Hallie Crawford was 19 when she took her first teaching job in Presidio, just as Pancho Villa’s raids were reaching into the Big Bend. Her father figured she was off on a wild goose chase. Her reply, “Then I’ll gather my geese,” became the title of the memoir she published in her nineties. According to the Handbook of Texas, she showed up for that first job with her teaching certificate in hand and her father’s gun strapped to her side.
She married rancher Roy Stillwell, twenty years her senior, in 1918 and moved into his one-room cabin on the Stillwell Ranch. She branded and herded cattle, mended fences and hunted game while raising two sons and a daughter. When Roy died in a truck accident in 1948, she kept the ranch going until handing it to her sons in 1964. That same year she became the first woman elected justice of the peace for Alpine, in Brewster County, and she held the office until she retired in 1978. When her own relatives landed in her court, she gave them the maximum fine.
She died in 1997, two months short of her 100th birthday.
Her name now hangs over a seventh-floor steakhouse in the Harwood District, a long day’s drive from Alpine. Stillwell’s opened with Hôtel Swexan in 2023 and has been recommended by Michelin three years running, in 2024, 2025 and 2026. CraveDFW has eaten there, and the first thing that registers is the room: walnut, jewel tones, deep seating and a cocktail lounge right alongside the dining room. The servers wear white jackets and will likely suggest starting with a drink in the lounge. Take them up on it.
The bigger story is what comes out of the kitchen, and it starts on ranches in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.
Stillwell’s serves HWD, Harwood Premium Beef, Akaushi cattle raised exclusively for the Harwood restaurants. The program was inspired by Ann Barbier-Mueller, a fourth-generation cattle rancher from Sunnyvale, and developed by the Barbier-Mueller family and a team led by Taylor Kearney, the Garland-raised chef who oversees food for Harwood Hospitality Group.
Kearney told CraveDFW the idea started as a bit of a joke. He had brought in four major beef programs to evaluate and wasn’t happy with any of them for the price.
“We were coming out of COVID, the world was in chaos, and I was trying to eliminate one more headache from my plate: inconsistent beef,” he said. “Building our own program gave us more control over the product and consistency we could deliver to our guests.”
The hardest lesson was time. “Patience, and a lot of it,” Kearney said. “It takes about two years before you start seeing the results of your work, so you have to think everything through well in advance.”
He visits the ranches at least once a year and is quick to give the ranchers their due, saying they “know far more about raising cattle than I do.” He added, “It’s a partnership, and I trust their expertise.”
Running the kitchen at Stillwell’s is Greg Wallace, executive chef at Hôtel Swexan. Wallace is a Culinary Institute of America graduate who held top kitchen jobs at the MGM Grand and Bellagio in Las Vegas, served as executive chef at the Naples Grande Beach Resort in Florida and later oversaw the restaurants at the Omni Dallas. He said the team wanted Stillwell’s to stand out from a traditional steakhouse from day one, particularly because volume was never the focus.
“It was important to us that the Texas story came through in everything we did, from sourcing as much local produce as possible to putting playful spins on classic Texas dishes,” Wallace said.
You can see that on the menu. The charred octopus comes with potato salad, cornbread, pickled peppers and pimento. The deviled eggs get house-made bacon and black garlic molasses. Creamed corn picks up green chiles, bacon and cotija, and the HWD bone marrow arrives with gremolata crumble and grilled sourdough.
Owning the herd changes how the kitchen thinks. Wallace said the chefs have the whole animal at their disposal, and each time a herd is harvested, they typically change up the cuts they offer. Knowing exactly what they pay per animal lets them move money around.
“If I want to put more into our burger blend, we can balance that by bringing down the cost of our prime cuts,” he said. He was candid that the program doesn’t solve everything, noting the restaurants are still exposed to swings in fuel and transportation costs. “But having more control over our beef program gives us options we wouldn’t otherwise have.”
Anything that doesn’t find a home on a menu somewhere in the district can go into that burger blend. Kearney said the group’s sports bars give the steakhouses a ready outlet for cuts that wouldn’t work elsewhere, and the whole-animal approach has led to jerky, beef candles and the decision to eliminate seed oils across the group’s kitchens. That switch, he said, mostly meant a slight increase in cost and updated training manuals and recipes.
The aging is where the dry-aged cuts earn their keep. Wallace said the beef is wet-aged for 28 days, then dry-aged for a minimum of 28 more, and the team tested other timelines and cuts before landing there.
“Beyond 28 days of dry-aging, you have to go significantly longer to see a meaningful difference, and we weren’t getting the results we wanted,” he said. “Ultimately, 28 days was the sweet spot for our aging rooms and cabinets.”
Every cut is broiled, finished with salted butter and served with Stillwell’s steak sauce. The HWD section of the menu includes a filet mignon, a dry-aged New York strip, a Delmonico ribeye, a dry-aged ribeye, a 22-ounce cowboy and a rotating butcher’s cut. A separate list of classic cuts runs from an 8-ounce filet to a 42-ounce tomahawk, and Japanese wagyu is sold by the ounce, including a trio of wagyu for anyone who wants to compare.
Ask both chefs what to order and you get the same answer. Wallace points to the 28-day dry-aged ribeye, the cut he’d recommend to a guest and the one he’d cook for himself. Kearney goes ribeye too, pan-seared or cooked over an open flame with salt, pepper and butter. “The beef speaks for itself,” he said, “so you don’t need to do much to it.”
Wallace also has a soft spot for the cuts people pass over. He named the hanger steak at sister restaurant Mercat and the tri-tip as two he wishes more diners would give a chance.
For a broader look at the kitchen, the seven-course Chef’s Tasting Menu runs through HWD beef tartare, beef dumplings with truffle gravy, hamachi crudo and a 6-ounce HWD filet with potato pavé, truffle and bordelaise before ending with a pomegranate cheesecake charlotte. The whole table has to take part, and a wine pairing is available.
That wine list carries real weight. Stillwell’s holds a Wine Spectator “Best of” Award of Excellence, and the restaurant says its markups are the lowest in Texas, with older vintages and bottles selected exclusively for Hôtel Swexan.
Wallace said the Michelin nod didn’t change much in the kitchen day to day. “The recognition gave us another reason to keep pushing ourselves,” he said.
Kearney, for his part, is still cooking. Dallas diners remember him running Front Room Tavern and Cedar Grove at the same time while still in his twenties. He has also cooked in Las Vegas, New York and France, and he came to Harwood when he was offered the chance to run Saint Ann. He’s still on the line and expediting four to five days a week, and with new projects on the horizon, he figures he’s cooking more than ever.
He grew up with grandparents who were serious cooks, learning to garden, pickle, preserve and hunt. One early boss left a lasting mark: a chef who was the first person in the building every day, even when he didn’t have to be, because he never wanted to give anyone an excuse for why something wasn’t done. Kearney still tries to outwork his team. He describes his career with a line he has believed for years: “the compass was built before the clock.”
He sees the group’s newest steakhouse, Docent, as a different experience from Stillwell’s. “Docent and Stillwell’s will always have a little friendly competition, but they offer two distinct experiences,” he said.
Hallie Stillwell spent her life on land that didn’t forgive shortcuts. Raising your own cattle, waiting two years for the first results and aging beef for close to two months asks for a similar kind of stubbornness. She’d likely have recognized it.
Stillwell’s is on the seventh floor of Hôtel Swexan at 2575 McKinnon St. in Dallas. Dinner is served Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m. Cowboy Hour runs daily from 4 to 6 p.m. in the bar and lounge. The hotel is valet only. Reservations are recommended, and the full menus are posted on the Stillwell’s website.
