On Wednesday, August 5, The Mexican is handing its kitchen over to a chef who doesn’t cook in Dallas, doesn’t cook in Texas, and won’t be back after that night. Chef Esteban Lluis, who runs the Michelin-starred restaurant Damiana inside the Viñedos de la Reina estate in Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe, is bringing a one-night-only tasting menu to the Design District, and it’s the closest most of Dallas will get to that dining room without a flight to Baja California.
Lluis earned Damiana its Michelin star in 2024 and has held onto it since, adding a Michelin Green Star this year for the restaurant’s work with local growers and regenerative farming in the valley. He’s a Mexicali native who trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and came up through kitchens in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, including a stint at Cala, before building Damiana into one of the most credentialed tables in Baja wine country.
The Dallas menu runs four courses built around seafood and slow-cooked meat rather than the usual steakhouse instincts. Starters include a smoked fish pâté with mussels escabeche and salsa macha, bluefin tuna tiradito, and kampachi ceviche, followed by a pescado zarandeado with pipián verde and a seafood arroz meloso loaded with abalone, spider crab, and clams. The main course splits between a braised prime short rib with coloradito mole and lacto-fermented habanero, and duck with a morita-orange gastrique and crispy Brussels sprouts. Dessert is a frangipane tart with vanilla bean-miso ice cream.
Only 300 seats are available across two seatings, 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., at $225 a person, with optional wine or tequila pairings at $75 each. Reservations run through OpenTable only, and given the seat count, this is one to book early rather than decide on the day of.
The Mexican has built its reputation in the Design District on scale and spectacle, the 15,000-square-foot build, the tequila wall, the valet line of Ferraris out front. A one-night collaboration with a Michelin-starred chef from Mexico’s wine country is a different kind of statement, less about the room and more about what’s coming out of the kitchen, and it’s a rare enough chance that it’s worth planning around.
