Across the din of the dining room at Te Deseo, we can hear them. A table of women is celebrating a birthday and every few minutes there’s a group yell — AAAaaaaah!!! — that sounds like a roller coaster making a circuit through the booked-up restaurant.
Are they opening presents? Ogling the other gorgeous customers in Dallas’ primo see-and-be-seen spot? Or maybe they just ordered one of Te Deseo’s more dramatic dishes, say, the picada Argentina, an extravaganza of grilled meat that is borne aloft and — wheeee! — served on a four-legged butcher block with an enormous cleaver holstered at its side.
Wait till they find out that an even bigger, wilder party is busting out in the rooftop bar — 45 degrees in November, be damned.
Te Deseo is fun. Big fun. A kind of gorgeous delirium rules at this stylish Pan-Latin restaurant in the Harwood District, like a slightly debauched Miami Beach villa washed up on a grassy spit of land amid the office towers near downtown.
The dimly lighted dining room has its own atmospheric conditions — warm even when the retractable roof is open in cold weather, and I swear, there’s a sort of mist floating around the surreal turquoise tree at the center of it, the fake bougainvillea climbing the walls and the fire roaring away in a painted-tile hearth.
Snake down a narrow dark corridor and you’ll hit the packed bar. Find a staircase and it’s up to the roof, where miniskirted waitresses are parading through the crowd with sparklers and bottles of Patrón tequila held aloft in neon halos.
It’s a scene, and we know what that means: It’s the kind of place where food is usually an afterthought, and not a good one. A glance through chef Ty Thaxton’s menu — a mashup of Mexico, Peru, Argentina and everyplace else between here and the South Pole — doesn’t exactly reassure you.
But Thaxton, it turns out, spent about six years living in Mexico, where he was a hotel chef, and devoted a good deal of his off-time to traveling through South America. Rather than offering a menu filled with dishes from here and there, he’s combining influences from everywhere, plate by plate.
A lot of the time, the results are confident and surprisingly good. Arroz chaufa is a spin on the Peruvian fried rice that itself is a fusion dish, part of Peru’s chifa cuisine that developed in the wake of Chinese immigration.
Thaxton pushes the traditional elements of chaufa — ginger, soy sauce, aji amarillo, shrimp, cilantro — by adding carnitas and garnishing it with thinly sliced avocado. The result is richly flavored, surprisingly balanced and delicious, like Chinese fried rice meets Mexican rice.
His tiradito, the Peruvian take on sashimi, is made with strips of buttery yellowtail set in a vivid pool of rocoto chile sauce spiked with rice vinegar, lime juice and roasted red pepper. The heat and acid cut the fattiness of the fish, and a few other touches — dabs of cured salmon roe, curls of thinly sliced cucumber, avocado puree and crunchy sea salt — add dimension without cluttering the clean, bold flavors.
Same with the sea bass ceviche, inspired by ceviches Thaxton made in Los Cabos, where the fish is cured in lime juice and dressed with coconut milk. Here he adds lemon grass and serves it with crisp tortilla chips dusted in a Cajun spice blend and jalapeño popcorn, recalling the giant kernels of corn, called choclo, served with Peruvian ceviche.
His charred octopus, another standout, crisps tender tentacles over a wood-fired grill and dresses them with a smoky arbol chile sauce and “rice chicharrones,” which are squares of Vietnamese rice paper fried until they puff up and seasoned with furikake.
Flautas stick closer to home, but still push the needle on flavor: The plate features three corn tortillas wrapped around rich, house-smoked brisket, set off by pickled red onion, squiggles of crema and a ranchera sauce that has a lot more going on than most. (Fewer tomatoes and more chiles and bell pepper are the secret, Thaxton says.)
That picada Argentina is one of three family-style dishes, and it may be the best deal on the menu. For $98, it is more than enough for four, and each element is exactly medium-rare and delicious: the finely grained, intriguingly spiced pork sausage imported for Te Deseo from Brazil, the four double lamb chops from New Zealand, the deeply flavored filet and bone-in New York strip steak from Allen Brothers beef, the same purveyor as Al Biernat’s. Roasted tomatoes and two dipping sauces finish the dish: a bright, herby chimichurri, and an earthy Mexican sauce called macha, made with roasted arbol and guajillo chiles, ground peanuts and garlic.
The picada may arrive looking like a joke, but there’s nothing flippant about the sourcing or preparation. I can’t say the same about some other items on the menu.
Pollo a la brasa, a Peruvian-style whole roasted chicken served in a cauldron, is a deflating experience, the bird pre-cut and piled up, like chicken in a bucket, and missing the tang and spice that make the dish so good. Here the chicken has the bouncy texture of overbrining, a slimy skin and almost no flavor.
Arrachera fajitas, grilled skirt steak with onion, peppers and all the usual fajita trappings, also disappoints. The slices of beef are thick, wet and heavy in the mouth, like an extra tongue.
Other dishes are just blander than they should be, given what we know Thaxton can do, including arepas with chicken and green chiles and carnitas tacos. Both are just fine, but not nearly as interesting as the best items on the menu.
Desserts head back into the fun zone with zany presentations like the Chocolate Cigar, a fat “Cubano” cigar made with a wrinkled chocolate “tobacco leaf” shell filled with chocolate mousse and a hard rolled cookie stuffed with hazelnut cream. It’s served on an ashtray, with a scoop of coffee ice cream and shaved white chocolate “ash” completing the ruse. As with the picada, there’s serious effort hiding inside the cuteness (though you’ll have to be OK with eating it by hand — it’s impossible to cut through that cookie running up the center).
Coconut Domingo, though, is another story. This play on a sundae (Domingo, get it?) is a pileup of coconut ice cream, mango sorbet, sour dried mango dusted in chile, caramelized dried mango, a tamarind straw, a pineapple wedge, a lava overflow of torched meringue and a terrible iced cutout cookie shaped like a palm tree. “It’s like the whole Mexican snack aisle in a glass,” my friend said. And it was pre-made, so it was all frozen together in one solid lump.
Unless you need a laugh, skip the desserts and head up to the roof, where you can end the evening amid a high-spirited crowd, with the glittering Dallas skyline and a nip in the air reminding you that yes, you are still right here at home.
Te Deseo
Rating: Two stars
Price: $$-$$$ (Starters and small plates $8 to $16, mains $24 to $44, family-style main courses $32 to $98, desserts $8 to $12.)
Service: Friendlier and generally better than you’d expect at a clubby restaurant
Ambience: A kind of gorgeous delirium rules at this Pan-Latin restaurant in the Harwood District, blotting out the rigid office towers and planned development surrounding it with the design of a fever-dream villa. It’s packed with party-minded millennials, from the rooftop cigar bar to the dimly lit dining room with a turquoise-painted tree in the center of it. Chef Ty Thaxton’s menu mashes up the cuisines of Mexico, Peru, Argentina and more, for better and for worse, and serves the results with a wink, from an Argentine grilled meat spread that arrives on a mini butcher-block table sporting a giant cleaver to the fat chocolate “Cubano” cigar nestled in an ashtray.
Noise: Loud (84 decibels)
Drinks: Agave spirits are the thing here, with a selection of more than 50 tequilas and 17 mezcals ($9 to $180), plus flights of both. The dozen house cocktails ($11 to $14) are mostly based on tequila, cachaça and rum, though I didn’t find a standout in the bunch. A short list of beer ($5 to $7) tilts toward South America, with bottles such as Xingu from Brazil and Cusqueña from Peru; same with the 70-bottle wine list, which delves deeply into Argentina.
Recommended: Yellowtail tiradito, charred octopus, flautas, arroz chaufa, picada Argentina
GPS: Of course you want a table in the center of the dining room. You don’t go to Te Deseo to sit semi-hidden behind a wall along the periphery.
Address: 2700 Olive St., Dallas; 214-646-1314; tedeseodallas.com
Hours: Dinner Monday-Thursday and Sunday from 5 to 11 p.m., Friday-Saturday from 5 p.m. to midnight. Brunch Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Bar is open Monday- Thursday and Sunday from 5 p.m. to midnight, Friday-Saturday from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Reservations: Accepted. (Note: There is a dress code that forbids, among other things, hats and “open-toed flat footwear.”)
Credit cards: All major
Health department score: Not inspected at publication time
Access: A sidewalk from the valet stand goes up a slight incline to the restaurant. The dining room and bar are on one level; elevator to the rooftop bar and upstairs lounge.
Parking: Free valet parking.
Ratings Legend
4 stars: Extraordinary (First-rate on every level; a benchmark dining experience)
3 stars: Excellent (A destination restaurant and leader on the DFW food scene)
2 stars: Very Good (Strong concept and generally strong execution)
1 star: Good (Has merit, but limited ambition or spotty execution)
No stars: Poor (Not recommended)
Noise Levels
Below 60: Quiet. Maybe too quiet.
60-69: Easy listening. Normal conversation, with a light background buzz.
70-79: Shouty. Conversation is possible, but only with raised voices.
80-85: Loud. Can you hear me now? Probably not.
86-plus: Deafening.
Prices
Average dinner per person.
$ -- $19 and under
$$ -- $20 to $50
$$$ -- $50 to $99
$$$$ -- $100 and over
