When Joseph Palladino co-founded Nick & Sam’s in 1999, he helped establish the template for what a Dallas steakhouse could be — loud, celebratory, thick with regulars, the kind of room that feeds off its own energy. He eventually moved on from that partnership, spent years building other concepts including the Coal Vines pizza chain, and then did something unexpected: he went to New York and opened a steakhouse at Grand Central Terminal. Palladino’s Steak & Seafood launched in September at the historic Grand Central space that last housed Michael Jordan’s restaurant, and it became one of the year’s most talked-about New York openings almost immediately. Now it’s coming home.
Palladino’s Dallas opens this month at 5959 Royal Lane, Suite 635 in Preston Royal Village — the 9,850-square-foot former Spec’s space next to La La Land Kind Cafe. The room has been built out with a full dining room, a bar, a private dining room, and a jazz lounge, which is the detail that separates this from every other steakhouse opening in recent memory. A jazz lounge inside a Preston Royal steakhouse is either an anachronism or a masterstroke, and given what Palladino built in New York, it is probably the latter.
The culinary team is worth knowing. Executive Chef and partner Sam Hazen is a CIA graduate who also taught there, and his résumé runs through La Côte Basque, the Quilted Giraffe, Michelin three-star Le Gavroche in London, Tavern on the Green, and a decade at Tao — the latter giving him the sushi expertise that informs what Palladino’s is doing with seafood. Leading the Dallas kitchen day to day is Chef de Cuisine Henry Johnson, who came up through Café Pacific, the Cowboys Club at The Star, Bistro 31, and most recently EVELYN. In between, Johnson represented Texas on Season 24 of Hell’s Kitchen, which is the kind of pressure test that either breaks a chef or focuses one.
The menu covers the steakhouse canon without apology — Caesar salad, French onion soup, Prime New York strip, Maine lobster, a la carte sides — and then extends into territory most steakhouses don’t bother with. A serious sushi program reflects Hazen’s Tao years. Caviar service for the table. A rainbow carrot Wellington for the vegetarian at the table who always gets ignored at a steakhouse. Italian-inflected specials that reflect Palladino’s sensibility about food, which has always been generous and slightly unpredictable. In New York, Michael Strahan has his own section on the menu. Dallas will have its own regulars soon enough.
The New York reception was not modest. The NY Post called Palladino’s “NYC’s hottest new restaurant,” noting it had been “packed day and night.” Eater New York added it to its list of best steakhouses in the city. The Today Show aired a segment with Chef Hazen. For a concept that still has only one location, it arrived with the momentum of something that has been around for years — which is the advantage of being built by someone who has been doing this in Dallas for a quarter century and knows exactly what a room needs to feel right from the first night.
Palladino’s Steak & Seafood is at 5959 Royal Lane, Suite 635, Dallas. Opening June 2026. Follow @palladinosrestaurants for opening date announcement. Reservations at palladinos.com.
