Kent Rathbun and Christopher Tunnell held their first menu tasting for Ulloa’s Kitchen + Bar last week at Rathbun’s house. Frugé Seafood brought the fish right to the door. Both men say it went well, and the Spanish and Peruvian restaurant at 727 Fort Worth Ave. in West Dallas is now aiming for a spring 2027 opening.
The project goes back about seven years. Susan and Woodrow Gandy were investors in the group that redeveloped the Belmont Hotel, and from up on that hill they could look straight down at a corner lot on Fort Worth Avenue where the businesses had closed. Susan bought the block. After trips to Spain and Peru, she decided what she wanted to put there.
The name is a mouthful, and Rathbun will be the first to tell you. He says it took him a while to get it right. Say oo-YO-ahs. It comes from Antonio de Ulloa, a Spanish naval officer who spent years in Peru in the 1700s and wrote about a ring of light that shows up in the mountain mist there.
Two People in One
The Gandys brought in Rathbun as culinary director a couple of years ago. Tunnell joined about eight months ago. A headhunter sent him over as a candidate for either the chef job or the general manager job, and after a few conversations Rathbun steered him toward running the dining room.
“I said, hey, do you really want to be on the line in the kitchen, or would you consider the general manager position? You’d still have a lot to offer us in the kitchen,” Rathbun says. “I had two people in one.”
Tunnell has been cooking for 37 years. He started at 17 on a salad station for $4.25 an hour, then went through the Culinary Institute of America, where he studied under Roland Henin. He was part of the team that opened Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and later worked in Los Angeles as corporate chef for the Dolce Group, which ran Ketchup, Geisha House and Les Deux. Here in North Texas he helped develop North Italia for Sam Fox and opened The Mexican on Turtle Creek Boulevard as executive chef. He figures he has opened 50 or 60 restaurants.
He has run a dining room before, too. In Vegas he took a general manager job at Samba, the Brazilian steakhouse at the Mirage, and worked his way up to director of fine dining for the resort. He did it to understand the other side of the house.
“There’s usually this friction between the front and the back, and it’s so stupid,” he says. “I wanted to know what my counterpart was going through.”
He and Rathbun have cooked together plenty over the past year. Rathbun and his brother, Atlanta chef Kevin Rathbun, brought Tunnell onto their team for an event in Atlanta. He stayed at Kevin’s house with both brothers and their wives and made the rounds of Kevin’s restaurants. After the event, the party moved back to Kevin’s house, where José Andrés came in, sat down with them and talked for a while. They made paella together and smoked cigars.
“It was literally one of the coolest experiences that I’ve ever had,” Tunnell says. “I’ve cooked with a ton of celebrity chefs and just been really fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.”
These days he calls Rathbun “pretty much like a brother that you can call and run things past.”
There’s no head chef yet. Rathbun says they plan to hire a younger chef closer to opening, someone who can learn from both of them. “It’s very seldom you have a general manager that has also been an accomplished chef,” he says. “There’s a lot of eyes on every part of it.”
A New Direction for Rathbun
Spanish and Peruvian food is a new direction for Rathbun. He has traveled in Spain and spent time in Argentina and Colombia, and he ran the kitchen at Milano, an Italian place in Kansas City, early on. “At the end of the day, man, it’s about learning the product, learning the dishes,” he says.
People who remember Abacus will want to know if any Asian flavor comes along. Peru already has deep Japanese and Chinese influence in its cooking, so there’s room for it. Susan Gandy wants the menu to stay rooted in Mediterranean and South American food, though. “That will allow us to bring a little bit of Asian flair to it,” Rathbun says, “but it’s certainly not going to end up an Asian menu.”
The Tapas Menu
There will be separate menus for dinner, lunch and dessert, plus a tapas menu with about 15 plates and specialty cocktails printed on the back. Tunnell says 12 or 13 of those tapas will be savory and two or three will be sweet, each sized for two people.
“It’s just enough to feel like the portion is great for two people,” he says, “but you’re going to want to order another one,” Tunnell mentions.
Look for paella and several different ceviches, with a good-sized raw seafood section running through the tapas and dinner menus. Tunnell also mentions vegetable dishes and root vegetables. He’s working with a Texas farmer who raises Ibérico pigs and started a co-op with other small farms, so the kitchen can count on specialty cuts. Produce will come from Brothers.
The bar will pour pisco and brandies, and Tunnell wants the cocktails to get people talking. “The way it’s presented, walked across the dining room or set down at the bar, is going to make you ask questions about it,” he says.
Two Floors and a Garden
The building is still under construction. It will seat about 186 on two floors, with a bar on each level, a lot of balcony and patio seating, a private upstairs patio for parties and a guest elevator. The Gandys own the land around it, which means valet and plenty of parking. Tunnell says he has already talked Susan into letting him plant a garden.
The team expects to get into the building in late February or early March. Training and friends-and-family tastings will follow before Ulloa’s opens at 727 Fort Worth Ave. You will hear more about all this and more on upcoming articles on CraveDFW.
