John Tesar famously insulted a restaurant critic then banned her — and he had once leaned into his moniker of being “the most hated chef in Dallas.” Now, the founding chef of Knife, the restaurant that reshaped the Texas city’s steakhouse culture, is in New York, running Palladino’s Steak & Seafood in Grand Central Terminal. He says the temper is behind him.
“I’m really a wise, pragmatic old man now who’s been in the restaurant business for five decades,” Tesar says.
He started in early September as Palladino Restaurant Group’s corporate executive chef, overseeing the Grand Central restaurant and the Dallas location that opened about six months ago. He remains based in Dallas; he travels between cities. “Wherever I’m needed is where I go,” he says.
Bourdain referred to Tesar with the pseudonym “Jimmy Sears” in Kitchen Confidential. In Medium Raw, he said he’s “probably the single most talented cook I ever worked with,” adding that Tesar “pretty much wrote the book” on self-sabotage, D Magazine reported in 2011…