Houston is trying to copy something Dallas built almost by accident. 55 Seventy started four years ago as a place for Preston Center residents to store wine they didn’t have room for at home. Members would rent space, open a bottle on the couches while they were there, and eventually didn’t want to leave. Owner Tommy Shuey didn’t set out to run a restaurant. He built one anyway because that’s what the members actually wanted.
That accidental restaurant is now getting a second location. 55 Seventy Houston is set to open this fall, and the club has hired two chefs with real Michelin pedigree to run the kitchen there. Executive chef Diego Fernandez comes off a run as research and development chef for Pappas Restaurants, but Dallas diners may recognize his name from further back: Fernandez led the kitchen at Fauna, Stephan Pyles’ private tasting room inside Flora Street Café, before that, carrying experience from two three-Michelin-starred kitchens, Alinea in Chicago and Quince in San Francisco. Joining him as opening executive banquet chef is Jacob Solomon, who came up through Chicago’s Michelin-starred Peninsula Hotel and later led Dusek’s Board & Beer as chef de cuisine. The two will formally introduce themselves to Dallas members at 55 Seventy’s inaugural Food & Wine Tasting Experience on August 29, sharing the lineup with Dallas executive chef Josh Sutcliff and a handful of other local chefs.
The stated goal in Houston isn’t just opening a second club. It’s catching up to what Sutcliff has already built in Dallas, with the Houston team explicitly framed as raising the bar to match him.
Which makes this a good moment to actually look at what Sutcliff’s kitchen is doing in Dallas, since the club’s Sunday brunch, launched earlier this year, is the clearest window into it. Service runs 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and the menu doesn’t play it safe. Deviled eggs open things simply enough, but the ham and cheese tartine and bread pudding French toast both push past standard brunch territory. Anson Mills polenta with pork belly is the dish worth building a reservation around, slow-cooked grits doing the kind of heavy lifting most brunch menus reserve for eggs alone. There’s a mushroom and pork strata for anyone who wants something closer to a savory bread pudding, and a straightforward steak and eggs for anyone who doesn’t want the kitchen to get too clever with breakfast.
For lighter appetites, the chicken salad club sandwich and the kitchen’s own brunch salad, built on chicken, tomato, frisée, bacon, beets, and avocado, round out the menu without leaning on the usual pastry case. Even the smash burger gets a spot on a brunch menu, which says something about a kitchen that isn’t trying to draw a hard line between breakfast food and everything else.
Membership is still the catch. 55 Seventy remains a private club, meaning brunch isn’t a walk-in option for most people, only for members and the guests they bring. But the fact that Houston is importing Michelin pedigree just to try to match what’s happening in this dining room on a Sunday morning says the food program here is doing more than most private clubs bother to attempt.
