During the CEDIA Expo in Dallas, we stayed at the new Hilton Garden Inn in the downtown area. There was a restaurant in the building, but the hotel was so new that it hadn't opened yet. So we were out a lot for meals while we were there. It was the first night of the show and we had to go to a reception directly after the show. After being there for about an hour or so, we all took off to find a place to eat. About a block and a half from our hotel we decided to go to the Dallas Chop House for some beef.
There are a lot of very good to excellent restaurants in Dallas - especially steakhouses - and each one has to work hard to gain diners over the competition. Mike Hoque found that out when after an 8 year career of running a limo company he had a chance to buy into the Go Fish Ocean Club, a seafood/steakhouse in the North Dallas area. He was able to make a successful go with the restaurant and saw an opportunity to open a similar restaurant in downtown Dallas - the Dallas Fish Market - in 2007.
In 2009, Hoque and his restaurant group - Dallas Restaurant Group, or DRG Concepts - opened the Dallas Chop House to rave reviews. One of the most popular items on the menu at the Dallas Chop House was the Chop House Burger, a gourmet blend of certified Angus beef that was a big hit with patrons. In fact, the Chop House Burger was so popular that Hoque decided to open a restaurant by the same name next to the Dallas Fish Market a year later. DRG Concepts also oversees Wild Salsa - a contemporary farm-to-fork Mexican restaurant in downtown Dallas, as well as a second Chop House Burger in the Arlington area between Dallas and Fort Worth.
The Dallas Chop House is located on ground floor of the Comerica Bank Tower at the corner of Main and St. Paul streets in downtown Dallas. (see map) There's a nice bar area with a patio and that's where we hung out waiting for a table for 7 to get set up. They had a number of specialty drinks on the cocktail menu, but I just went with an IPA from the Deep Ellum Brewing Company, located just east of the downtown Dallas area.
I was standing around talking with a dealer of mine that I ran into at the bar and my colleague, Matt, came up and said, "Hey, have a sip of this." It looked innocent enough - until I had a small sip. I immediately started to feel a sting of spicy heat on my lips and tongue and had to take a drink of beer. A couple of healthy drinks of my beer didn't cut the heat. Matt said, "Yeah, that's how I was when I took my first drink. I think I may have ordered the wrong thing." It turned out that he had ordered a drink called "The Devil's Rope" - it featured fresh mango and pineapple juice and crushed serrano peppers mixed with vodka and Luxardo Maraschino liqueur. The picture above right is how he left the drink. "It's undrinkable," he said before he went off to get a beer from the bartender.
In August of 2014, a fire broke out in the kitchen at Dallas Chop House and the restaurant sustained smoke and water damage. They had hoped to be reopened by September 1, but it turned out that the damage was more extensive than first thought. They re-built the kitchen and dining area, cleaning up other areas of the restaurant in the meantime. The downtime also allowed DRG Concepts culinary directors to revamp the menu at the Dallas Chop House. They reopened for dinner toward the end of October of 2014 and fully reopened for lunch after the first of the year in 2015.
We were seated at a table in the middle of the dining room. Our server for the evening, Darlene, a spunky lady who came to Texas from New England years ago. The was a fun lady who did a fine job of taking care of a bunch of hungry guys.
On the other side of a metal divider, you could see into a large picture window that looked directly into the kitchen. After using the restroom, I walked down the corridor that separated the kitchen and dining room to take a gander at the operation. I took a couple of pictures until I realized that I was getting some stern looks from the staff in the kitchen. Hey, if you're going to have a picture window looking into the kitchen, get used to it!
The menu at the Dallas Chop House is pretty basic. It's steaks, some seafood, pork chops, chicken, appetizers, soups and salads. Sides include roasted wild mushrooms, mac and cheese, grilled asparagus, roasted Brussels sprouts, and loaded twice baked potatoes. Darlene brought out a couple three small plates of what looked like flower pot-baked buns. Light and flaky, these things were delicious.
They had a number of interesting appetizers on the menu at the Dallas Chop House including a prime steak tartare, rosemary roasted bone marrow with a bacon jam and a pickled shallot salad, and something they called "Bacon & Eggs" - pork belly bacon served with a smoked egg emulsion and a maple-pink pepper caramelized sugar sauce. They also had oysters on the half shell that evening. I learned long ago from a Cajun man from Louisiana that you never order oysters from the Gulf of Mexico or the Eastern seaboard in a month that ends in a "ber". He explained to me that oysters are bottom feeders and when the ocean gets churned up from hurricanes the oysters become gritty. Since there wasn't a major hurricane in the gulf this year, these were probably safe to have. But they were pretty small oysters versus the size of the shell.
I got the wedge salad as a starter. This was a large chunk of iceberg lettuce and it was topped with Maytag Blue Cheese crumbles and a creamy dressing along with sliced marinated cherry tomatoes, chopped real bacon pieces, toasted pecans, and watermelon radish slices. The lettuce was cold, crisp, and fresh. The pungent and flavorful Maytag Blue Cheese gave the overall taste of the salad a solid foundation. It was a great start to the meal.
Our main entrees came to the table. A couple of the guys at the table split that evening's special - an 8 ounce filet along with grilled shrimp and grilled asparagus in a hollandaise sauce. They had a late lunch that day and weren't all that hungry. The kitchen actually split the filet into two pieces, cooked it as a 4 ounce steak, then covered it in hollandaise sauce, leaning a large grilled asparagus spear on top of the steak with two grilled shrimp on the side.
For my main course, I got the 10 ounce filet - rare, of course. It actually looked a little small for a 10 ounce steak, but there it was. It was like a big ball of meat - tender, juicy, full of flavor, and outstanding. I got some of the roasted wild mushrooms to share with others. They were earthy and flavorful, a great complement to the perfectly cooked filet.
One of my colleagues seated across from me got the 18 ounce bone-in New York strip steak. Had I been a little more hungry, I may have signed up for that. He's a big carnivore and he devoured the steak. I joked with him that if he were at home he probably would have picked up the bone and gnawed at it. He said, "No probably about it! I WOULD be doing that right now!"
There's a ton of very good steakhouses in the Dallas area and while this was the first one I've been to in a number of years, I have to say that the steak I had at the Dallas Chop House was as good as ones I've had at some of the best steakhouses throughout the Midwest. Darlene's service was professional, yet she was very fun to kibitz with back and forth. And the atmosphere of the restaurant was classy, yet relaxing. The meal I had at the Dallas Chop House was one fine meal.
Probably the last Maytag Blue Cheese you'll be enjoying for awhile. They're doing a major recall for listeria. A shame, its a great cheese.
https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2016/maytag-blue-cheese-listeria-recall-exapnds/
Posted by: Slakingfool | March 28, 2016 at 10:13 AM
Yep, saw that a few weeks ago. They're supposedly disinfecting everything in the dairy and - as you say - it will be awhile before we're able to enjoy any of their great blue cheese.
Posted by: Road Tips | March 28, 2016 at 10:55 AM