Luqa, the restaurant component of the Dallas Roof Gardens in downtown, manages to be an experience at once excellent and anti-climactic.
That’s because the place comes with such a colorful, controversial back story—from its prolonged, three-year renovation to the 27 extravagant palm trees that sit on its rooftop—that you expect a little more drama with your plate.
A wee five stories tall, this one-time savings and loan building became a favorite pet for downtown watchers and architecture buffs who tracked its renovation, plank by plank. The concern flared with every lapse in construction or financing: would the plucky building survive? And what to make of Obi Ibeto, its mysterious owner-developer from London who went out of his way to avoid the spotlight?
Obi’s the one who dreamed up the high-flying idea of echoing the concept of the Kensington Roof Garden in England, a similar compound with bar, restaurant, and garden. Cheers to anyone with such big ambitions, but the Dallas Roof Gardens complex underwhelms at first—especially in its unfinished state. Even after opening, it remained a work in progress as of early January, with unfinished elevators and a leaky water sculpture at the ground floor entry.
The kitchen, though, has been on the money since Day One. David Gilbert, 28, is a serious young chef with grand ideas, and he shows the ability to see them through. Though he grew up in Dallas, he went to Johnson & Wales, then worked at kitchens in Europe, St. Thomas, Atlanta, and Beverly Hills.
He knows about quality of ingredients and how to cook them properly, the basics you hope for at any restaurant. But his food also had humor and novelty, pushing it into an intellectual realm of dining that stimulated the imagination yet (mostly) satisfied the primary objective of filling your stomach.
Sometimes this was just about reconsidering the classics. The burger at lunch, for example, he tweaked by using ground bison (the favorite of mogul Ted Turner), which is leaner and better for you than beef. He mixed in parsley and roasted garlic, topped it with smoked Gouda cheese—to enhance the flavor of the mesquite log on which the burger was grilled—and served it on a buttered, toasted brioche bun. On the side were sweet-potato fries, their skins still on, sprinkled with fleur de sel; sun-dried tomato-garlic aïoli, standing in for ketchup; and a dish of house-made sweet pickle slices. Very nice.
Australian rack of lamb had a neat pouring trick of its own: lamb jus, served from a French coffee press. Sounds goofy, but it was terrific. The lamb was a half rack, four meaty chops, accompanied by garlic whipped potatoes and wedges of roasted acorn squash. Lastly came a spoonful of crème chantilly, slightly sweet. The server proffered a coffee press, full of lamb jus with whole coffee beans at the bottom. As he poured it over the crème chantilly, it brought to mind café au lait. The coffee beans gave the liquid a deep, toasty flavor, adding distinctiveness and gravitas.
If you’re a young, avant-garde-leaning chef, you’re playing around with exotic techniques, and Gilbert is no exception. His artillery includes dehydration as well as sous vide, the trendy method of cooking food in a vacuum at very low heat. Duck spring roll came with a sauce made from whole oranges that’d been cooked at low heat until they disintegrated, and a paper-thin slice of dehydrated orange so perfect it looked like a photo of an orange slice.
Does it occasionally become too much? I’d pass on the deconstructed crème brûlée with custard in a large bowl, topped by a floating pane of pulled sugar at least a quarter-inch thick—too thick to eat. But for the most part, Gilbert balances his desire to experiment with the more essential need for simple, appealing food. For all its radical strokes, Luqa’s menu had an earthy quality evident in its use of root vegetables such as butternut squash in the ravioli, and grains such as the barley served with a roasted Cornish hen.
The service and the wine list were—how to put it— more in line with the building (i.e., not quite ready for prime time). “We’re starting slowly,” confided one manager about the nascent state of the wine list. Meanwhile, a busboy at the waiter station in the corner stealthily helped himself to swigs of wine from a glass he kept hidden.
They may not have had the wine, but they sure do have the space for it. In the center of the building sits a two-story wine tower, with capacity for 1,500 selections of what the restaurant touts as an “international collection.” The tower is one feature in what is an undeniably splendid interior, with a chic, open design in which the restaurant connects to the bar upstairs via a sweeping railed staircase. The kitchen is enclosed in what looks like a glass cage, with floor-to-ceiling windows that provide diners full view of the action but buffer the cooking staff from noise. They look like scientists in a lab. 1217 Main St. 214-760-9000. $$$.
