Tastemaker Awards

Top 12 Dallas chefs nominated for Tastemaker Awards 2024 chef of the year

Cobb salad at Margaret's

www.margaretsdallas.com

We're down to the wire for CultureMap Dallas' 2024 Tastemaker Awards, our annual awards event honoring the best in Dallas food and drink.

We've nominated restaurant industry stars for awards in 10 categories, spotlighted in a special editorial series: celebrating candidates for Rising Star Chef, Pastry Chef, Neighborhood Restaurant, Patios, Wine Program, Bars, Bartender, and Restaurant of the Year, as voted by our panel of esteemed judges. There is also our Best New Restaurants category, the only one where the winner gets decided not by judges but instead by readers.

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on May 16 at the Fashion Industry Gallery, where we'll toast the nominees while indulging in bites and sips. Tickets are on sale now.

This entry covers the Chef of the Year: These are the established names, at the top of their field, owning their own restaurants or overseeing the kitchens at top restaurants around Dallas.

Here are our nominees for Chef of the Year:

Andrea Shackelford, Harvest at the Masonic
Shackelford built her early career around the farm-to-table movement, working with notable chefs such as Tom Colicchio, Kevin Maxey, Jeff Harris, Tim Bevins, and Graham Dodds before joining forces with McKinney wunderkind Rick Wells at his Wells Hospitality Group (Rick’s Chophouse) in 2012. Both fierce advocates of sustainability, they recently opened Harvest at the Masonic, re-purposing the former Masonic Lodge, a landmark building on the square in McKinney.

Arnulfo Trey Sánchez, Vaqueros TX BBQ
The colorful Sanchez has more than 36 years of barbeque experience, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, Taste of Texas, The Cooking Channel’s Man Fire Food, and Man’s Greatest Food. He was also a semifinalist for the 2024 James Beard Awards. In 2018, he launched Vaqueros Texas Bar-B-Q, a food truck that sets up shop at Hop & Sting Brewing Co., and will open a stand-alone restaurant in Allen at Watters Creek Village in summer '24.

Braden and Yasmin Wages, Malai Kitchen
Braden and Yasmin Wages met while studying at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, then honed their skills working at the Hillstone Restaurant Group before launching their own concept, Malai Kitchen, specializing in Southeast Asian cuisine, in 2011. They've traveled Vietnam and Thailand to expand their knowledge of the regional ingredients, flavors, techniques, trends, and customs, and have garnered notoriety for their commitment to excellent food, hospitality, and an innovative in-house beer program.

Chad Dolezal & Jason Smith, Cenzo’s Pizza & Deli
Cenzo's is the Oak Cliff restaurant-deli in a vintage Magnolia service station that's been transformed into a fun, irreverent, but excellent pizza palace by chef team Chad Dolezal and Jason Smith, with sandwiches, pizzas, appetizers like antipasto and garlic bread, and a lunch deal with salad and a slice. These are chefs applying their significant skills to give the neighborhood what it wants, be that a burrata salad with grapefruit, arugula, and almonds; or a chicken parm sandwich served on Thursdays only.

Franchesca Nor, Dive Coastal Cuisine
Nor is a thoughtful restaurateur who makes great fresh food — spring pea soup with crab, killer sandwiches, grilled stuffed avocado with shrimp & corn — as well as serving her market in Snider Plaza attentively. She's also is heavily into sustainable endeavors such as her an innovative new farming concept, DiveDWN, designed to provide locally-grown crops, plus serve as a hub for education, cultivation, and conservation.

James Rowland, Carver Park
Well-regarded veteran chef (Beau Nash, Bistro Nous Greenville Avenue Bar & Grill) is changing the game in the office cantina world with his chef-driven cafes tucked inside North Dallas office buildings. Rowland and his partner Fana Yohannes have been turning out fresh sandwiches, pastas, soups, and hearty vegetarian dishes at Carver Park (which was nominated for a Tastemaker Award in 2022), and Carver Park LBJ. Office workers and lunch dates alike can enjoy dishes like meat loaf with mashed potatoes or a chicken poblano quesadilla.

John Tesar, Knife Italian
Colorful chef gets attention for his unfiltered, outspoken personality, overshadowing his culinary prowess. But he's a skilled, creative chef who elevated the burger with his now-closed Arts District restaurant The Commissary and jolted Dallas' moribund steak scene with his acclaimed Knife steakhouses in Dallas and Plano. He has restaurants now in other cities, so he's not in Dallas as often, but he's making waves locally with Knife Italian, his new Italian restaurant at The Ritz-Carlton Dallas, Las Colinas.

Jonah Friedmann, Margaret's
Returning Tastemaker Award nominee (from 2022 as chef at the Commons Club at Virgin Hotels Dallas) is now wowing them at the JW Marriott Dallas Arts District, at three inhouse restaurants including Margaret's on the 11th floor. Chicago native attended the Culinary Institute of America and also obtained a bachelor's in hospitality from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He's worked at major hotels such as the Gaylord Texan, Sheraton Dallas, and Hotel Vin in Grapevine, which he helped open in 2020.

Noah Hester, Hamm's Meat & Market
Texas chef earned fame for his appearance on E! Entertainment's The Bradshaw Bunch, following the adventures of former quarterback Terry Bradshaw and his family; Hester's wife Lacey is Bradshaw's daughter. But Hester has earned his own set of accolades for his culinary skills. He and Lacey own the historic Hamm’s Meat + Market where, along with the butcher operation, they are turning out gourmet sandwiches and hosting amazing chef dinners.

RJ Yoakum, Georgie
Yoakum joined the team at Georgie, the Travis Walk restaurant that was formerly a platform for Australian celeb chef Curtis Stone, in January 2023 with a packed resume: The French Laundry in Napa, Angler in San Francisco, travels in Europe, and study at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park. He's the current Dallas foodies' darling, with carefully composed dishes like snapper with pea and Meyer lemon panade, shiso pesto, and preserved pepper boullion.

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Eco Warrior News

Dallas restaurants doing amazing little things for the environment

Southwest Airlines

Cute bamboo cup from Southwest Airlines

One unfortunate legacy left by the pandemic has been a huge increase in the use of plastics — setting back progress that was being made pre-pandemic.

Plastics are bad. They harm everything they touch: the environment, health, food security, and economies. But they're convenient, subsidized, and in some cases necessary.

Before the pandemic, a growing awareness had started to snowball regarding the negative impact of plastics, particularly plastic straws and single-use plastic containers — and it was significant enough to make the plastics industry very nervous.

"In the two years leading up to the pandemic, the public backlash against plastic was a major concern for industry leaders," says a story about plastics and the pandemic in The Guardian. "As a corporate executive remarked during an industry event early in 2019: 'We need to get the image of plastic in oceans out of the public’s mind. Otherwise, we could lose our social license to operate.'"

But then the pandemic came along, igniting mass hysteria about contagion, and suddenly, bans on single-use plastics that had been in the works were reversed in countries around the world: North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

“Overnight, plastics went from public enemy No. 1 to consumers asking for everything to have as much packaging as possible and to be single use," said one gleeful analyst for Shell Oil, who are a major plastics player.

The urgency of the plastics situation remains invisible to most people, lined up at the drive-thru for their coffee or Chick-Fil-A, piling up nearly 250 pounds of plastic waste every year. (That's what the average American amasses — more than any other country.)

But there are brave, pro-environment efforts being made by Dallas companies and organizations, big and small.

La Casita Bakeshop cup Revolutionary compostable cup at La Casita Bakeshop.Facebook

Dallas efforts
The Dallas restaurants and organizations listed below have taken steps to fight waste, even though it costs them money.

Plastic Free Lunch Day is November 22
Dallas ISD’s Food and Child Nutrition Services will participate in Plastic Free Lunch Day on November 22, to help reduce the amount of single-use plastic in school cafeterias.

Plastic Free Lunch Day was started by middle school students in Brooklyn. The initiative was such a success that it was adopted by all New York City public schools in 2022. The concept has since spread to public schools across the country — including Dallas ISD, which was the first in Texas to participate, when it joined up in 2022.

It creates an opportunity to educate students and the community on ways to positively impact the environment, including skipping plastic. Dallas school cafeterias will replace the plastic items they regularly use during lunch with biodegradable alternatives. (Plastic cutlery, cups, and straws will be available upon request for the crybabies.)

Southwest Airlines bamboo cup
Southwest Airlines Co., the Dallas-based airline, has introduced a new bamboo cup for inflight cold beverages, and a wood stir stick in place of a plastic stick. The airline expects the new items to reduce its inflight single-use plastics by more than 1.5 million pounds annually.

In July 2024, Southwest transitioned to a paper overwrap for its napkins made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled materials — fully eliminating plastic from this service item. The airline is making an effort to eliminate single-use plastics from inflight service by 2030.

La Casita Bakeshop compostable cups
La Casita Bakeshop, the award-winning bakery and cafe operation, recently debuted fabulous new cups that are 100 percent compostable, soil- and marine-biodegradable, breaking down naturally after 90 days. and are made from natural materials.

"We are always trying to find ways to be more environmentally friendly and this is a big way we can," they said in their post announcing the new cups. "We just want to be proud of our paper trail and being a restaurant it's hard to do that."

Smoothie King biodegrable cups
Smoothie King, the Dallas-based smoothie chain, previously used styrofoam cups, but began testing a biodegradable cup in 2019. They now offer it as the default choice. They're using Vio Foam, specially made cups that biodegrade 92 percent in four years. They'll still accommodate whiny selfish customers who insist on getting a plastic cup instead, but their Vio foam cup not only helps the environment, it also keeps their smoothies cold a little longer.

Kate Weiser Recycle Box Program
Kate Weiser, the Dallas chocolatier, sells its gorgeous eye-catching bon-bons in a variety of boxes, from 4 pieces all the way up to 35 pieces. (OK, they'll sell them individually, too, but who goes to a chocolate shop and buys a single chocolate?) They have a program where you can bring your empty box to the store and get a refill and get 5 percent off. (Weiser amusingly calls it a "secret hack.")

Dude Sweet Chocolate freezer packaging
Dude Sweet Chocolate, the Oak Cliff chocolatier, has a next-level campaign in which they will accept cold-ship packaging you've received in the mail and re-use it. Say, for example, that you ordered an 8-pack of ice cream pints from Double Rainbow in San Francisco, and it arrived in a box with freezer packs and a foil liner. You can drop that packaging off at Dude Sweet's factory location at 1340 Inwood Rd., and they'll re-use it in one way or another when they're doing shipments of their chocolate.

Note: Whether you're putting it in the blue bin or the gray bin, your plastic is not being recycled. The best course when it comes to plastic, especially single-use plastic, is to not use it at all.

sustainability