Restaurant Victory at W Hotel

Sunny new Cook Hall chef shows imagination with revamped menu

Cook Hall pappardelle with tomatoes and mushrooms.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins
Fried okra.
Photo courtesy of Houndstooth
Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins
Beef tenderloin with roasted potatoes and chard.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins
Orange Bundt cake.
Photo courtesy of Cook Hall

The restaurant Cook Hall is up at bat again with new chef Douglas Wagenhauser, recently appointed to take over the space that was once Craft, on the lobby level of the W Dallas Victory hotel.

There needs to be a restaurant in this space; an eatery is necessary to serve as the in-house canteen for hotel guests and the residential building next door. Armed with this imperative, management hosted a dinner for a dozen bloggers to display Wagenhauser's expertise.

A Dallas native, Wagenhauser has hotel experience, including a stint as sous chef at the Landmark Restaurant in the Melrose Hotel. Prior to becoming a chef, he was a photographer at Fossil.

His atypical culinary approach felt both traditional and modern, with a prominent yet matter-of-fact attention given to vegetables as well as meat.

Perhaps that unique background explained his sunny, amenable personality, rare in the chef world. (A spokesperson for the restaurant called him "a breath of fresh air.") His atypical culinary approach felt both traditional and modern, with a prominent yet matter-of-fact attention given to vegetables as well as meat.

The dinner, a parade of courses, began with a bruschetta-like toast and ended with two desserts. In between came soup, four entrees and three sides, all served family-style to be shared.

The toast was topped with cubes of butternut squash, farmer's cheese and fried sage leaves. There was also okra, whole pods fried in a crisp cornmeal crust, served with celery sticks and colorful heirloom carrots.

Entrees included seared scallops with parsnip puree, and filet of beef with roasted potatoes and buttery Swiss chard.

Fried chicken with mashed potatoes had a novel crust, made of three cereals, including corn flakes and frosted flakes. Accompanying Brussels sprouts were cooked until just soft and glazed with maple; Wagenhauser said he applied it to offset the sprouts' inherent bitterness.

The fourth entree was a vegetarian pasta with paper-thin pappardelle, mushrooms and bite-size tomatoes. Vegetable sides such as collard greens and mac and cheese were dosed up with loads of cheese and meat. But he served a cool concoction of cornbread topped with black-eyed peas, goat cheese and a strip of crispy chicken skin.

Here's the entire menu:

Snacks
Mussels mariniere
Cornbread with vanilla honey butter
Fried okra
Butternut squash toast with fried sage and pumpkin seeds
Green bean flatbread with cauliflower puree, caramelized onions, Maytag blue cheese and cilantro
Country pâté
Artisanal cheese and charcuterie board

Soup and salad
Butternut and barley soup with water chestnuts
Mixed green salad
Seared tuna salad
BBQ pork sliders

Plates
Short rib rigatoni
Pappardelle pasta, fennel, tomatoes and maitake mushrooms
Shrimp and grits with étouffée
Beef filet with Yukon gold potatoes and Swiss chard
Trout with potato and corn succotash
Scallop with apple-bacon jam, endive and parsnip puree
Fried chicken with mashed potatoes
Rib-eye

Sides
Maple-bacon collard greens
Artichokes, potatoes, Asiago cheese, sun chokes, salami
Mac and cheese with piquillo pepper
French fries with garlic aioli and spicy ketchup
Cornbread croutons with black-eyed peas, goat cheese and crispy chicken skin
Cook Hall chips

Sweets
Devil's food chocolate cake, brittle pumpkin seed, mascarpone
Orange Bundt cake with sugar frosting and blackberry jam
Pumpkin ice cream sundae with pumpkin ice cream, rehydrated cranberries and spiced whipped cream
Pear sorbet with homemade gin shot

unspecified

Lower Greenville shakeup

Dallas restaurant Rye to close on Lower Greenville as sister bar moves in

Rye

undefined

The popular farm-to-table restaurant Rye is set to close its doors on Lower Greenville later this spring, and its sister spot, self-described “avant garde” cocktail bar Apothecary, will take over its space.

Rye owner Tanner Agar announced the restaurant’s impending closure in a release, sharing that Rye’s last day of service is set for March 7. Following its shutter, the space will undergo a brief makeover to make way for a “moodier” aesthetic for Apothecary, complete with new lounge-style seating options and refreshed design elements.

“To allow Apothecary and Rye to grow individually into the concepts we know they can become, our teams and spaces need to become more separated, with knowledge and resources dedicated to each concept individually,” Agar says in the release. “Apothecary is taking over the full space because we feel that Lower Greenville is the appropriate home for it.”

Rye first opened on Lower Greenville in 2021, joining the restaurant’s original location in downtown McKinney, which debuted in 2015. The McKinney location closed in 2022 after its building was extensively damaged in a fire.

In 2024, Rye earned recognition from the Michelin Guide, which praised its “genuine hospitality” and “unrestrained” cuisine.

Now, Agar insists that Rye “isn’t gone forever,” but has not yet shared where or when the restaurant might reopen. Agar says that he is currently on the look-out for a new location that will “better support the team’s mission and overall vision.”

Apothecary, on the other hand, will reopen on March 13, taking over the dining room formerly occupied by Rye. The bar will be split into two sections, essentially, with Rye’s former dining room transformed into the bar’s main space, which will serve a “more approachable” menu of libations, including classic cocktails, beer, and wine.

The bar’s current space will be transformed into a dedicated space for cocktail experimentation, with an “exclusive” back-room feel. The space will allow the bar’s “cocktail masters” to serve more adventurous drinks, and a brand-new omakase-style cocktail service that drinkers will have to make a reservation for.

Before it closes, Rye plans to go out in style with a final tasting menu, set to begin on Tuesday, January 27, that pays homage to dishes from the restaurant’s first year in business. Also following its closure, Agar is planning a series of Rye pop-ups that will take place every couple of months to keep Rye in Dallas’s dining conversation.

The all-new Apothecary will open on March 13, one week after Rye’s final day of service on March 7. In the meantime, diners can score their final reservations at Rye via Tock.

bars lower greenville michelin guide closings