Old Dog, New Tricks

Here is the description for the baby turbot, a species fished out of the waters near Chile: pan-roasted and served on a bed of gnocchi, fava beans, leeks and mustard greens. Sounds compelling, doesn't it? The bed I mean. That's why I found myself eagerly feasting on the gnocchi and fava bean and leek undergarment and almost ignoring the fish. It's delicate and slightly dry with vague hints of sweet. There is nothing particularly wrong here, but the mouth doesn't flood either. It needed some mechanism to translate its elusive subtlety so it has some meaning on the tongue.

"What color do you want it?"

That was the first time I ever heard that question used to query how one wanted one's meat cooked. And it's endearing—a little ruffling of the buttoned-down Mansion service rituals, sort of like that shipping container full of y'alls, but more interesting.

It was posed over the lamb loin, which came with a swift piece of kitchen work known as "new world" panzanella salad, or an interpretation of the classic Italian bread salad using baby roasted vegetables (artichoke, eggplant, squash, zucchini and mushrooms) and an ingenious bread permutation (chickpea croutons). This, too, is a genuine feasting moment, much more so than the perfectly sliced ovals of lamb loin (our color was medium rare). The meat is so overly seasoned with white pepper that it is all but impossible to tease out any lamb character. That it is served just short of chilled compounds the dither.

The rib eye is waterless too, though I can't exactly put my finger on why. It's a huge piece of prime, dry-aged meat; black and craggy with a bone jutting out the top. Tesar says he pan-roasts his steak because he likes to sear meat rather than grill or broil it. Anyone can pitch wood chips into fire, toss a steak on the grill and char it up. "You don't want come to restaurant and have me do what you can do in your backyard," he says. Why not?

This steak is juicy. It's tender. It's ruddy. It has the concentrated dry-aged nutty finish. But it seems more infested with blankets of loose fat than woven with marbling, and it lacks that lusty caramelized cinder hide that seems to seep throughout the meat to give steak its Svengali powers. Most of us can grill competent backyard steaks, but it's the skilled chef who has the power to draw us from our homes and our amateurish efforts, as well as our money.

Dessert was a simple feast: nine balls of sorbet including prickly pear, green apple, lime, mint and blackberry, along with a deliciously lithe carrot cake structured in perfectly symmetrical layers cut into a clean square.

Nearly 30 years ago the circa-1925 Sheppard King Mansion was transformed from a rundown villa cast in the image of 16th-century Italian opulence into a five-star hotel and restaurant by Caroline Rose Hunt and her Rosewood Hotels & Resorts. Plans are being drawn up for a restaurant renovation to be announced by the end of this month. It may be as dramatic a shift as the food. So should you invest in a Mansion experience? Go there now. Sample the scampi and maybe the foie gras. Sear these benchmarks into your memory. Then return after the evolution slows. My guess is by then the whole menu will have achieved "scampi-style" status. Don't forget to wipe your lips. 2821 Turtle Creek Blvd., 214-559-2100. Open for lunch 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-2 p.m. for Sunday brunch. Open for dinner 6 p.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 6 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday & Saturday. $$$$