After suffering a fire in the kitchen in August, downtown Dallas steakhouse Dallas Chop House has a date for its official reopening: Monday, November 3.
The restaurant has undergone an extensive renovation for the past 10 weeks, says Nafees Alam, vice president of DRG Concepts, and CEO Mike Hoque expressed his thanks to the downtown Dallas community for their support and patience.
The fire was concentrated in the restaurant's kitchen but ended up shutting down the street and causing an evacuation of some employees at Comerica Tower.
"To get the kitchen back in shape, we had to gut everything out," Alam says. "When the firefighters came in, they had to make sure the building was protected, and that entailed taking a lot of stuff apart.
"It was a precautionary measure on their part, but we had to rebuild."
As long as they were rebuilding, they took the opportunity to upgrade the kitchen equipment and give the restaurant a refresh.
"We took the time to make some positive changes that we felt like would add value," Alam says. "In addition to putting in a new Vent-a-Hood and other equipment, we did cover the dining room with new wallpaper and brand new furniture.
"We didn't change the dining room, we liked the look and wanted to keep it," he says. "But everything's been touched up."
To mark the reopening, chefs Chad Starling and AJ Joglekar — who in June served a rib eye that had been aged for 459 days —have redesigned the menu, supplementing their steakhouse standards with new recipes such as a braised Wagyu short ribs with red wine.
The key thing for them was to get the restaurant open in time for fall, including the Dallas City Lights festival of which they will be a part. "We wanted to be open in time for the holiday season," Alam says.
For the remainder of the year, Dallas Chop House will be open for dinner. It will resume lunch service in 2015.
Steak is back on at Dallas Chop House.
