There are changes underfoot at one of Dallas-Fort Worth's most prized restaurants: The McKinney restaurant formerly known as Harvest Seasonal Kitchen has been reborn as Harvest at the Masonic, keeping its vital farm-to-table ethic but in a bigger, more glorious setting.
The restaurant relocated in fall 2023 from its original location at 110 E. Louisiana and moved to the former Masonic Lodge, a three-story building at 215 N. Kentucky St. on the square in McKinney, following an impeccable restoration by property owner Rick Wells.
Wells is the generous McKinney benefactor and founder of Wells Group, a hospitality company that includes Harvest as well as Rick's Chop House, the fine-dining steakhouse also in McKinney.
The Harvest team, including acclaimed chef Andrea Shackelford and general manager Sanam Zahir, sensed that they were outgrowing the previous location. “We always thought we could expand our mission and help more people if we had more space,” Zahir said.
That mission, beyond serving good food, is to support local farmers and suppliers, which many restaurants pay lip service to, but which Wells and company really fulfill, working with 90 farmers in the area.
When the time came to expand their footprint, they sought out an older building rather than the easier path of building something new. The Masonic's location in downtown McKinney was definitely appealing - but the structure, built in 1911, was in such poor condition, it took three years and more than $1 million to restore.
According to Wells, challenges included not only installing a kitchen and dining room on the second floor and a bar on the third floor, but also buttressing the structure so that it could withstand crowds and extensive use, while also ensuring that the walls, bricks, and windows adhered to historic integrity.
They're using the entire building, with each of the three floors exhibiting a different personality.
The first floor is basically a recreation of the original Harvest. It incorporates all of the booths and original furnishings from the first location. Other than the addition of a bar in the back, fans say it looks and feels like the original.
Chef Dre's Dining Room at the Harvest at the Masonic.
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The second floor has a kitchen and dining room dubbed "Chef Dre's Dining Room." It feels like a tea room, very feminine, with sage-green walls, salmon-colored high-backed velvet chairs, and art on the walls including a display of cowboy hats.
The third floor has a masculine energy with dark walls, full bar, and live music Wednesday-Saturday nights.
The menu is the same on all three floors and continues the farm-to-table approach; even the flowers on the table are locally grown.
Shackelford is a graduate of SMU and a wunderkind who worked at Craft, Tom Colicchio’s acclaimed restaurant at the W Hotel in Dallas, where she oversaw the kitchen at lunch.
The menu is seasonal, but not froufou. There are brisket tacos, pimento cheese with blackened tortilla chips, carrot hummus, beef skewers, Cobb salad, and chicken-fried steak.
Keeping to their goal to make farm-to-table accessible to all, they've kept prices moderate, with their most expensive dish being bison New York strip with creamed kale, baby carrots, and cauliflower-potato mash for $45.
They're also heavily invested in fighting hunger locally with two nonprofits that work in tandem to fight food insecurity: The Seed Project Foundation, which supports agricultural, education, and community initiatives with annual grants totally $250,000; and a partnership with McKinney Roots, where they donate produce and nutrient-dense foods to nonprofits, churches, and schools.
“We don’t just want our food to be sustenance, but to have a little more substance,” Shackelford says.
Racing at the Velocity Sim Racing Lounge in Houston. Courtesy of Velocity - Sim Racing Lounge 