Sitting on the patio of his latest restaurant, on Dallas’s bamboo-lined Katy Path, Stephan Courseau beams like a brand new father. The founding father of Travis Road Hospitality—established after he introduced “white-tablecloth stalwart” Le Bilboquet from New York greater than a decade in the past and adopted it with two of his personal eating places, Knox Bistro and Georgie—Courseau explains the raison d’être for Le PasSage, an Asian-French idea that opened October 18. “I could have done ten Le Bilboquets,” he says in a nonetheless discernible French accent, regardless of his fifteen years in Dallas. As the only real holder of rights to increase the Parisian-style bistro in Texas, Courseau says he “probably wouldn’t have to work anymore” if he had caught with the one-hit marvel. “But that’s boring.”
Murmuring in a tender, even thicker French accent, chef-partner Bruno Davaillon, who oversees the kitchen at Le PasSage, says that since he’s now not a 25-year-old chef, he received’t essentially be on the road firing five-spice duck breasts in the course of the dinner rush. As an alternative, he’ll deal with the harder job of orchestrating a symbiosis between the kitchen and the service workforce, a feat he calls “magical” when pulled off efficiently. The restaurant is Davaillon’s first endeavor that veers away from the French delicacies he began cooking as a twelve-year-old within the Loire Valley on his great-aunt’s farm. Now a gray-templed, Michelin-recognized chef, he says his intention at Le PasSage is to use French cooking methods to dishes from Cambodia, China, Thailand, and Vietnam and plate them in a fashion one would discover in a conventional French restaurant. (Related issues have occurred earlier than: The banh mi and Vietnam’s enduring espresso tradition got here on account of French colonization.)
Courseau and Davaillon’s imaginative and prescient is edgy. After working in the identical circles for many years, finally banding collectively after Davaillon’s Bullion closed, in 2020, the Frenchmen are circuitous relating to defining it. Le PasSage not pan-Asian, not fusion, and never centered on anybody nation or area in Asia. It’s extra of an endeavor to emulate eating places like those Courseau loved visiting together with his spouse throughout their twenty years dwelling in New York, the place “all food is celebrated at the same level,” he says, referring to locations akin to Indochine, Le Colonial, and Mr Chow, and, in London, Hakkasan.
By presenting Asian meals modified by French methods, Le PasSage is an try at “honest food that has a twist and makes you travel,” Courseau says. The purpose is to take recognizable dishes—shrimp toast, hen satay, shaking beef—and tweak them into “the best you ever had. What drives us is to not repeat ourselves.”
To realize a way of journey and connection between worlds, builders Lindsay and Blake Shipp of Capital Peak Ventures tapped Austin-based architect Michael Hsu to design the luxurious mixed-use playground often known as the Terminal at Katy Path, together with its eating places. The designer of the Uchi and Loro areas, together with scores of different impression-leaving tasks, such because the P. Terry’s flagship and ATX Cocina, in Austin; M-Ok-T and Balboa Surf Membership, in Houston; and Gulfpoint, in Padre Island, Hsu can also be accountable for the design of Le PasSage’s all-day sister spot, Rose Café, on the primary ground; the retail and workplace areas on the second ground; and a few residences above.
Boasting a few of the solely eating places on the Katy Path that aren’t open-air taprooms, the Terminal is a placing, omnidirectional constructing with equally beautiful entry factors from all facades, an effort to hark again to the Katy Path’s origins because the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. The MKT, because it was known as, grew to become the primary railroad to enter Texas from the north, in 1872, eleven years earlier than the launch of the Orient Categorical—the theme Courseau knew he wished for Le PasSage from the start.
When the challenge began, 4 years in the past, Hsu says he was excited by Courseau and Davaillon’s “strong reputations for quality” and “thresholds for design.” As with the restaurant’s delicacies, the luxury-train design goals to invoke the turn-of-the-century romance of climbing aboard, with French and Asian influences.
To hold out the imaginative and prescient on the plate, Davaillon known as in skills akin to Hou Lam “Dicky” Fung, the company govt chef who oversaw all of Mr Chow’s flashy, celebrity-studded areas for fifteen years, and pastry chef Dyan Ng, who started working at a younger age for substantial cooks like Alain Ducasse, Man Savoy, and Davaillon himself. Ng has a way of recent horizons, calling Dallas “a breath of fresh air” that appears rife with alternative, particularly for cooks and bakers akin to herself. “Everything seems new here,” she says. “We’re excited to showcase what we’ve learned throughout our careers.”
In the identical manner the Katy Path without end modified Dallas and its economic system, Le PasSage will additional the town’s rising repute as a vacation spot for world-class eating places, Courseau hopes. “Dallas, and Texas in general, is more and more cosmopolitan, year after year,” he says. Dallasites need extra high-end choices, as he sees it. “They have a desire to be recognized as a place where things matter.”
A placing primary eating room consists of George Nelson bubble lamps, customized lotus-flower wall lamps by Pelle, and wishbone chairs modeled after these designed by Danish architect Hans Wegner, often known as the Grasp of the Chair.
Evan Sung Images
A peek by means of the big, discreet entrance door offers a glimpse of heat lighting and ranging shades of high-gloss pink used all through the restaurant’s inside. Daniele Garcia, inventive director of Travis Road Hospitality and spouse of Courseau, created a temper board for Hsu that included punchy colours starting from flamingo pink to cerise.
Evan Sung Images
Along with congee and breakfast tacos served each morning and summer time rolls and Cambodian lemongrass skewers for lunch, Rose Café will even function the restaurant’s bar. With a meals menu created by chef Sotear Tep, the cafe is open each day from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. There are grab-and-go choices, together with espresso, or “if you want to sit down, have a glass of wine and the best papaya salad in town, we have it,” says Davaillon.
Evan Sung Images
Chef Fung’s Peking duck—a dish Davaillon says would have been a “crime to modify”—is served with sufficient carved meat, pancakes, and dressings for 4. Fung, who beforehand labored at eating places in Beirut, Dubai, and the Philippines, calls himself “a bird without a lake” that’s prepared for a brand new problem in Dallas.
Beckleyco Images
Appetizers embody steamed dumplings, akin to shrimp ha gao and pork shumai, in addition to Chinese language child again ribs, fried bitter greens with candied walnuts, and Cambodian ravioli stuffed with pork and wooden ear mushrooms.
Beckleyco Images
The reception space features a backlit onyx host stand, lacquered shutters, and a column designed by Hsu to resemble one in every of Harry Bertoia’s mid-century trendy sculptures.
Evan Sung Images
Learn Subsequent
