Eduardo Osorio is taking over the food at all of it.
The Village Dallas named him culinary director this morning, which puts him over Meridian, Over Under, Village Beach Club, Anise and Buzz & Bustle, plus whatever the property opens next. He stays on as executive chef at Meridian, which is the job he already had and the one that made the case for this one.
Those five rooms have almost nothing in common, and that is the interesting part. Meridian is live-fire and ingredient-driven and the reason people who don’t live at The Village drive over. Over Under is a sports bar. Village Beach Club is a resort-style pool that serves food and books live music. Anise sits inside the Drey Hotel doing breakfast and lunch and then cocktails at night. Buzz & Bustle is the coffee shop.
Running one kitchen well is a craft. Keeping five kitchens consistent when one of them is pouring beer during a Cowboys game and another is feeding people in swimsuits is a different job entirely, closer to management than cooking. Plenty of good chefs have taken that step and disappeared into spreadsheets. Osorio is keeping his hands on Meridian, which suggests he knows the risk.
He was born in Los Angeles and started out in Marina del Rey and Santa Monica, which is where the coastal cooking and the seafood focus at Meridian come from. From there it was New York, Chicago, Saudi Arabia, Las Vegas and eventually Dallas. Brandy Spence, the VP of food and beverage for The Village, says he understands that each concept has a different job to do, which is the actual test for this role.
What he has already shown is a willingness to open the doors to other people’s cooking. Meridian’s Chef Collective series, which Osorio started in the spring, brings a different Dallas chef into his kitchen for one night at a time. Restaurant Shua came through in July. Phillip Halff of Halff Culinaire in August. Reilly Brown of Frenchie was there just last night. That is not a series a territorial chef runs, and it says more about how he will handle five teams than any promotion announcement does.
The Village is at 5605 Village Glen Dr., and the practical read for anyone eating there is that the coffee shop and the sports bar are now answering to the same standard as the restaurant people actually make reservations for. Whether that holds through a summer of pool service is the question worth revisiting in a year.
Our recent visit to the Village.
