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Knife & Spoon

With a discreet entrance tucked off the lobby of The Ritz-Carlton Grand Lakes, Orlando, the restaurant greets you in a grand way with a huge open kitchen, windows all around and a dramatic ceiling that looks like a geode cut and open with dim light coming down from above. It's Chef John Tesar's new restaurant in Orlando, and he recruited other chefs from top Marriott hotels across the state. Everyone who knows food in Orlando is talking about this place—and also talking about how it's great for a special occasion.

The 28 Most Essential Food Experiences in Dallas

While there are literally thousands of life-changing dishes to try in and around Dallas (hint: we’ve devoted full lists to the subject, from killer burgers and BBQ to Mexican food and brunch), we’ve narrowed down the choices into one wide-ranging bucket list-style roundup for your hunger-fueled convenience. As you eat your way through the metro area, you’re likely to discover plenty of other contenders worth adding to your own all-time greats map, but consider this lineup a fantastic headstart.

A Top Chef’s Secret to Cooking the Perfect Steak

For many Americans, Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of backyard grilling season. But before you pull out your grill and get it ready for your first big cookout, chef John Tesar has some advice that may make you rethink everything you thought you knew about cooking a steak.

Is Dallas the country's steakhouse capital?

Perhaps most radical of all is Dallas’ first celebrity-chef steakhouse, John Tesar’s Knife, now with three area locations. The French-trained Tesar cooked alongside Anthony Bourdain in New York in the ’80s before moving to Las Vegas and then Dallas, where he earned five stars at the city’s famous Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek hotel.

Knife and Spoon at the Ritz-Carlton sears the best steaks in Orlando

Knife & Spoon, the Ritz-Carlton newcomer whose eminence is rooted in chef John Tesar's prized proteins. You'll recognize Tesar, the four-time James Beard Award nominee, from his appearances on Top Chef seasons 10 and 14, or as the character called 'Jimmy Sears' in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.

A big ol’ juicy steak

Steakhouses have always been a mainstay of the Dallas dining scene, both as places where big-bucks business deals take place over martinis and filets and the go-to option for a celebratory meal for birthdays, graduations, and pandemic vaccines (soon). Among the mightiest of the meaty, you’ll never regret a Prime Cowboy Ribeye from Al Biernat’s, a Prime porterhouse from the flagship location of Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, or one of John Tesar’s dry aged steaks aged up to 240 days at Knife Steakhouse.

BEST RESTAURANTS IN PLANO

Reinventing the steakhouse experience, Knife is the celebrated concept from regionally and nationally acclaimed John Tesar. Named to Esquire magazine’s best new restaurants 2014, the Knife restaurants offer high-quality, exceptional meats from Texan ranchers and farmers, features dry-aged classic and prime cuts as well as specialty cuts such as chuck flap, outside skirt, culotte, beef cheeks, oxtail and Akaushi beef.

The Best Steakhouses in America

The first time I tried John Tesar's food at Knife, it was to get the burger, which also happens to be one of my favorite burgers in the world. But the second time I went to Knife, I was freed from the shackles of burger eating, and I got to really see just what Tesar and his crew could do when that meat wasn't ground up at all. But before I even get into the steaks, let's talk a little bit about the fact that there is a five-piece bacon tasting and a ham tasting.

10 Best Restaurant Meals Of The Year

This is the rare eatery that made my list in back to back years - I was wowed when I first ate here while doing a burger story in 2018, and it was one of the key reasons I returned to Dallas to do a magazine feature on the city’s amazing high-end steakhouse culture and offerings, a range arguably better than any other steakhouse centric city on earth.

‘Top Chef’ Alum John Tesar Brings West Coast Surf and Turf to Dana Point

The Dallas-based chef opens Outer Reef inside the Laguna Cliffs Marriott
It’s no longer a rumor: Former Top Chef contestant John Tesar’s seafood restaurant Outer Reef is headed to Dana Point at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa, with an opening slated for the end of 2018. Tesar is a four-time James Beard nominee, and appeared twice on Bravo’s culinary competition show.

John Tesar taps fellow 'Top Chef' alum Gerald Sombright for Knife & Spoon at Orlando’s Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes

It'll be a Top Chef reunion of sorts when Knife & Spoon opens inside the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes this spring. We told you a couple of weeks ago that Top Chef Season 10 and 14 alum John Tesar, a four-time James Beard Award semifinalist for “Best Southwest Chef,” is opening his modern steak and seafood concept in the old Norman's space in April or May of this year.

2020’s Most Anticipated American Restaurant Openings

Dallas steakhouse Knife made Esquire’s list of the 40 most important restaurants from 2010 to 2019. That’s a big win nationally for chef John Tesar, as it’s just one of two Texas restaurants on writer Jeff Gordinier’s list.

Which Dallas restaurant was named by ‘Esquire’ as one of the ‘most important restaurants of the decade’?

The future of dining in America looks bright. Next year, some of the country’s most iconic cooks—alongside legendary chefs from around the world—will unleash fresh new dining engagements, from mod Mexican to casual French, to dry-aged beef-powered Korean. Expect projects from big-time names like chef Enrique Olvera of Mexico City’s Pujol, hometown hero chef Daniel Humm from Eleven Madison Park, and restaurateur Danny Meyer, whose Shake Shack empire needs no introduction.

15 Excellent Options For Dining On Christmas Eve & Day in Dallas

Considering how much thought goes into buying all those gifts, booking travel, and hosting holiday shindigs, the most important question during the season is always "What are we going to eat on Christmas Day?"
Another classic Feast of the Seven Fishes can be found at Knife Plano, where just 40 guests can enjoy an exclusive taste of the Roman Catholic traditional seven-course meal the way only chef John Tesar can serve it.

America's 50 best steakhouses

From grand Las Vegas carnivore temples helmed by world-famous chefs to clubby Chicago dining rooms loaded with mahogany and brass to New York institutions with now-household names, the steakhouse is an American icon. These are the 50 best...

12 essential steakhouses in dallas

Chef John Tesar’s meat temple at The Highland has racked up accolades and inspired a cookbook.

Chefs for farmers

Top Chef star John Tesar is kicking things up a notch at the Chefs for Farmers Festival. He joins Good Day to share his skillet fried chicken recipe.

A Burger Scholar's Quest for the Best Burgers in Texas....

21 best restaurants in Dallas

There's so much more to the city than barbecue and Tex-Mex (but it's got that, too)...

Chef John Tesar showing how to cook the best burger ever at home with Jane McGarry on Good Morning Texas.

John Tesar Raises the Steaks in Dallas

A five-time James Beard nominee and twice a contestant on “Top Chef,” John Tesar is known for being bold both in and out of the kitchen. He worked in Manhattan and Las Vegas before moving to Dallas in 2007;

The 10 Best Steakhouses in Dallas

Since 2011, when we last published our list of the best steakhouses in Dallas, we’ve seen the arrival of a new steak age. I visited 20 steakhouses to determine the best 10, and two of the top three represent the new guard.

One of the World’s Greatest BBQ Pitmasters Has Created the Ultimate Guide to Steak

In 2015, Aaron Franklin gave us all his brisket secrets. Built around a 15-page treatise of technique, science and art, Franklin BBQ: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto, showed us why so many people wait in line at Franklin’s Austin restaurant: because smoking the best beef in Texas is a lot of work! Among barbecue geeks...

Brioche French Toast

Chef John John Tesar from Knife stops by the Good Day kitchen to share a brunch recipe. Knife is now open at the Shops at Willow Bend in Plano and will soon open for lunch, brunch, and dinner.

Knife, located in the Highland Dallas, is a reinvention of the steakhouse experience. Knife is the highly awarded restaurant created by nationally acclaimed, James Beard-nominated and Bravo’s.

This week on The Meat Show, host and professional carnivore Nick Solares heads to Knife, chef John Tesar’s upscale Dallas steakhouse, to sample dry

No place does steak better than Texas — and now there’s even more proof. Three Texas meat temples made the exclusive

The 31 Best Steakhouses in America

Our restaurant critic, Pete Wells, explains why bringing your gripes to the management instead of anonymously torching the place online will make everybody happier. Need opinions on where to eat? They’re easy to find these days

How to Complain at a Restaurant?

Our restaurant critic, Pete Wells, explains why bringing your gripes to the management instead of anonymously torching the place online will make everybody happier. Need opinions on where to eat? They’re easy to find these days

January Five-Star Service: Heather Baloga

There are some people who just get it. Heather Baloga is one of them. Her passion for food and customer service started long before she ever realized it. It was the large family dinners, where her grandmother would cook up

10 Best Restaurant Meals Of 2018

I write on culinary topics for many prominent publications

The Scoop: A Fancy Caviar Dinner and a Family Guy Themed Pop-Up Bar

Chef John Tesar and Michael Passmore are hosting a caviar dinner: Chef John Tesar and Michael Passmore, founder of Passmore Ranch, are hosting a special caviar and champagne dinner on January 11.

At Knife Chef John Tesar is reinventing the steak house by taking it back to it's Texas roots at Knife.

The Dish: Chef John Tesar

Click here to watch Chef John’s interview on CBS This Morning’s The Dish

Click Here buy a copy of John’s new cookbook “KNIFE STEAKHOUSE MEALS AT HOME”.

The 40 Most Important Restaurants of the Decade

Knife Dallas2014-presentJust when the American steakhouse started to grow stale, John Tesar found a way to reinvent it.

The 25 Best Steakhouses in America Right Now

You know you’re in Texas when a steakhouse’s sauce list includes béarnaise and salsa verde. Dallas’ Knife, the flagship of Top Chef alum John Tesar, offers old-school cuts like filet au poivre and pork porterhouse along with exotics like grilled short ribs and a 240-day dry-aged rib eye. Most of the beef comes from 44 Farms, a century-old, black Angus producer in Cameron, Texas.

Ten tasty Dallas area destinations to indulge your inner carnivore

If there’s one thing that Dallasites love, it’s a good steak. Which is only fitting since Texas is the top beef producing state in the nation. So it should come as no surprise that the metroplex is brimming with high-quality steakhouses. The only difficult part is deciding which one to choose.

35 Best Steakhouses in the U.S., Ranked

Get a little “exotic,” as one of the menu sections suggests, trying out the 32-ounce 240-day dry-aged bone-in ribeye. The bacon flight also impresses with its five slabs curated from around the world.

The 2021 Best of Big D

At steak wizard John Tesar’s den, we crave the off-cut bavette from 44 Farms as much as the behemoth rib-eye, dry-aged 240 days. We also love the story of how he sold steaks during lockdown, dropping marbled flesh into waiting car trunks. Honorable mention: Town Hearth