Eduardo Osorio came to Dallas for one reason: to take over the kitchen at Meridian. He left Los Angeles, where he had been working his way through serious restaurants — Catch Hospitality, the 50 Eggs group, Yardbird — and moved here in 2024 to rebuild a restaurant that had gone quiet after James Beard-recognized chef Junior Borges departed. The renovation took the better part of a year. The result, which reopened in October 2025, is the best version of Meridian since it opened.
The organizing principle of the new menu is live fire, and Osorio means it literally. The wood-burning hearth at the center of the open kitchen is not a design element. It runs through every service, and an entire section of the menu is built around what comes out of it: duck breast, Sakura pork, embered roasted branzino, wood-fired half chicken, and hearth roasted turbot. The duck is the place to start. The hearth renders the fat and crisps the skin in a way that no other cooking method replicates, and the result is duck that makes you understand why chefs keep coming back to fire.
The open kitchen and chef’s table setup — sitting directly beneath a chandelier with a clear sightline to the pass — lets you watch Osorio work. He plates with precision and his team moves efficiently around him. The room itself got a full redesign: dark velvet green drapery, gold accents, a custom backlit art installation, an expanded patio, and a private dining room called The Ember Room. It’s warmer and moodier than the original Meridian, and it suits the food.
Start with the Foie & Sea Island Cornbread. It’s one of the signatures of this kitchen and one of the better first bites in Dallas right now — rich without being heavy, Southern without being sentimental. The Wagyu Tallow Seared Oysters are what regulars order first: the tallow adds a depth to the oysters that makes them taste more like themselves, which is the best thing you can say about a cooking technique. The Blue Prawn Toast with smoked trout roe, chives, and yuzu ginger aioli is precise and light and hits every register at once. The beef tartare is properly made — seasoned correctly, not overthought.
The pasta section is worth slowing down for. Lumache with lamb bolognese is slow-cooked and serious, the kind of plate that eats like a main course even when you order it as a shared starter. The Hokkaido scallop pasta is the lighter option, the sweetness of the scallop balancing against the richness of the sauce in a way that keeps you going back to it. Pork ragu verde is the one you’ll see on the tables around you.
The Japanese sweet potato with apricot, golden raisin, cashew, and straciatella is one of the more original things on the menu — it sits between a savory plate and a composed dessert and it works on both levels. Order it. The Snake River White Sturgeon with chanterelles and creamed leeks is the seafood anchor: Snake River Farms produces fish at a level most kitchens never see, and Osorio uses the hearth to give it a char that the chanterelles and leeks balance without fighting. The 21-day dry-aged ribeye with smoked tomato bordelaise is the marquee meat plate, and it earns the position. The roasted branzino with nduja sofrito, fennel, and lemon verbena is the call if you want the fire without the weight.
The Buzzed & Aged Burger is available at the bar and is one of the better chef burgers in the city right now — worth knowing about if you walk in without a reservation and need a reason to stay.
Dessert: the Sesame S’mores is the one. A serious riff on a campfire classic that’s more interesting than the original and lands clean. The truffle fries are the side that keeps getting reordered mid-meal by tables that came in planning to share one order.
The cocktail list keeps up. The wood-fired Negroni with mezcal is the drink to start with — it’s built for this food. The Extroverted Old Fashioned and the Truffle the Night Martini round out a program that’s thought through without being precious about it.
The Sunday Supper is the deal worth knowing. Every Sunday, Meridian serves a family-style meal for three to four people at $99 — whole fried chicken, Sea Island cornbread, pimento grits, charred broccolini, and dessert. Twenty percent of every Sunday Supper sale goes to Meat Fight, the Dallas nonprofit that funds multiple sclerosis research. At that price point, at this level, it’s one of the best value propositions in Dallas dining. Reserve a table and go on a Sunday.
The Chef Collective is the other thing to track. Osorio has been running one-night-only collaborative dinners with Dallas chefs he knows — no gimmick, no theme, just two kitchens cooking together for a single evening. It started in spring 2026 and the lineup has been good. Dates are on the website.
Meridian is open Wednesday and Thursday 4:30 to 9pm, Friday and Saturday 4:30 to 11pm, Sunday 5 to 9pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Full menu available at the bar for walk-ins. Reservations on OpenTable. The address is 5650 Village Glen Drive in The Village Dallas. Phone is (469) 659-6382.
