Meridian is handing part of its kitchen over again. On Wednesday, August 12, the modern American restaurant at The Village Dallas continues its Chef Collective series with a one-night collaboration between executive chef Eduardo Osorio and chef Phillip Halff, founder of the private dining concept Halff Culinaire.
The premise of Chef Collective has stayed consistent since it launched in May: rather than build hype around Meridian alone, Osorio hands the kitchen over to a different respected Dallas chef each time and lets two cooking styles collide for one night only. This round pairs Osorio’s live-fire, Italian- and Mediterranean-leaning menu with Halff’s more unpredictable style, built on hyper-seasonal ingredients, several of which come straight from Halff’s own farm.
Halff isn’t a restaurant chef in the traditional sense, and that’s exactly what makes this pairing interesting. A Richardson High School graduate, he trained at the Culinary Institute of America’s Hyde Park campus in New York, earning both an associate’s and a bachelor’s degree before returning to Dallas to cut his teeth as sous chef at the Blind Butcher during what regulars still call the restaurant’s glory years. He was named to Zagat’s 30 Under 30 list in 2016, but rather than climb the traditional kitchen ladder toward an executive chef title, he walked away from restaurant work entirely after watching Netflix’s Chef’s Table convinced him there was a more personal way to cook. He spent a year in Raleigh, North Carolina helping manage a restaurant there, then moved back to Dallas in 2017 with what he’s described as a fire in his belly to turn his private dinners into something real.
What he built instead of a restaurant is Halff Culinaire, a pop-up chef’s-table dinner series that moves around the DFW area rather than sitting still. The dining room, when there is one, opens only bi-monthly, seating just eight guests across three tables plus a chef’s counter, with Halff and his small team serving each course themselves and explaining the dish as it lands. The menu changes every single time, built around whatever’s at peak season, much of it grown in Halff’s own garden.
He doesn’t charge like a traditional restaurant either; Halff Culinaire runs closer to a donation model to cover the cost of ingredients and the team’s time, which has let him keep pushing the food in stranger, more personal directions than a standard menu would allow. He’s also made a habit of handing his own dinners over to guest chefs on occasion, giving other cooks in the city a stage the same way Osorio is giving him one now.
The August 12 dinner is priced at $185 per person, and every dish on the menu is being created specifically for this one night rather than pulled from either chef’s existing repertoire. That’s the real draw of Chef Collective as a format: nothing on the menu will show up again anywhere else, on either chef’s regular menu, once the night is over.
Reservations are required and seating is limited, which has been true of every dinner in the series so far. Meridian is located at 5650 Village Glen Drive in Dallas, and reservations for this specific dinner can be made through OpenTable.
