This story was updated on Nov. 18, with exclusive details on the menu.
For months, there was no sign out front, thick brown paper covered every inch of the windows, and, until recently, no one even knew what to call the new restaurant secretively coming together on Travis Street.
Now Georgie by Curtis Stone ― the first restaurant outside of Los Angeles for the Australian celebrity chef, author and television star ― is nearly complete, and it is set to open tonight. But those hoping for a celebrity sighting will be disappointed: Stone will not be in the house.
Eight months ago, Stone and his brother Luke announced they would be partnering with Dallas restaurateur Stephan Courseau on a restaurant that would showcase meat both on the menu and in a butcher shop, as Stone’s acclaimed restaurant Gwen does. It is opening in the old Villa-O space in Knox Henderson, where Courseau had planned a restaurant with Junior Borges until that partnership fell apart last fall.
And that was pretty much all we knew until October, when Stone and Courseau invited The Dallas Morning News in for a first look. Now Stone has given the News a first look at the menu.
And it is a meaty document, to be sure: At the heart of it are seven different steaks, ranging from a 6-ounce, grass-fed Buck Creek tenderloin from Texas for $45 to a 42-ounce bone-in rib eye of Australian Blackmore Wagyu for a walloping $390. After ordering, diners will choose their weapon: A selection of knives will be offered with each meat dish.
The entrees include a whole rotisserie chicken, served with two side dishes on a silver platter ($68), a roasted venison loin with smoked parsnips and maitake mushrooms ($48) and a veal tenderloin with baby root vegetables ($42).
Surprisingly, there is only one pasta dish on the menu: chestnut agnolotti in brown butter ($24). Pasta is a specialty of Stone’s and has been prominent on the menu at his Los Angeles restaurants Maude and Gwen.
The menu is relatively tight ― see the full menu here ― with nine appetizers and six entrees, plus side dishes and steaks. But it is layered with luxury, including a caviar service with red wheat blini and creme fraiche, starting at $110 for one ounce of Calvisius caviar from Italy and going up to $310 for an ounce of Petrossian Imperial Kaluga. There is also a five-course tasting menu for $90.
The appetizers include charcuterie with housemade pickles ($28), steamed clams with watercress ($17) and a foie gras tart with pumpkin preserves, ribbons of butternut squash and sorrel ($23).
Perhaps the most spectacular starter is the steak tartare ($18), which will arrive at the table under a glass dome filled with smoke. The dish is seasoned with black garlic, mustard, crisped shallots and beef jerky.
“We’re super excited to be coming out to Dallas,” Stone said before the opening, on the phone from Los Angeles during a break from running his L.A. restaurants and promoting his new PBS series, Field Trip with Curtis Stone. “But we’re not doing Gwen in Dallas. We wouldn’t do a carbon copy. We want something that has its own heartbeat.”
Still, the restaurant will have much in common with Gwen, a glamorous spot with a serious butcher shop and a dry-aging room attached to the dining room, and a menu that artfully melds all of that big meat with complex preparations.
Georgie also offers Blackmore Wagyu, the spectacular small-production beef from Australia (Stone is the sole importer), along with Texas beef from boutique producers such as Creekstone Farm and K Bar K Ranch.
The partners have hired talent from some of Dallas' best restaurants, including executive chef Toby Archibald, a New Zealand native who was chef de cuisine at Bullion and previously cooked at Daniel Boulud restaurants in New York, Toronto and Vancouver.
Michael Lawson, Georgie’s head butcher, was previously sous chef at Macellaio, and sous chef at Gemma and Sachet, where he created numerous dishes on the menu. Pastry chef Cessy Mendoza previously ran pastry programs at Nobu restaurants in Dallas and, most recently, Houston, and was also pastry chef at Abacus in Dallas.
Wine and cocktails will be handled by veterans of Courseau's other two restaurants on Travis Street, Up on Knox and Le Bilboquet, with help from Stone's team in L.A.
Last month, Mendoza was breaking in the new ovens with a batch of stecca, a flattened baton of Australian bread that’s like a cross between focaccia and ciabatta, with a shattering thin crust and a tender interior rich with olive oil. Archibald hopes to serve it with Lewis Road Creamery butter from New Zealand. Her dessert menu includes panna cotta with hibscus, lychee and coconut.
In the kitchen, a shiny French Rotisol rotisserie is ready to be taken for its first spin, when rows of young chickens will bronze above vegetables cooking in a bath of chicken fat. Archibald also plans to experiment with rotisserie pineapples for desserts and cauliflowers for vegetarian entrees.
Disappointingly, unlike Gwen, the huge kitchen contains no asador grill or any other form of live-fire cooking. (Ventilation issues, Courseau explained.) "We'll use cast iron, black pans, molecular immersion circulators - a variety of things," Stone said.
Later, there will also be brunch, a first for Stone, and it may even incorporate a charcuterie trolley.
Beginning today, Georgie will be open from 5 to 11 p.m. nightly, with the bar opening at 4 p.m., and seating available for walk-ins. Regular dinner reservations will begin on Dec. 2.
Tableside service should feel right at home in the contemporary Art Deco dining room, another thing in common with Gwen.
Tufted banquettes in persimmon velvet are arrayed over a floor paved in rectangles of black and coral marble and creamy terrazzo. The open kitchen will be semi-concealed behind a transparent scrim, but the beef aging room will be completely visible behind glass.
All together, the restaurant will seat about 100, including 34 in the bar, where French doors swing open to the sidewalk and perhaps some outdoor tables.
A separate entrance will lead to another gathering spot: the G Butcher Shop. It will sell meat, charcuterie and prepared foods such as the rotisserie chicken, and it will have indoor and outdoor seating for breakfast and lunch, with espresso drinks, pastry, fresh juices and smaller items.
The butcher shop will open separately in about a month.
Stone and Courseau started the project about a year ago, after Courseau had dinner at Gwen, looked around and decided: "This is it, this is the food I want to serve," Courseau recalled. He quickly arranged a meeting with the Stone brothers (Luke runs the front of the house at Gwen). And the idea took off.
"It was a bit of a strange connection," Stone admitted, "but those are the ones that seem to work. They are the more genuine."
Archibald spent most of the summer in Los Angeles, cooking at Gwen and absorbing the Stone sensibility. Meantime, Stone made several trips to Dallas, eating at up to a dozen restaurants in a day or two, including Knife, Town Hearth, Bullion and Lucia. More than anything, he was looking for the "white space" - a niche that wasn't being served in Dallas yet.
It is an ambitious, fascinating experiment, combining two restaurant groups from two parts of the country. Though L.A. foodies initially dismissed Stone as a celebrity chef, the Melbourne native went on to create two of the city's best restaurants and has been a hands-on presence in both of them, despite the demands of Top Chef and other television shows.
Stone said he will be in Dallas four to six times a year, will collaborate with Archibald on the menu, and has sent one of his own top chefs to get Georgie off the ground. "It's a real partnership on many levels," Courseau said.
And who, you might ask, is Georgie? Stone’s other restaurants are named for his grandmothers, but Georgie has less sentimental origins. After deciding to not call the restaurant Gwen, Courseau offered up a list of names starting with a G, so they could keep the stylized "G" logo. Georgie was among them and, Courseau said, just happens to be the name of Stone’s niece.
