Punk Noir is closed. The Design District tasting-menu restaurant lasted about four and a half months, and it ended with almost no warning.
Co-owner John McKeel has confirmed the closing. According to people who worked there, the staff was let go on Wednesday, Oct. 14. That was one day after the restaurant posted about a new fall menu on Instagram. Reservations are no longer available.
Punk Noir opened June 2 at 139 Turtle Creek Blvd., in a large warehouse space built for a very small number of diners. Each seating was limited to about two dozen guests. The restaurant was owned by Dallas natives John McKeel and his sons, Cole and Clay McKeel. When they first announced it in September 2025, they said they wanted to shake up fine dining in Dallas.
To run the kitchen, they hired RJ Cooper. He won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2007 in Washington, D.C., where he later became known for Rogue 24, a long tasting-menu restaurant. Chef de cuisine Jay Vopatek, formerly of Rye, and pastry chef Rachel Maykut, who came from Uchi, worked with him.
The meal was meant to feel like a performance. Diners moved from room to room over the course of the night. It started in a communal dining room with projection-mapped visuals and graffiti art, then went to an open kitchen where Cooper served some courses himself, then to a smaller neon-lit room, and finally to the Noir Lounge for cocktails. There were 20 courses, and you didn’t choose any of them. Dishes ran from blue crab with seaweed and calamansi to Peking duck, geoduck clams and Wagyu tongue.
It was also one of the most expensive dinners in Dallas, with the tasting menu priced at $295 per person before drinks.
The timing raises questions. The 2026 Michelin Guide for Texas came out on Oct. 8, and Punk Noir was not included. The owners haven’t said whether that played a part, and Cooper has deferred questions about the closing to the McKeels.
Cooper still has one Dallas date on the calendar. Before the closing, Meridian at The Village announced that he would cook a Chef Collective dinner there with executive chef Eduardo Osorio on Monday, Oct. 19. Whether that dinner goes on as planned hasn’t been confirmed.
