It always bodes well for a restaurant when local chefs get to flex their culinary muscles
Once upon a time, an internationally-familiar celebrity chef who has opened a new Dallas restaurant made me retake every press photo prior to a review I was writing because the on-site executive chef — the one who the owner had entrusted with supervising the dishes — was in all the pictures. The celeb chef wasn’t even in town, so it’s not like he could step in. And he didn’t care if anyone else (a waiter, a busboy) posed with the food … just not his chef. Why? Because the restaurant was his, and he didn’t want anyone else getting credit for it. (FYI, the restaurant was shuttered within a year.) Some bosses crave all the attention; some like to spread it around.
Wolfgang Puck is one of the latter.
Puck isn’t personally in the kitchen much at Five Sixty, his still-relevant Asian-tinged fine dining restaurant that revolves atop Reunion Tower. Most of the duties for turning out the cuisine is handled by executive chef Jacob Williamson, sushi chef Hiroyuki Fujino and, of late, executive pastry chef Erika Lucio — those are names you should know, and that Puck wants you to know.
“Wolfgang likes it when his chefs [get credit],” Alex Reznik, Puck’s operations partner, told me at dinner earlier this month. Skills and acclaim across the board build the brand, not detract from it.
And that has certainly been the case at Five Sixty. On two visits this year, Williamson’s gifts have been particularly in evidence. (He’s led the kitchen since late 2015.) A grilled New York strip, touched with a demiglace of classic Shaoxing wine, was perfectly sweet and juicy, while a densely-packed tartare of tenderloin with a soy-cured egg was ravishing. But one thing that really sent the later dish over the top was toasted Hokkaido milk bread. It was a stunner.
When bread can make you do a double-take, you’ve got something going on in the pastry department.
Lucio joined the team about six months ago, and has showcased her hand at ending Williamson’s (and Fuji’s) meals as deftly as they begin. So the launch this week of a new dessert menu bodes well for the restaurant, which was jam-packed on a recent Thursday. Her yuzu panna cotta, served in a globe to make it appear like an aquarium, was a terrific bit of trompe l’oeil creativity: spongy blueberry cake seeming like exotic coral, with an indigo-colored gelee oozing like magma from an underwater fissure, with creamy terra cotta at the base. Lucio’s desserts as not just beautiful, but sophisticated and satisfying.
Yuzu also plays a role in her version of baked Alaska, pictured, and probably will find its way into the sorbets and gelati. There’s also a Caraibe chocolate mousse frangipane with raspberry and matcha, Japanese cheesecake, cookies and even a bittersweet chocolate souffle. Finding a good destination restaurant for desserts is usually a puzzle for me; Five Sixty makes it easy.
Puck is still energetic (dare I say “puckish?”) after decades in the biz (he turns 69 later this summer), but he can’t do this forever. It’s nice to see his proteges are getting their just desserts.
— Arnold Wayne Jones
