"I'm having a blast," chef Avner Samuel declares, motioning around the dining room of Mariposa, the third-floor restaurant of Neiman Marcus at the Shops at Willow Bend. "I've never worked from 8 to 3 in my life!"
Samuel is indeed a perpetual-motion icon on the Dallas dining scene. He began by jump-starting Tex-Mex cuisine at the Mansion on Turtle Creek some 30 years ago, then furiously opened (and closed) 20 restaurants of his own around the city. He shuttered the last one, Nosh, in 2016 and departed for his native Tel Aviv, where he cooked at the Orient Hotel.
But on a visit to Dallas last June, he got off the plane, took one look at his grandson and ... "Immediately I knew," he says. "I had to come back. The following day, I found the job at Neiman Marcus. I interviewed, agreed to the job, went back to Israel and resigned, and three weeks later, I just jumped in."
Samuel, an outsize presence amid the quietly lunching ladies, leans in to confide a little more. "The venue was outdated," he says. "Food is change, like fashion. I said to them, look at the store, it's so beautiful. Look at food, what the hell is going on? It was like the '80s."
As the new executive chef, Samuel, 62, led his kitchen staff on a tour of the store, pointing out the color and design and explaining that they would emulate that clean, creative simplicity on their menu: "The days when we take the food and slap it on aplate are gone."
The restaurant serves only lunch — hence the shorter workday — and Neiman's, Samuel says, gave him free range, with a couple of exceptions. The popovers with strawberry butter and the mandarin orange soufflé, a chicken salad dish dating to 1957, could not be touched. Even so, Samuel tinkered with the chicken: It is now cooked sous vide and served as a '70s-retro composed plate, with a tiny molded orange gelatin and garnish of microgreens.
The rest of the menu is devoted to new dishes and revivals from Samuel's former restaurants. The tortilla soup is the recipe he created for the Mansion, "the original," he emphasizes, before Dean Fearing took over. Samuel's delicate version is served as a dainty mound of shredded chicken, cheddar, avocado and tortilla strips, with a tableside pour of subtly spiced brick-red broth.
The bright red beet-cured salmon Samuel created in 1998 for Bistro A gets updated with shaved fennel, watercress and caviar, while the grilled half-chicken with pommes frites and herb butter is from Nosh. My Mother's Salad, a Samuel staple since the '90s, is here, too, with tomato, cucumber, green pepper and parsley dressed with lemon olive oil and, if you like, topped with chicken or shrimp.
His new dishes have a vegan tilt, in line with the general direction that Neiman Marcus is taking throughout its restaurants. House-made ravioli arrive without any cream or cheese, but atop a purée of watercress and finished with an almond-milk reduction. That department-store standard, the vegetable panini, is made with care, the vegetables marinated and grilled lightly to pick up a smoky flavor and finished to tender in the oven.
Naturally, Samuel was not restrained by a vegan edict: Lustier dishes include short rib tacos, made with beef braised for four hours in red wine, and served with cabbage, pineapple habanero and cilantro sauce. "I told them ladies will eat red meat," Samuel says. "And they do!"
In the coming weeks, Samuel plans to add cooking classes at the store and revamp the dreary NM Cafe downstairs into a Middle Eastern spot with a glass case filled with salads, sandwiches wrapped in house-made pita and, in what must be a first for Neiman's, a shawarma machine. That must have taken some persuasion? "Not at all, not at all," Samuel says. "I need to create a vibe, an energy, and you can do that by putting the food in the front."
He fantasizes that perhaps next year, he can redo the Mariposa dining room with an open kitchen, but for now that will have to wait. It is 3 p.m., time for Samuel to change out of his white chef jacket and into a fantastic purple paisley Robert Graham shirt. He slips out of the store, looking as chic as his new surroundings.
Mariposa is on Level 3 inside Neiman Marcus at the Shops at Willow Bend, 2201 Dallas Parkway, Plano. neimanmarcus.com.
