A heaping helping of news & reviews from DFW’s dining scene.
Chef Joanne Bondy is fast becoming a culinary star, cooking for her second time at the prestigious James Beard House.
On Saturday night, local food goddess Joanne Bondy made history in New York. The chef from Old Hickory Steakhouse at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine cooked a grand dinner at the revered James Beard House in Greenwich Village, N.Y.
And she became the first woman from the DFW area to have cooked at the Beard House twice.
Chef Bondy wowed the New Yorkers with her Texas presentation, too. Her dinner, titled "Jeans to Jewels: A Farm and Ranch Harvest Dinner," starred a wagonload of ingredients she took with her from our local and regional food producers. Her menu included, among many things, sweet potato fritters with butter-pecan and lavender syrup; Deep Ellum blue cheese biscuits with pear compote; lima bean soup with cilantro “garleek” broth and Port Aransas shrimp; Broken Arrow Ranch antelope chop with roasted acorn squash; and Molsbee Farm Sendero spice-rubbed black angus filet with cauliflower mac and cheese. Accompanying wines included several from Fall Creek Vineyards in the Texas Hill Country.
Bondy, who first drew acclaim at the late Ciudad in Dallas, and her culinary team cooked in the Beard House kitchen for 11 uninterrupted hours on event day, a Saturday in late October, finishing up just in time for John Imaizumi, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Gaylord Texan, to welcome the capacity crowd of 80. Guests crowded into the charming old brownstone, where the author and king of fine American cuisine lived until his death in 1985. For the occasion, the Gaylord team decorated the house with jeweled cow skulls and hundreds of yellow roses.
Bondy brought a posse of friends and fans from DFW, as well as some local media. It was a happening.
You can try Chef Bondy’s Beard House menu, Oct. 28 through Nov. 15, at the Old Hickory Steakhouse, inside the Gaylord Texan, 1501 Gaylord Trail in Grapevine; 817-778-2280. www.gaylordhotels.com.
