A new Italian restaurant that brings a lot to the table has opened in Dallas: Called Ocean Ranch, it opened on March 4 at 2114 Greenville Ave., the space that was previously home to award-winning restaurant Carte Blanche, which closed in 2024.
Ocean Ranch is from two veterans of L.A.'s storied Italian restaurant scene: Nando Silvestri, a prolific restaurateur for more than 30 years; and chef Enrico Glaudo, who grew up in northern Italy and has a lengthy restaurant resume of his own.
At Ocean Ranch, they're doing a crowd-pleasing combination of seafood and steak with an Italian influence, featuring dishes like fish & chips, Wagyu meatballs, lobster roll, seafood risotto, penne a la vodka, and trendy steak frites.
There are oysters four ways: on the half shell, oysters rockefeller, tempura fried, and oyster po'boys. There is also clam chowder, tuna tartare, and varied shellfish you can order in a sampler platter.
Three steaks — New York, ribeye, and filet mignon — can be ordered with toppings like crab or crispy oyster mushrooms, with steakhouse-style sides like mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.
"I'm from north of Torino, well known for steak from the Piedmontese cow but also surrounded by the sea on three sides, so there's seafood," Glaudo says. "Not fried calamari — refined seafood. With Ocean Ranch, the idea was, why not put the two together. I always liked the idea of a steakhouse but hate when you go and there's nothing but red meat. At the same time, so many seafood places, there's no meat. It seemed like a good idea to combine the two, in a seasonal Italian way."
There are flatbreads, but it's not a pizza place. And pastas are something they mostly do for lunch — "but they're light, not with a heavy tomato sauce," he says. "For dinner, we do a Piedmontese seafood risotto that is dear to me."
Prices are not too outrageous, with entrees such as short ribs and chicken parmagiana averaging about $30. A well-stocked wine list has classic California labels — Caymus, Stags Leap, etc. — including seven Cabernet Sauvignons, side-by-side with Italian labels like Marchesi di Barolo and Antinori Chianti.
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Getting the place open was no cakewalk. They relocated the bar which previously ran down the middle of the space.
"It made more sense to put it off to one side, and now we have more seating with an 18-stool bar, plus 70 seats inside and 20 outside," Silvestri says. "It's been a lot of time and money."
Silvestri and Glaudo are both well known in southern California's cosmopolitan Italian restaurant scene. Silvestri owned restaurants such as Tramontano in Malibu and Il Piccolo Ritrovo in the Pacific Palisades. Glaudo has earned much acclaim as a chef at restaurants such as Primi where his authentic Italian cooking dazzled critics.
Both started when they were very young: Silvestri opened his first restaurant in 1992 when he was only 21, and Glaudo started his career in the kitchen at age 14.
They're a colorful duo with fun extracurricular hobbies. Silvestri grew up in southern California and got into boating. Glaudo is a huge motorcycle aficionado.
What brought them to Dallas was SMU, which Silvestri's son attends.
"I started coming to parents' weekend festivities and could see a need for this kind of food we'll be providing," Silvestri says. "But I'd already been shifting out of California. I still have places in L.A. but I also opened a couple of places in Florida. We're not part of some big hospitality group — it's just me and the people I've gotten to know throughout the years."'
Glaudo is a gad-about who first came to Texas nearly a decade ago by way of Houston, where he served as executive chef of Hotel Granduca Houston.
"I love Texas, it's in the middle of the country and you can go anywhere on a motorcycle in a day and a half," he says.
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