One of Dallas' most lauded chefs, Stephan Pyles, will be designing menus for a retirement community.
The chef will create the menus for five restaurants inside a high-rise retirement community called Ventana by Buckner, which is expected to open near Highland Park and Preston Hollow in August.
The towers are located on Central Expressway near NorthPark Center — that can't-miss-it 12-story glass structure on the west side of the freeway. The project cost $140 million, according to a Dallas Morning News story, and will have apartments with both independent and assisted-living options for people who are "62 and better," says Rick Pruett, executive director of the community.
Ventana by Buckner is expected to have a heated indoor pool, a rooftop garden and a movie theater. And, it'll boast food from one of the godfathers of Southwestern cuisine.
The move is unusual, maybe, for the chef behind restaurants such as Flora Street Cafe, Stephan Pyles and Star Canyon. But Pyles in a press release calls it "very exciting" because he hopes to offer a "restaurant-quality experience" inside this senior-citizen community.
Besides, Pyles says his regulars have aged.
"I've been in the restaurant business for four decades and so it's the people that I know," he says in a statement about Ventana's future residents. "It really feels like it's an opportunity for me to bring my food to them instead of them coming to me."
It's a first in Dallas, at least: We can't name another high-profile, local chef like Pyles who has collaborated with the senior-living industry. And Pruett says it's a first on a larger scale.
"I'm in my 20th year," Pruett says of his career in senior services, "and this has never been done before."
Consulting work is not foreign to Pyles, however. He closed and moved Stampede 66 to Allen, inside a Marriott hotel where he has serves as the executive culinary adviser with Benchmark Resorts & Hotels. Pyles has also worked with Benchmark to create menus at the Texas A&M Hotel and Conference Center in College Station.
Beyond that, he's consulted for Omni hotels, Longhorn Steakhouses, County Line Barbecue, Golden Chick, Frito-Lay, Taco Bell and many more.
Pyles is busy right now, revamping his Dallas Arts District restaurant Flora Street Cafe by reimagining it into two components: a "casualized" main dining room and an exclusive, smaller tasting room. The smaller tasting room is expected to open later this month.
Pyles said in early 2019 that his move out of daily kitchen work is not a move towards retirement. Retirement, no. A retirement community? Yes.
Inside Ventana, Pyles will create five dining rooms. The steakhouse, for instance, "will have beautiful views and floor-to-ceiling windows" and have steak and lobster on the menu, Pruett says. (And, interestingly, members of the general public will be able to eat there even if they don't know a Ventana resident, though Pruett says "it will be very challenging to get reservations outside of Ventana.")
Pricing for Ventana wasn't immediately available, but the community charges entrance fees that go toward "life care," Pruett explains, meaning that the price is fixed for residents' life-long stay.
"So instead of wondering what healthcare would cost five to 10 years from now," Pruett says, "come into the 'club' and we have those costs manageable for the future."
Pruett says his company relies on research that says seniors value dining options — and that "historically, over at least the past two decades, it's always a poor performer in satisfaction," he says.
With a new generation of senior citizens retiring and needing care, Pruett says Ventana has decided that luxury dining is one way to be different.
He describes this generational shift as "like going from Big Band" in the past "to Bowie and the Beatles" today.
"This community is starting a lot of cutting-edge things, and I think this dining concept is a revolution," he says.
