Avner Samuel is cooking in Addison now, at La Stella Italian Steakhouse and Music Lounge, and his latest tasting menu reads a lot like the old days on Oak Lawn. There’s live scallop with osetra caviar, scrambled eggs under black truffles, foie gras on Wagyu. The six courses he recently served are headed for the regular menu soon.
If you dined at Aurora, you’ll see it right away. If you didn’t, some background helps.
Samuel was born in Jerusalem and was cooking by 13. He graduated from the Tadmor culinary school and then spent five years training in France, at La Varenne in Paris and with Lenôtre. In 1981 he landed in Dallas as executive chef of the brand-new Mansion on Turtle Creek and stayed about four and a half years.
Dallas cooking changed a great deal in that stretch. A handful of chefs began applying French technique to Texas and Southwestern ingredients like chiles, corn, cilantro, game and Gulf seafood, and the result became known as Southwestern cuisine. It got Dallas noticed across the country. Samuel is counted among the “Gang of Five” who built it, with Dean Fearing, Stephan Pyles, Robert Del Grande and Anne Lindsay Greer.
Rosewood moved him over to open the Crescent Court in 1985. He ran the kitchen at the Fairmont after that, then opened his first place, Avner’s, on McKinney Avenue in 1991. Esquire put it on its list of the 10 best new restaurants in America. Yellow, Okeanos and Bistro A followed, among others. He has moved around a lot over the years, and a good number of Dallas diners have moved with him.
Aurora opened in 2003 at 4216 Oak Lawn Ave. It was small and plush, with velvet drapes, and truffles and champagne were close to standard issue. The Dallas Morning News gave it five stars, and AAA gave it Four Diamonds. In 2010 it was reworked into the more casual Nosh Euro Bistro. Samuel has since cooked in Israel, at Neiman Marcus and at a second Nosh in Preston Hollow, and lately he has been consulting and cooking private dinners.
La Stella belongs to JP Piccinini. The original opened in the Arts District in 2022, and the Addison flagship opened last November in the old Lawry’s building. It’s an Italian steakhouse with a live music lounge, and much of the menu comes from JP’s mother, Giovanna, whom everyone calls Nonna.
Here’s the tasting, course by course.
Live Diver Scallop with Osetra Caviar and Scallions, topped with Crispy Seaweed and Lime Basil Oil. Divers pick these scallops off the sea floor by hand instead of dredging for them, so they come up clean and sweet. Live means they’re still in the shell when they reach the kitchen and get opened right before plating, which is why they can be served raw or close to it. Osetra caviar comes from the Russian sturgeon. The eggs are medium-sized and golden brown, with a nutty, buttery taste. Crisp seaweed gives the bite some crunch, and the lime basil oil brightens it up.
Yukon Potato Latke with Red Beet Cured Salmon, Osetra Caviar, Sour Cream and Chives. A latke is the crisp fried potato pancake from Jewish home cooking, made here with Yukon Golds. The salmon gets cured gravlax-style in salt, sugar and grated red beets, which turns the edges a deep magenta and the texture silky. Regulars from Nosh will know this one. Samuel has been putting beet-cured salmon on latkes for years, and it’s as close to a calling card as he has.
Organic Scrambled Eggs with Black Winter Truffles and Goat Milk Butter. The eggs are cooked low and slow in the French manner, so they stay soft and almost custardy. Black winter truffles, the type often called the Périgord truffle, are shaved on top while the eggs are hot, and the smell hits the table before the plate does. Goat milk butter adds a little tang.
Nonna’s Famous Wagyu Agnolotti with Truffle Sauce and Black Winter Truffles. Agnolotti are small filled pasta from the Piedmont region of Italy, pinched shut by hand. La Stella fills them with Wagyu beef using Nonna’s recipe, and they’ve been one of the restaurant’s best-known dishes since it opened. For the tasting, they’re dressed in truffle sauce with more black truffle shaved over. It’s Nonna’s dish with Samuel’s extras on top.
Stone Axe Medallion with Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras and Béarnaise Brûlée. Stone Axe is an Australian Wagyu producer whose herd is 100 percent fullblood Japanese Black, raised in the high country of New South Wales and Victoria. It won grand champion at Australia’s Wagyu Branded Beef Competition in 2020 and again in 2021. The steak is crowned with seared foie gras from New York’s Hudson Valley. The béarnaise, the old French sauce of butter, tarragon, shallot and vinegar, gets torched on top the way you’d finish a crème brûlée, so it picks up a golden crust.
Budino Americano with Kahlúa Pipette. Budino is Italian for pudding, smooth and rich. This one is built around coffee, after the caffè americano, and it comes with a small pipette of Kahlúa so you can add as much coffee liqueur as you like.
Anyone who ate at Aurora will recognize most of this menu. That room was known for diver scallops, caviar, foie gras and black truffles brought in from Europe. This time Samuel is sharing the menu with Nonna’s family recipes, in a bigger room meant for long dinners and celebrations, with live music going in the lounge after dessert.
La Stella Italian Steakhouse and Music Lounge is at 14655 Dallas Parkway in Addison. Make reservations on the La Stella website.
