and accompanied by two dressings, basil and jalapeño/ranch.  The chef sources many Texas and regional food and products: farm-to-market produce like beefsteak tomatoes and Parker County peaches, quail and bison from Maverick Creek Ranch near Eden in the Texas Hill Country, Texas-grown microgreens and herbs, handcrafted Guernsey-milk butter and cheese from Lucky Layla Farms outside Dallas.  But he also riffs slyly on de rigueur regionalism: as a pre-dessert, diners are surprised by a tiny Dr. Pepper float, the soda fountain pride of Waco, Texas.

A barbequed shrimp taco, mopped in sauce from the original Sonny Bryan’s in Dallas, sounds like a simple enough starter.  But Fearing pushes its limits by tucking the grilled shrimp and some jalapeño Jack cheese into a house-made tortilla and topping it with a marinated red onion salad with mango. Resting on slivered green cabbage wetted with a smoky citrus vinaigrette, the ensemble is garnished with smoked pecans, cilantro, and colorful julienned bell peppers.  Too many flavors? No.  Somehow it all works together brilliantly.

Another “no rules” tenet: The food doesn’t have to be Southwestern.  While most menu items radiate Southwestern/Texas flair, others are Asian-inspired.  A standout is the hamachi starter.  Dusted with five-spice powder, the yellowtail (amberjack) is flash-seared, sauced with wasabi-spiked avocado, then plated with spicy ponzu and a jade basil salad.  The pheasant entrée is a Texas game bird flavored with orange and ginger, served over sesame/shrimp stir-fried rice, and garnished with tempura white asparagus and morels.

Fearing’s menu also reflects a commitment to healthy eating.  He uses soy milk in place of cream for all dishes except desserts.  All plates feature fresh vegetables.  He even uses a reduced turkey stock in place of brown sauce.  “It just feels lighter,” says Fearing.

Just as important, he wants a staff who treats people as he would.  To make his restaurant an extension of his personality, he needs a team to mirror his own strengths – attention to detail, people skills, genuine warmth, talent, and drive to excel.  “That was a huge fear, that I’d never be able to find the right group,” he says.  But he needn’t have worried: By all accounts, he’s the kind of boss for whom good people jump to work.  “He’s a genuinely nice person,” says Bill Mabus, a partner in Crescent Real Estate who worked with him on Fearing’s.  “I keep looking for the dark side of Dean, and there isn’t one!”

Fearing enjoyed the slower pace of life between restaurants; he got to spend more time with his wife,Lynae (who co-owns the hip Pan-Asian Shinsei with Tracy Rathbun, wife of Dallas chef Kent Rathbun of Abacus) and their two sons, ages 7 and 9, with whom he got to watch classic horror movies every Saturday night.  But all the time, he was seeking younger versions of himself: “warm, honest, kind, genuine personalities who put hospitality first.”

Networking nationwide, he discovered personable Vermont native Joel Harrington, whom he tapped as chef de cuisine.  Next in command is executive sous chef Eric Dryer, who takes charge of lunch.  He gives both a certain amount of autonomy, nothing that “a little ownership goes a long way.”  He means that literally.  Top staff could become partners in the restaurant one day, with opportunities to take the Fearing’s concept on the road.

He tapped only two staff with whom he’d worked previously – wine director Paul Botamer and pastry chef Jill Bates.  For all other positions, he sought out fresh faces nationally.  Vacationing in Maui, he rediscovered Alex Aland and knew he’d found his maître d’.  In Florida he found Holland nativeWinfred van Workhum, who excels at training and mentoring; he hired his restaurant manager,Justin Beam, in part for his “great smile.”  The youth of his team means the midlife Fearing gets to do a lot of the mentoring.  “They’re kids with hearts of gold,” he enthuses.  “They’re young, but they’re learning. We can help them grow.”  In the early weeks he was regularly demonstrating techniques for cooks, correcting mistakes, and even delivering plates to diners. (“People love that!”)

“We work as a team, and I’m right there with them,” he insists, sounding less like a nationally known veteran chef than a bison ranch forman on branding day.  At Fearing’s the exuberant namesake has already achieved something even more important to him than a critic’s stars.  “People say they’ve never worked at a happier place.”

By BILL ADDISON / Restaurant Critic

How does a celebrity chef unshackle himself from flattering but limiting perceptions to reinvent his future? And how, in the process, can he captivate a fresh culinary audience without alienating a generation of longtime devotees?

Take a gander at the crowd at Fearing’s in the Ritz-Carlton Dallas for some insight into those meaty questions.

A senatorial gentleman in one room unhurriedly spoons tortilla soup into his mouth. His whole body seems intent on the bowl before him, but the nostalgia in his eyes suggests his mind is meandering through two decades of memories.

Across the way, three preternaturally blond women confab over a bottle of 2003 Silver Oak Cabernet. One discreetly nods at a table of handsome thirtysomething businessmen, all wearing ties made of a silk so fine you can appreciate the texture across the room.

Outside, at the Live Oak bar, a guy in leather pants waits for his friend to grapple with the hotel’s disgruntling valet snarl. He’s patient, mostly because he’s deeply enjoying his $17 glass of Pappy Van Winkle’s, an artisan bourbon aged to mosaic richness.

Dean Fearing, the boot-wearing force behind this labyrinth of luxury, chats up these folks and nearly everyone else in the place. With his improbably charming demeanor that combines the aw-shucks-ma’am cordiality of Roy Rogers with the maniacal ebullience of the Emcee from Cabaret, Mr. Fearing has single-handedly drawn the eyes of the nation’s style arbiters back to the Dallas dining scene.

He is so at home at the helm of his new show that his storied history as an ’80s progenitor of Southwestern cuisine and his 21-year reign as the chef at The Mansion on Turtle Creek could easily vaporize into the annals of time as pivotal but obsolete steppingstones. Fearing’s right-now design is alive with striking detail in such a way that, more so than in other restaurants, it becomes an active part of the experience, just as a city sometimes functions as a dynamic character in a novel or film.

But the olden days have a tenacious way of clinging to one’s sensibilities, and that shows in the menu. Much of it trudges over too-familiar ground, creating a tug-of-war between Mr. Fearing’s professional present and past. Happily, at the most recent of three review meals, I tasted dishes that wriggled ever closer to the current moment in American cooking, even as I fell more and more in love with the restaurant’s all-out elegance.

THE SPACE

There are three solid reasons to show up early for reservations at Fearing’s:

• The valet situation can be a congested mess that, during peak times, involves a trail of cars backed up onto McKinney Avenue.

• Once inside, you’ll want to take a discreet stroll through the restaurant and decide in which dining room you’d like to encamp for the evening.

• Most important, when you lay eyes on either of the restaurant’s come-hither bars, you’ll be relieved you left time to slurp up the details over a martini or Manhattan. There’s much scenery to behold.

When Fearing’s opened in August, word was that the Rattlesnake Bar, the gateway to the restaurant from the hotel’s lobby, attracted an older crowd. That still seems true, perhaps because it swiftly became a de facto gathering spot for local businesspeople as well as corporate travelers. The design’s timelessness lends itself to white-collar meetings of the mind: Chocolaty woods look melted into place around doorframes and leather wall panels, while stately couches and chairs bolster quiet, intense conversation.

But the backlit honey onyx that flows around the actual bar gives this nook some sci-fi titillation. Incredible what nature produces: The swirling pattern in the onyx resembles a sepia-toned map of Mars’ surface.

As for the younger patrons, they’ve all congregated at the Live Oak bar. The tableau of beauty out there is almost intimidating: couples slouching on low-slung furniture, the women’s casually dangling feet showing off their latest shoe purchases, the men in their designer jeans and blazers rustling the ice in their glasses. In the winter, that swanky outdoor fireplace will be billowing a whole new bonfire of the vanities.

Finished with your cocktail? Everyone convenes at the hostess stand to be seated in one of four settings that vary dramatically in style and formality (a fifth realm, the Wine Cellar, is reserved for private parties of up to 16 people). Though the reality is probably much more practical, I’ve concocted a whole fantasy wherein the black-clad staffers who greet you here operate as a collective Sorting Hat, a la Harry Potter: Your essential character (or at least your wardrobe) dictates in which of the distinct rooms you’ll be dining.

After years in the Mansion’s starched surroundings, Mr. Fearing very publicly declared that Fearing’s would have no dress code, and that the same menu would be offered throughout the restaurant. That being said, the most casually dressed patrons are often ushered into Dean’s Kitchen, the restaurant’s buzzing command center. It’s bright and noisy, but not uncomfortably so. Even through the diverting hustle of the open kitchen and the bustling to-and-fro of servers retrieving plates, the juicy design details finessed by Atlanta’s Johnson Studio pop out: the ascending loops of rawhide stitching on boxy light fixtures, the translucent wall behind the stoves splattered with black squiggles that are surely meant to reference Jackson Pollock.

The distinguished gentleman savoring Mr. Fearing’s signature tortilla soup? He belongs in the Gallery, the most buttoned-up room, which remarkably evades being stuffy. The light in here is the color of clarified butter, thanks in part to two bamboo-shaped chandeliers that look as if they were fashioned from sugar. Willy Wonka would happily dine under them, perhaps parked in one of the droll, oversized Mad Hatter chairs set at various tables around the room. Honey onyx runs prominently through the Gallery as well. Both it and the huge, weathered antique mirror look like portals to other worlds.

The women sipping cabernet have an air that harmonizes with the Sendero, a calming, glass-walled room that miraculously makes wicker furniture appear fetching. Though the staffers unfailingly try to accommodate whichever setting customers request, I always secretly hope without saying anything that I’ll end up in this space, mostly because of the Murano chandelier. Its majestic, bow tie pasta-shaped ornaments hang roughly in the form of an egg, swaying softly and hypnotically. It adds a fairy-tale quality to the place.

Lastly, there’s the Ocaso patio, laid out among blue-tiled fountains and precisely shorn topiary (note the red chile pepper plants in the garden patch). It has a unique dual appeal: The rippling shadows at night give the tables a cinematic sort of romance, yet I’ve seen solo diners contentedly ensconced out here as well.

The collective atmosphere at Fearing’s epitomizes the direction that fine dining is headed in America: accessible, versatile, heady but tangible.

Perhaps that’s why some of the throwback themes in the cooking clash so discordantly with the expectations established by the space.

THE FOOD

Five basic tastes are ascribed to the human palate: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (meaty or brothy). Some cultures include spicy on that list. Mr. Fearing wholeheartedly embraces another: smoky.

On a menu where roughly half the offerings conjure Southwestern cuisine’s halcyon days (with the other half dedicated to more contemporary New American and Asian vantage points), smokiness seeps into too many dishes. It bullies every other flavor in Dean’s Tortilla Soup, a revamped recipe from Mr. Fearing’s Mansion days. It pricks the taste buds jarringly in the barbecued shrimp taco, another reworked Mansion classic that once included lobster (and at $20 for an appetizer, I wish it still incorporated the tonier crustacean). Its presence in the Caesar dressing whomps this variation of the salad at lunch. The mesquite wood used in the kitchen’s grill imparts a smokiness that trumps even the assertive, though pleasant, gaminess of coriander-crusted lamb chops.

Of course, smoke can be a sly charmer when employed with the appropriate proteins. Case in point: a big brute of a rib eye is mopped over the mesquite grill. Even the smell of the meat beguiles the senses without bludgeoning them.

But smokeless meat provides gratifying variety: Buffalo tenderloin, for example, is marinated in maple syrup, whose layered sweetness augments the meat’s natural savor. The preparation lets the lean, moist tenderloin take its place of pride among silky jalapeño grits, a tuft of garlicky spinach and a fun, crisp butternut squash taquito that mingles with the maple to evoke autumn.

Meals have a gracious rhythm at Fearing’s that begins with a simple amuse-bouche such as roasted potato vichyssoise. But an old-school propensity toward too many ingredients in a single dish can disrupt the directness established by those focused teasers. Other folks rave about the signature surf ‘n’ turf number, but I don’t find the appeal. Filet mignon is spiked with a compound butter whose cuminy spice mix tastes like something best left in 1988. And chicken-fried lobster? Thick batter simply doesn’t complement the seafood. The surprise contender on this entree is the spinach enchilada. Its filling, though thoroughly infused with dairy, still tastes essentially of leafy greens. Can you order those a la carte?

Barbecued oysters get lost in a hide-and-go-seek of artichokes, spinach and Gulf crabmeat. Sea scallops on brussels sprouts leaves with bits of Virginia ham aren’t well-married by a tangerine essence. It’s an intriguing mix of ingredients that still needs tweaking.

And speaking of tweaking, I’m praying that Mr. Fearing rethinks the fried chicken served on Sunday nights. The skin is soggy! The tomato gravy tastes like liquid smoke! The supposedly “all day green beans” had a crispness that indicated they were steamed for only seven minutes! That $28 Southern fiasco was my single biggest disappointment.

Ah, but then Mr. Fearing and his cooks can surprise you with some modern, provocatively executed enchantments. On my last visit, I marveled over duck breast graced with smashed sweet potatoes and a jammy huckleberry glaze. On the side was a nicely bitter frisee salad with a lump of duck confit nestled in its frizzled limbs. And in the corner sat a prim square of foie gras terrine whose flavor brought every other element on the plate back to an unctuous neutral. Excessive? Yep, but thrillingly cohesive, too.

The most distinguished among Mr. Fearing’s Asian dabblings is soy-glazed black cod served with rice punctuated by hijiki (a feathery seaweed), a tempura shiso leaf (a Japanese herb akin to mint) and not-too-salty miso clam broth. Cilantro shoots give a fresh, Chinese perspective to a lunch entree of Alaskan halibut prepared in the Spanish escabeche style.

Lunch also furnishes Fearing’s most understated salad: a tight disk of peeky toe crab with languid slices of avocado, sweet pepper confit and a laudably subtle smoked carrot-cumin vinaigrette.

THE SERVICE

The servers delivering this culinary roller coaster gained gracefulness on each of my visits. At first, many of them wore expressions of barely contained panic. Only sommelier Paul Botamer had his cool from the opening moment. His assistant sommeliers needed fine-tuning, but they’ve caught on to recommending interesting varietals to those of us not willing to spend triple digits on a bordeaux. Now, in the eye of the publicity storm around this restaurant, the service team is navigating the arch of meals with more confidence.

My tablemates and I have always developed a warm rapport with our servers by dessert time, which makes us suckers for ordering more than we have room to devour. The sweets are actually the most consistently accomplished aspect of the meal: Butterscotch pudding (that tastes, to me anyway, like the coveted cake batter left over in the bowl) gilded with crunchy apple fritters. A dreamy banana pie crowned with a thunderhead of meringue. A plate of whimsical cookies that include a Little Debbie-like concoction and a fudgy Valrhona brownie. Each dessert is clean and direct, with a winking nostalgia that still succeeds in a contemporary context.

So has Mr. Fearing liberated himself from the ghosts of Mansion past? Not quite yet, though he seems to be finding his footing evermore in the present. Maybe if fewer creations smacked of smoke …

At any rate, brave the valet, join the throngs and taste (and see!) for yourself what the city and national magazines are buzzing about. Fearing’s is as much an event as it is a restaurant.

by Alison Cook
Chef Dean Fearing’s one-of-a-kind laugh reverberates through the north Dallas mansion where he has gathered friends and family together for Thanksgiving dinner.  Part Woody Woodpecker cackle, part good ol’ boy guffaw, the sound bounces off the domed rotunda in the two-story library.

This Thanksgiving season is a heady time for Fearing.  After more than two decades as chef at one of Dallas’s most notable restaurants in one of its most luxurious hotels, the Mansion on Turtle Creek, he has just opened his own place, Fearing’s, in the city’s new Ritz-Carlton.  The fiercely ambitious project brings together a fistful of concepts: an elegant dining room; a casual, glassed-in garden pavilion; and indoor and outdoor bars.  There’s even a raucous space called Dean’s Kitchen with an open cooking area, decked out with rough oak paneling and glowing rawhide chandeliers.

A lanky eastern-Kentucky boy with a playful drawl, Fearing arrived in Dallas in 1979 as a cook at the Fairmont hotel’s Pyramid Room, then the city’s most celebrated restaurant.  He’d been headed there, in fits and starts, since junior high school, when his father, Tom, a Holiday Inn executive, pressed him and his older brother into service as kitchen jack-of-all-trades.  The family hopscotched all over the Midwest, wherever their dad’s job took them.  “We would fill in if the dishwasher got sick or the banquet chef got thrown in jail,” Fearing recalls.

A culinary arts program at a local community college eventually led Fearing to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.  “I ate up that school like a piece of chocolate,” he says.  Right out of the gate, he landed a job as saucier at Maisonette in Cincinnati, under the fabled Georges Haidon. “Everybody else in the kitchen was French,” Fearing recalls.  The leap to Dallas and the Pyramid Room – and from there to his long reign at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, starting in 1980 – made him one of city’s best-known chefs, and a leading proponent of New Southwestern cuisine, the elevated version of Tex-Mex food that was just starting to captivate the country.

These days, Fearing is moving away from the cooking genre he helped pioneer.  “I don’t want to be themed anymore!” he announces in a faintly self-mocking drawl.  He describes his new style as “the way we eat now,” and he works with more Asian touches and locally produced ingredients and uses healthier cooking techniques.  The new restaurant’s official motto is “Elevated American cuisine with bold flavors, no borders.”

As his Thanksgiving guests arrive, Fearing serves them freshly mixed blood orange margaritas.  The cocktails are an inspiration from Shinsei, the pan-Asian spot co-owned by Fearing’s wife, Lynae, which has been wildly popular since it opened in Dallas a year-and-a-half ago.  Lynae, a statuesque blonde who moves like the dancer she used to be, and the yoga teacher she now is, crosses the library in pursuit of her toddler nephew, Mason (she and Fearing have two sons, Jaxson, nine, and Campbell, seven).  En route to her young nephew, Lynae stops to chat with her Shinsei partner and friend, Tracy Rathbun – the wife of another celebrated Dallas chef, Kent Rathbun of Abacus and Jasper’s.

Soon, everyone gathers at the dinner table for the first course of Fearing’s vivid Thanksgiving menu, a testament to the relaxed, eclectic mode in which the chef is cooking now.  The smooth butternut squash soup is laced with ginger and topped with a pecan-spiked whipped cream, his riff on the heavy cream that is invariably added to holiday soups.
Fearing heads over to the glossy tangerine-and-sage-glazed turkey that sits on the buffet table.  His roasting methodology is tried and true, and he’s religious about cooking the bird for a strict 15 minutes per pound in a low and slow oven, basting every 15 to 30 minutes to keep the meat moist.  “I’m a real turkey-basting kinda guy,” he proclaims.  “It’s so important.”

He came by these convictions the hard way.  His childhood Thanksgiving memories are of his mother rising at 2 a.m. to put the turkey in the oven, where it would languish until 5 p.m. before emerging “as dry as the desert.”  After Fearing turned pro and got turkey religion, he jokes, “my family’s world turned.”

Now he stands over his masterwork with a carving knife as Lynae asks, “Can I please have some dark meat?”

“This is the Norman Rockwell moment that everyone loves,” says Fearing.  “But really, you should take the breast off the carcass and slice it across the grain, like meat loaf.  Cut it with the grain and you get shreds.”
The bird is perfect, and its tangerine glaze, with an alluring sage accent, gives the turkey a gorgeous, burnished color.  More tantalizing still is Fearing’s clever Texas answer to traditional cranberry relish: a lush, chunky combination of avocado and red pepper laced with pieces of caramelized onion.  The relish is also terrific with the jalapeño-tortilla turkey dressing, a beloved staple from Fearing’s Mansion years. Made up of crumbled, slightly sweet corn bread and earthy tortilla strips, the stuffing is baked so that it caramelizes a little where it hits the baking dish.  (Those well-browned pan scrapings are the bits worth fighting over.)
Once guests have carried their plates to the long dining table, for a few moments nothing is audible but the clinking of forks.  But Fearing’s parties don’t stay quiet for very long, and soon, the stories start rolling.  The Fearings’ friend Ashley Lavish, who is in Lynae’s yoga class, claims to have once won the title of Miss Austin.  “What was your talent?” deadpans Lynae.  “I twirled fire batons,” Lavish shoots back.

Amid the hubbub from the kids at the table, Greg O’Neal – who designed the bold green-and-brown interior of Shinsei, which includes photos of both the Fearing and Rathbun children – sits up in his chair at his first bite of Brussels sprouts in cranberry brown butter.  “These are amaaaaaazing,” he cries, drawing the word so far out it almost snaps in two.
Instead of predictable mashed potatoes, Fearing serves creamed onions infused with sage and thyme.  It’s an idea he dreamed up after Neil Manacle, the chef de cuisine at Bobby Flay’s Bar American in New York City, served him wilted greens in a little cream.  Fearing loved them, and he also loved Manacle’s recollection that for Thanksgiving, his grandmother creamed everything in sight.

Even the glossy green beans show Fearing at his best: He’s injected them with Kentucky-boy soul by adding country ham, and he’s folded in strips of salsify just because he likes it.  It’s low-key sophistication without a shred of self-importance.

Dessert arrives.  “I need a rest!” comes a groan from the table.  But soon the slices of lustrous pecan pie are gone, and attention turns to the individual pumpkin puddings capped with large swirls of meringue, a dessert that’s the result of a collaboration between Fearing and Jill Bates, the pastry chef at his new restaurant.  Tracy Rathbun makes her way over to Fearing’s elbow.  “I love the vanilla in the meringue,” she tells him.  “I told Lynae we should use it for the banana parfait with ginger snaps at Shinsei.”  But Fearing is busy making sure there won’t be any leftover pudding.  “No crust!” Fearing exhorts his lagging troops.  “Isn’t that great?”

by Judy Wiley

If you’re not planning on being in a cooking mood for Thanksgiving, or want to get out of town between then and Christmas, you have Texas options near and far. Some of them:

The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas: Fearing’s will serve a prix fixe menu for $95 adults, $45 children 12 and younger, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5 p.m.-9 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. The menu includes tangerine-glazed turkey with tortilla dressing, lamb chops, beef tenderloin and seafood. Reservations: 214-922-4848.

Dickens on the Strand, Galveston: Tickets are on sale for this annual event, a downtown Victorian holiday festival Dec. 1 and 2. Advance tickets are $9 adults, $4 for children ages 7-12. To get them online, go to www.dickensonthestrand.org or order by phone at 877-772-5425.

Hyatt Regency Hill Country, San Antonio: Thanksgiving brunch Nov. 22; attractions and events including a life-size gingerbread house that Saturday. Brunch is 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and costs $39.95 for adults, $20.50 for children ages 5-12 and free for children younger than 4. Reservations: 210-520-4080.

By Christine Perez

The expectations were high for Fearing’s, the new restaurant within the Ritz-Carlton Hotel & Residences in Uptown. But somehow, celebrity chef Dean Fearing has found a way to exceed them.

Besides scrumptious fare, the restaurant offers six or seven different dining settings, from a formal art-gallery-style room to the more boisterous Dean’s Kitchen, where diners can watch the food being prepared, and the Rattlesnake Bar.  In Dean’s Kitchen, you’ll also find a reservation-only Chef’s Table, a custom five-to seven-course meal.

My guest and I dined in Sendero, a sunny, glassed-in porch that offered a real sense of escape from the 9-to-5 hustle and bustle. The ambiance was relaxed and easy, but there were many elegant touches, such as a striking chandelier–750 ribbons of Murano glass individually strung from the ceiling – Rosenthal china and fresh orchids on the table.

But enough about the atmosphere; let’s talk about the food. I started with Dean’s tortilla soup ($12), a delicious favorite Fearing brought with him from his 21 years at The Mansion, while my guest opted for a delightfully fresh chilled asparagus with basil egg salad ($12). Appetizer options on the new menu (it changes every few weeks) include a barbecued shrimp taco with mango-pick-led red onion salad ($18) and butternut squash bisque with Main lobster ($16).

Main Fair: New lunch selections include chili-braised short rib with queso fresco whipped potatoes and crispy tobacco onions ($24), grilled pork tenderloin glazed with rosemary mustard and caramelized cauliflower on six-year cheddar macaroni ($25) and palm sugar-mopped tenderloin of beef with jalapeño grits and garlic spinach ($29).

My guest chose mesquite-grilled wild salmon glazed with apricot barbecue sauce, black-eyed peas and watercress salad ($24). She pronounced the flavor of the dish to be spot-on, and the salmon, melt-in-you-mouth tender. I selected the grilled-seared halibut with three-bean salad ($24). It was topped with a peach broth made with the rare Minus 8 wine vinegar, so named because the grapes are harvested and hand-pressed at a single winery in Canada – at 8 degrees Celsius. It was, in a word, fantastic. Alas, it’s no longer on menu. It’s been replaced in October by halibut with potato brandade and cilantro shoots ($22).

Dessert selections include a trio of melon sorbets with Midori mint sauce ($10) and a rich dark chocolate cake with white chocolate mousse, Maker’s Mark cherries and toasted marshmallows¬ – not the giant grocery stores, but homemade, hand-cut miniature squares ($10).

With his new restaurant, Fearing says his goal is to offer health food with bold flavors that have no borders. “I didn’t want to be painted into the Southwest cuisine circle,” he says. “I think of it as elevated American cuisine, sophisticated in the sense of ingredients and the technical methods of cooking.” Indeed.

Like a summer blockbuster that’ been anticipated for months, überchef Dean Fearing’s domain at the new Ritz-Carlton in Dallas finally opened for business in mid-August¬–and how. The seven dining rooms (yes, seven, each with its own ambience) filled up immediately, and the hotel’s Rattlesnake Bar  was colonized by the chic-oisie, all of whom were so busy craning their necks that they could barely answer each other’s on their iPhones. At the center of it all was the ever-genial Mr. Fearing, the city’s own Top Chef, receiving hugs, backslaps, and high fives. Talk about the Dean Machine.

His new digs are intended to dazzle, and dazzle they do, with soaring eighteen-foot ceilings, panels of glowing onyx, and nubby silk upholstery on sleek settees that area so soft and cushy you feel like the queen (or queen) of Sheba.

But the question that has obsessed foodies ever since Fearing left the Mansion on Turtle Creek was not whether his new outpost would be posh. It was, What will Dean do? Would Fearing’s be the ultimate sequel to his 21-year Mansion run? Or, maybe, just maybe, would he strike out in a different direction? The answer to the latter: a resounding “No way!”

Yes, the dishes are novel and enticing, but the fundamentals remain intact: Southwestern and Mexican accents, upscale takes on Texan classic, and exotic excursions into pan-Asian cuisines. As always, the operative word is “bold,” with a go-for-it intensity that makes me think of Butch and Sundance jumping off that cliff. As evidence, I point to his new signature dish: a romper-stomper shrimp taco with barbecue sauce and a mango-and-pickled-red-onion salad.

Among the entrées, the premier example of the Fearing formula is perhaps the mesquite-grilled ribeye. “Mopped” with an assertive molasses-based basting sauce, it comes with a chunky mash of potatoes and cauliflower on the side. As you would expect, the meet is generous and perfectly cooked (as well it should be for an eye-popping $50), but I found myself wanting to dial the seasoning level down about 25 or 30 percent. The only neutral, soothing element on the plate was the blessedly plain tempura asparagus.

But if many dishes flirt with extreme cuisine, others are lovely and subtle. The Hitachi starter is one, a sushi –like arrangement of pristine seared fish accompanied by a purée of wasabi-accented avocado and crisp sticks of Asian pear. Brilliant. A summery variation on vichyssoise is another, with a milky broth of fresh corn embracing tender nuggets of lobster and rounds of smoked tomato. Pure pleasure. Personally, I would take these delicate creations any day over a good-time Charlie like chicken-fried Main lobster.

But that’s easy for me to say, because I don’t have to get all kinds of people into the tent, and if there is one thing that Fearing knows, it’s his audience. He hasn’t spent more than twenty years polishing the most distinctive culinary profile in Texas for nothing. Did you like the Dean Identity and the Dean Supremacy? Well, my friends, your going to love the Dean Ultimatum.