John Tesar takes over as Palladino's corporate chef
The Dallas chef known for Knife will split his week between Palladino's Grand Central dining room in New York and its newer outpost in Preston Hollow.
John Tesar is now corporate executive chef at Palladino's Steak & Seafood, splitting his week between the steakhouse's Grand Central Terminal dining room in New York and its newer Preston Hollow location in Dallas.
He replaces opening chef Sam Hazen, who recently left the two-restaurant group. Owner Joseph Palladino, a former New York City police officer who also holds a minority stake in the Dallas steakhouse Nick & Sam's, had been courting Tesar for some time, according to a company spokesperson, as Palladino's looks to expand the brand beyond its first two dining rooms.
A menu built for two cities
Twenty years of feuds and steaks, now split between two dining rooms six hundred miles apart.
Tesar's brief is to widen the menu rather than overhaul it: lower-cost cuts such as flat iron and skirt steak alongside the existing prime cuts, more seafood, and more Italian dishes that nod to the Palladino name. Early additions include tableside Dover sole finished in brown butter and capers.
The New York room, inside Grand Central Terminal, opened in September 2025, part of a wave of new-school steakhouses that also includes SoHo's Romy; the Dallas location, on Royal Lane in Preston Hollow, followed in June 2026. Tesar will now cook, or at least oversee, both.
Twenty years of Dallas steak
Tesar built his reputation in Dallas over two decades, after an early career in Manhattan and Long Island kitchens and a brief run in Las Vegas. His Knife brand spun off several concepts; most have since closed, including Knife Italian at the Ritz-Carlton Las Colinas, though the original Knife Steakhouse in Plano is still open. His licensed Knife & Spoon, inside the Ritz-Carlton Orlando Grande Lakes, holds a Michelin star, the kind of recognition other American chefs chased this season, too.
He is also known in Dallas for feuding publicly with critics, including a ban he placed on a long-serving local reviewer after an unfavourable write-up. The reputation has followed the cooking rather than replaced it: even critics who clashed with him rarely faulted the steaks.
Palladino's now has a chef with a bigger name than either of its dining rooms. Whether that name travels between Midtown and Preston Hollow as smoothly as the menu does is the next test, and a harder one than any single steak.
