For diners who have lived in Dallas long enough to remember Hibiscus on Henderson Avenue, a new restaurant named Elm & Good in Deep Ellum might feel familiar.
Executive chef Graham Dodds, who worked at Hibiscus in its heyday, is reinventing some of diners’ favorite dishes, like the rabbit agnolotti.
“It was one of the dishes I couldn’t take off the menu,” Dodds says of the pasta dish at Hibiscus. He reincarnated it later at Greenville Avenue restaurant Wayward Sons, which closed in 2017. Perhaps the third time’s the charm at Elm & Good.
Elm & Good opens Aug. 12 and is located at Elm Street and Good-Latimer Expressway, inside the Pittman Hotel operated by Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants. The full project, a three-building development called The Epic, has been in the works for more than three years.
Dodds’ menu at Elm & Good is a mix of American fare: “It’s got to be approachable, it’s got to be understandable,” the chef says, especially since the restaurant is on the bottom floor of a hotel that hopes to host travelers from all over the world. But Dodds is also focused on serving more vegetables and less meat, in part for environmental sustainability and also because he enjoys cooking with veggies.
“It’s risky, in a meat-and-potato town, to do vegetable-centric. But I think that’s the future,” he says. He remembers the food at Hibiscus fondly but notes that he’s taking a lighter approach at this new restaurant.
“Every night [at Hibiscus], I would look at all these steaks and lamb saddles and great big pork chops going out, and it didn’t feel sustainable to me. I felt like I needed to go in a different direction,” he says. “I felt like I needed to be the one trudging forward — getting away from this crazy 1-pound-of-meat-per-person situation.”
When he opened Wayward Sons in late 2015, a popular dish was a vegetarian charcuterie board — a no-meat plate that looked like it was filled with cured meats and pâté.
The garden charcuterie board will be on the menu at Elm & Good, and it’s once again vegetarian. It features sunchoke pâté, beet rillette, potato-leek terrine, marinated olives and pickled vegetables.
Other dishes include hush puppies served with charred okra and pimento cheese; pan-seared red snapper; and mushroom paella, in which the mushrooms are seasoned so they have a chorizolike flavor.
Drinks will include some nods to Deep Ellum history, like a cocktail called the Gypsy Tea Room: green-tea-steeped rum with lemon juice, honey syrup and muddled blackberries. The cocktails were created by lead bartender Gregory Hutson, who has worked at Grange Hall and Bowen House, both in Dallas.
Dodds says the kitchen staff will be wearing masks and will have their temperatures checked before each shift. Guests will be asked to wear masks anytime they’re out of their seats. Though the dining room fits more than 200 seated guests, the restaurant is starting with about 50 seats for now.
“You can separate people and it still feels like they’re in a lively room,” Dodds says. “That’s a huge bonus right now.”
Elm & Good is at 2551 Elm St., Dallas. Dinner only, at first, Tuesday through Saturday.
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