Michelin-Starred Chef John Tesar Takes Corporate Chef Role at Palladino Group

John Tesar, the Dallas chef whose Knife & Knife & Spoon earned Michelin stars in 2022 and 2023, has been named corporate executive chef of The Palladino Group — a role that puts him over menus at two steak-and-seafood houses, one in New York's Grand Central Terminal and one in Dallas's Preston Hollow neighborhood.

That's the headline. Underneath it sits a twenty-year relationship that finally found its timing.

Tesar joins restaurateur Joseph Palladino, whose background includes the Dallas steakhouse institution Nick & Sam's. The two have known each other for roughly two decades, and Palladino had floated a partnership with Tesar before. It never lined up. Now it has.

What changes on the menu?

Tesar's imprint is already showing up as an expansion of the seafood and Italian sides of the menu. The additions include:

• Tableside Dover sole with brown butter and capers
• Flat iron steak
• Skirt steak
• Baseball-cut steak

Those cuts and dishes sit alongside Palladino's existing prime beef and sushi program, which signals a deliberate menu-engineering play: broadening the center of the plate beyond prime beef while keeping the high-margin sushi and steak anchors intact. For a two-unit group competing in the premium steakhouse segment — Grand Central's captive commuter traffic on one end, Preston Hollow's affluent Dallas diners on the other — a Michelin-decorated chef running the menu is a pricing-power story as much as a culinary one.

Who is John Tesar?

His résumé reads like a map of American fine dining over three decades. Tesar started at Club Pierre in Westhampton, New York. He then opened 13 Barrow Street in Manhattan and logged time at New York kitchens including 44 & X, Vine, and the Supper Club.

From there the career bent west and south — Las Vegas, then Dallas, where he opened Spoon and later Knife. Knife & Spoon, at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, collected Michelin stars in both 2022 and 2023, the industry's most portable proof of kitchen discipline. Tesar is also a five-time James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef Southwest, and television viewers will know him from two seasons of Bravo's Top Chef.

Splitting time between two markets

Tesar will divide his time between the Grand Central Terminal location and the Dallas restaurant at 5959 Royal Lane in Preston Hollow. That split matters for a corporate chef role: it means both kitchens operate under the same culinary direction rather than franchising out standards to a local hire — a distinction The Palladino Group is implicitly leaning on as it grows from a single New York flagship into a bi-coastal, two-market brand.

The Dallas opening in Preston Hollow represents the group's expansion into Tesar's home turf, where his name carries the most weight with local diners and press.

What does this change for the group?

In practical terms, Palladino's gets a chef whose Michelin recognition and Top Chef visibility can justify premium check averages in both markets, and whose menu additions — Dover sole service, mid-tier steak cuts like flat iron and skirt — give operators flexibility across price points without abandoning the prime beef core. For a group at two units, the hire reads as positioning: building the culinary identity before scaling further.

Whether the partnership produces additional locations remains to be seen, but with a Michelin-starred chef now embedded across both kitchens and a two-decade relationship finally formalized, The Palladino Group has its culinary leadership in place for whatever comes next. More information is at palladinos.com.