Editor’s note: After I published this review, I was contacted by writer Mike Hiller. He says Colleen O’Hare “has parted ways” with The Keeper. I contacted Judd Fruia of Front Burner. The new chef at The Keeper will be Tyler Thaxton from DC Ritz Carlton. Colleen O’Hare tells me she is now at Montlake Cut. This review has been edited to reflect staff changes.
Front Burner Restaurant Group is almost single-handedly giving diners who live north of LBJ no reason to drive south to eat. Their current concepts, Mexican Sugar, Whiskey Cake, Sixty Vines, Ida Claire, The Ranch at Las Colinas, are located out of the loop. That will change with the second location of Sixty Vines, slated to open at The Crescent in Uptown in 2018.
The Keeper at The Shops at Legacy is all about seafood. Front Burner originally recruited Colleen O’Hare, a talented chef with a resume that includes Good2Go Taco, Mot Hai Ba, York Street, and the original Green Room in Deep Ellum. However, O’Hare recently left the restaurant. The new chef will be Tyler Thaxton from DC Ritz Carlton.
I’m not convinced maneuvering around a computer is the best way to order dinner. It’s helpful if you want to see a picture of the dish and some suggested wine parings, but some items didn’t have pictures, and my friend and I tended to forget about those dishes.
I didn’t want to eat calamari, but my opinionated, domineering friend wanted to eat it because it is battered with tapioca. I’m glad his choice prevailed. It was my favorite bite of the night. Tender tentacles of squid were tossed with blistered shishito and red peppers and charred lemon and served with a hot garlic-chili vinegar sauce. It was beautifully presented in a bamboo steam basket.
We also cleaned the glass filled with seafood campechana, a generous combo of plump shrimp, lumps of crab, and avocado. We played guessing games to determine the dominate flavor of the dish. Our waiter wouldn’t contribute. His only contribution was oregano. If there was oregano in that dish, we totally missed it. Nonetheless, it was superb despite the lifeless tortilla chips thrown on the plate.
I have earned my reputation as a king crab snob. It doesn’t matter if the lovely long legs have been airlifted by a U.S. Air Force special operations squad and delivered to Plano within 12 hours of its catch, there is nothing like eating one just pulled from the waters of Alaska. I realize we all have to make sacrifices when it comes to eating seafood in Dallas, and for the most part, restaurants do a great job of securing fine fresh fish, but it has been my experience that king crab doesn’t travel as well.
That said, I ate both legs served to me last night. (The waiter told us the crab comes from Dutch Harbor in Alaska.) They were steamed and just warm. The meat was sweet, but a tad dry. The kitchen should save the effort of offering spicy chili sauce for dipping. Fabulous king crab needs no embellishment. The accompanying warm potato salad and grilled corn were a nice addition, and I must say the whole dish is a bargain at $48.
My friend claims he picked the best dish. I have to let him win here so he will continue to drive me north and pay the tolls. His gently grilled redfish served with carrots and maybe turnips was a thing of beauty. The filets, bathing in a pool of almost clear miso citrus reduction, are topped with bright red pomegranate seeds. I say “maybe turnips” because I wasn’t offered a taste.
We didn’t eat dessert. Mostly because our server brought us the bill after removing the dishes of our main course, but also because when we arrived, we were seated to the left of the bar. It’s mostly an overflow space, and we felt lonely. The majority of the restaurant is to the right of the bar when you enter. The black and white octagonal floor tiles remind me of S&D Oyster Company and a million other seafood places. Subconsciously it says seafood.
The space is light and airy and faintly Polynesian. The walls are bright white with sea foam green accents and lots of indoor plants and a life-size mermaid in the bar area. The bar offers tiki cocktails, a touch we missed once again because if you don’t click on cocktails on the iPad, you don’t know about them. Another reason to have a single sheet menu with type that hits you in the eyeballs.
The exhibition kitchen is behind glass. And we didn’t discover the fresh seafood on ice at the fish-cutting station until after our meal. Which was a shame because there was a pile of fresh, not-on-the-menu stone crabs we would have ordered. Guess our waiter skipped reciting the specials.
The Keeper is great for Plano. The 250-seat restaurant was quite busy on a Tuesday night at 7 p.m. We’ll have to wait and see what the new chef does. Fruia says they are in the process of “trying to main stream the menu.”
