Six courses. Two French chefs. One Dallas kitchen.
by CHRISTINA GEYER
photographs by MANNY RODRIGUEZ
Christopher Hache, left, and Bruno Davaillon
Christopher Hache is an active Instagrammer (@chef_hache). If you were following the French chef during the month of July, though, you would have noticed a peculiar photo standing out among his de rigueur food and in-the-kitchen snaps. There he was, sitting on the patio at Dallas’ own Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse, a bottle of Shiner Bock in one hand, a big white napkin tucked into his T-shirt and surrounded by six plates of barbecue and side dishes. Not exactly where you would expect to find the Michelin-starred executive chef of the illustrious Hôtel de Crillon in Paris.
So why was chef Hache here, chowing down on barbecue? The Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek and its own French executive chef, Bruno Davaillon, simply asked him to come. Hache’s hotel, you see, was acquired by Rosewood in 2013 and will reopen, with much anticipation, in 2015 after a two-year-long renovation of the 256-year-old building. During the closure, Hache has been touring the world, visiting restaurants and other Rosewood hotels, collaborating with chefs and gathering inspiration for the dishes he will soon prepare in the kitchen of one of Paris’ landmark hotels. The Crillon opened in 1909 in the 1758 structure, a lavish pile built by order of Louis XV. (On the guest register? Winston Churchill, Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, the Dalai Lama.) Hache’s journey, which has taken him from the streets of Vietnam to the gardens of chef Thomas Keller’s California restaurant, The French Laundry, brought him to Turtle Creek Boulevard and Gillespie Street, where he and chef Davaillon created a six-course dinner menu that blended French and Texan cuisine, complete with wine pairings. Each night, dinner service was sold out.
On the final evening of Hache’s visit, after the last plate went out, he and Davaillon were ready to play — Texas-style. The suave, handsome Hache wanted to experience Dallas night life, so Davaillon, ever the proper host, took him — Mansion pastry chef Nicolas Blouin, the hotel’s food and beverage director Luke Mathot and Hache’s sous chef Justin Schmitt in tow — to several bars along lower Greenville Avenue, from Truck Yard to the Libertine Bar. The next day, Hache boarded a plane bound for Paris, only to soon resume his journey. On his itinerary? Brazil, the Sanguinaires Islands and more — nowhere where the barbecue is as good as it is here.
