Extra-expensive Chicago steakhouse Maple & Ash to debut in Dallas

There's a new steakhouse coming to town, because if there's one thing Dallas lacks, it's steakhouses. Called Maple & Ash, it's the latest concept to come to Dallas from What If Syndicate, the Chicago-based hospitality group of restaurants that includes Monarch, Kessaku, and Etta.

UPDATE 1-9-2023: Maple & Ash will be replaced by Catch Dallas, a seafood restaurant from Catch Hospitality Group.

According to a release, this will be a Texas flagship, and will be located at the corner of Maple Avenue and Wolf Street in Uptown — one of two restaurants penciled in for Maples Terrace, a mixed-use development, where it will open in early 2023.

What If signed a lease with Hines and Mitsui Fudosan America — part of a bigger partnership with Hines, the developer doing Maple Terrace. Also as part of that partnership, What If Syndicate is opening a location of Etta, its Italian restaurant concept, in a Hines building in downtown Houston, in 2022.

Maple & Ash is an upscale wood-fired steakhouse concept, whose philosophy is to have fun but also observe a professionalism by going the extra mile to create the best experience possible.

Their most famous menu item is the "I Don't Give a F*@k" Tasting, which they say is not "drawn out torture," but instead a four-course chef selected dinner, for $200.

Although: If they really don't give a f*@k, wouldn't they just spell out "fuck"? I feel like that's what someone who doesn't give a f*@k does.

Mostly everything is cooked on the wood-burning grill, from steaks to vegetables to seafood, and that includes their seafood tower, charred instead of raw, and available in three sizes: $74, or $154 for "pro", or $209 for "baller." See, they're fun.

Overall, it's a pretty classic steakhouse menu: shrimp cocktail, crab legs, Wagyu beef carpaccio, hamachi crudo, Caesar, wedge salad (which they crown with two oversized onion rings), meatballs, bone marrow.

The cheapest entree is $32 and from there it's up, up, and up. A petit 6-ounce filet mignon is $46. Surf & turf, which combines the petit filet with a half lobster, is $89. A 28-day dry-aged bone-in rib eye is $83. Rack of lamb is $78.

There's more: A section called Butcher's Reserve has big-ticket steaks such as an 8-ounce Texas Wagyu from A Bar Ranch for $125, and a 5-ounce Miyazaki Wagyu from Japan for $165.

And yet it still won't be the most expensive steakhouse in Dallas: That crown surely goes to Nusr-Et, from Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, AKA Salt Bae, which opened in Uptown in March, and where a Wagyu rib cap coated in 24K gold is $1,500.

What If Syndicate is all over Dallas. They've already opened two restaurants in the National building in downtown Dallas: Monarch is their Italian-steakhouse concept, also quite pricey, which opened in the spring; and Kessaku, a lavish sushi and cocktail lounge that opened in March, also, yes, a tad pricey.

Still to come from the What If group is Etta, a neighborhood restaurant theme with Italian food at a more affordable price, opening in Dallas' newly-christened East Quarter in 2022.