After almost a year out of the kitchen, chef Nilton "Junior" Borges is preparing for a big comeback to the Dallas dining scene: He has been named executive chef and vice president for culinary at the Village, the massive apartment development in North Dallas, and will oversee a 12-restaurant entertaiment complex there that is expected to open next year.
And the project will, at last, include a restaurant of Borges' own.
It will be Borges' first solo venture, after coming close to opening a highly anticipated restaurant in Knox Henderson last year in partnership with Stephan Courseau, the owner of Up on Knox and Le Bilboquet. In October, the plans and the partnership fell apart. Borges, one of Dallas' most promising chefs, has been almost completely absent from the scene until now.
"It's a super exciting project," Borges says of the Village's new entertainment district. "And it's in a part of town that doesn't have much going on, so it's going to be cool to have all of that within walking distance, like a real neighborhood."
The Village is nearly its own city: a 300-acre complex with 11,000 residents, bordered by Highway 75, Lovers Lane, Skillman Street and Northwest Highway. It is the largest rental community in North Texas, and the entertainment district alone will be 34 acres of retail outlets, a fitness center, ball fields, a putting green, offices and an event lawn, in addition more apartments and the cluster of 12 restaurants. The first phase -- the restaurants -- is expected to open next spring.
Borges will have the only chef-driven concept in the complex. He says the restaurant, which has not been named, will have a refined, modern design with about 100 seats indoors and more on a patio. There will be a full bar and a menu much like the one he was working on with Courseau, with locally sourced ingredients, an array of meats, live-fire cooking and many dishes based on the ones the Brazil-born chef grew up with. There will also be a separate market selling prepared foods, freshly baked bread, beer and wine.
Borges is developing the menu now, starting with building blocks such as house-made vinegars, hot sauces, miso pastes and pickles, and concluding with his own versions of Brazilian dishes such as moqueca, a seafood stew using coconut milk and aromatic herbs, and fritters made with tapioca and a Brazilian cheese similar to haloumi.
"So many things! So many drafts of menus!" he says. "The ideas keep coming and I keep putting them down. What I really want is to create a place where I can cook amazing food, balanced with how we connect with one another and see one another. All of those things are really important to me."
Borges has been dreaming up the restaurant for years, and it will be exciting to see it come to fruition. The chef spent a decade cooking in New York City at restaurants including Tom Colicchio's Colicchio and Sons, before moving to Dallas to become executive chef at Uchi Dallas. He was awarded a rare five stars by the Dallas Morning News in 2016, the highest rating at the time, for his work at that restaurant. Borges went on to become executive chef at FT33 and at the Joule hotel downtown, overseeing Mirador, Americano and its other restaurants.
His year away from the kitchen has been a good break, he says, allowing him to spend time with his 1-year-old son and to gain perspective on the frenetic Dallas dining scene. It's been quite a year here, with the openings of some of the best restaurants in town: Macellaio, Petra and the Beast, Homewood, Khao Noodle Shop.
"My restaurant will be as unique as every one of those restaurants are," Borges says. "At same time, it will give careful attention to something that's important and sometimes overlooked: Being part of a community."
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