Meat Out
Chef Kenny Mills brings the serious beef to Arlington with Chop House Steaks &Seafood
Known for his experience with steakhouses, chef Kenny Mills returns to his metier with Chop House Steaks & Seafood, a new steakhouse he opened this week in Pantego, a small township within Arlington. He describes it as an "old school steakhouse" but with details you'd only find in 2013.
"It's like a '70s or '80s Steak and Ale, where you get the salad bar and the steak," he says. "But we're doing a cool salad bar with items that are chef-driven. Not just ham but prosciutto. Feta cheese, dates, three lettuces, house-made dressings, seasonal items — things you wouldn't typically find on a salad bar, and not the same thing every day."
The restaurant will be open for dinner only, with a menu that includes not just steak and deviled eggs, but also edgy appetizers such as sweetbreads, bone marrow and beef tongue.
Mills has worked at steakhouses such as Capital Grille, Sullivan's and the extremely similar-sounding Dallas Chop House in downtown Dallas. In 2011, he opened Chop House Burgers, a fancy burger joint in Arlington. It was subsequently featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives, which increased business so much that he had to double his space.
"I never planned on doing a steakhouse," he says. "When I expanded Chop House Burgers, I was initially running into problems with the City of Arlington and thought about moving the burger place down here. Things with the burger joint worked out, but by then I could see this had the potential to be a steakhouse."
The two restaurants are only a couple of minutes apart, but the burger joint is in Arlington, and the steakhouse is in Pantego, in what used to be a Hungarian restaurant called the Blue Danube. Mills gutted the interior, squared off the archways to make it feel more modern, added a salad area and redid the bar.
"There's no steakhouses anywhere close to us," he says.
It will be open for dinner only, with a menu that includes not just steak and deviled eggs, but also edgy appetizers such as sweetbreads, bone marrow and beef tongue. Much of his staff includes people with whom he worked at Dallas Chop House.
"When I left, that they took off the menu we did," he says. "So we're doing lengua in a demi-glace with chimichurri; sweetbreads piccata; and steak, tuna, salmon and swordfish on mesquite wood. We're picking up where we left off."