Kent Rathbun has been one of the defining names in Dallas dining for the better part of three decades. He opened Abacus in 1999, followed it with Jasper’s in 2003, cooked for Queen Elizabeth and the Bush inaugural ball, beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America in 2008, and built a reputation that still carries weight in a city that moves on fast. These days he runs a catering operation and a barbecue venture with his wife Tracy, consults for a growing list of clients, and just helped open a restaurant in Burleson that carries his fingerprints all over it.
That restaurant, On the Rocks, is a partnership with Jason Benouared and his wife Renee, whose family has run La Bistro Italian Grill in Hurst since 1984. Robert Pjetrović founded La Bistro. Jason’s father, Sid Benouared, bought it in 2016, and Jason and Renee run it now. On the Rocks sits at 135 W. Ellison St., Suite 101, in Old Town Burleson, next to Mayor Vera Calvin Plaza, in the space Razzoo’s left behind in December. It’s been serving reservation-only dinners in a soft opening since the start of September while the staff trains, with the full dinner menu set to land by September 15 and lunch and weekend brunch arriving the week of October 1.
The name comes from the restaurant’s signature dish, not the bar. Jason added a stone-cooked filet to La Bistro’s menu ten years ago, a dish he calls Filet On the Rocks, inspired by the way porterhouse comes to the table in Florence. It’s cooked tableside on a superheated stone, and Jason liked the idea enough to build an entire restaurant around it. Kent Rathbun came aboard as culinary director, designing the menu and helping stand the place up, with an ongoing consulting relationship after that…