John Tesar Opens Knife Italian and Can’t Get Over His Past | Eater Dallas

"Opened in March 2024 inside the Las Colinas Ritz-Carlton as an expansion of the chef’s hotel partnerships, this restaurant is positioned as “a non-hotel restaurant in a hotel,” intended to keep guests on the property by offering high-quality food and elevated ambiance. The menu focuses on crowd-pleasers—steak, salads, handmade pasta, desserts—and pizzas (currently Neapolitan with plans to add other styles), alongside refined small plates such as caviar-topped zeppole, crudo, kingfish in a mussel broth, and salmon with ’nduja sauce. Familiar dishes from the chef’s other restaurants have been reworked with Italian touches (for example, hamachi reimagined with grapefruit and beets), and family recipes play a role too, such as baked clams based on his mother’s recipe. The chef’s outspoken personality and his Michelin pedigree are drawing diners to the suburbs to try the concept." - Courtney E. Smith