When visiting Dallas, you will find a few tried and true attributes, including impeccable shopping, luxurious accommodations, and high-end, premium-quality steaks. Dallas is the home of Nieman Marcus, The Mansion on Turtle Creek, and some of the finest steakhouses in the country.

The former Top Chef contestant John Tesar is hoping you’ll encounter just that at his new Knife Modern Steak, which opens Thursday at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point, Eater LA reported recently. The restaurant is a spin-off of his lauded Knife in Dallas and the Michelin-starred Knife & Spoon in Orlando, Florida.

Critic Brad A. Johnson says the dining room looks familiar but make no mistake: Chef John Tesar’s elegant cooking stands apart from anything else in south county at the moment...

For Dallas, the exalted designation of a Michelin-starred restaurant now comes by proxy. Last week, longtime Dallas chef John Tesar received one Michelin star for his restaurant Knife & Spoon in Orlando, Florida. And, yes, we had Knife first. So, this doesn't seem fair at all.

We spent an exciting moment with @chefjohntesar of restaurant @knifespoonorlando newly awarded 1 Star in the MICHELIN Guide Florida talking to him about how it feels to win his first MICHELIN Star and what it means to him and his career.

Dallas chef John Tesar won his first Michelin star on June 9, during a ceremony that honors the best culinarians in Florida. Tesar’s restaurant, Knife & Spoon, located at the Ritz-Carlton resort in Orlando, hosted the event — but Tesar didn’t know he would be honored.

Chef John Tesar, known for his many James Beard Foundation award nominations, his time on Top Chef, and penchant for (ahem) speaking up, is officially coming to Orange County. Tesar has been promising — or at least loudly hinting at — a coastal OC project for years, and now the big, nationally known name is here. This month, Tesar will open Outer Reef, his long-discussed seafood restaurant inside the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point.

Knife & Spoon, the Ritz-Carlton newcomer whose eminence is rooted in chef John Tesar's prized proteins. You'll recognize Tesar, the four-time James Beard Award nominee, from his appearances on Top Chef seasons 10 and 14, or as the character called 'Jimmy Sears' in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.

The Dallas-based chef opens Outer Reef inside the Laguna Cliffs Marriott
It’s no longer a rumor: Former Top Chef contestant John Tesar’s seafood restaurant Outer Reef is headed to Dana Point at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa, with an opening slated for the end of 2018. Tesar is a four-time James Beard nominee, and appeared twice on Bravo’s culinary competition show.

It'll be a Top Chef reunion of sorts when Knife & Spoon opens inside the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes this spring. We told you a couple of weeks ago that Top Chef Season 10 and 14 alum John Tesar, a four-time James Beard Award semifinalist for “Best Southwest Chef,” is opening his modern steak and seafood concept in the old Norman's space in April or May of this year.

Dallas steakhouse Knife made Esquire’s list of the 40 most important restaurants from 2010 to 2019. That’s a big win nationally for chef John Tesar, as it’s just one of two Texas restaurants on writer Jeff Gordinier’s list.

Four-time James Beard Award semi-finalist John Tesar of Dallas’s Knife is teaming up with The Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes to introduce Knife & Spoon. The chef will continue his signature New American steak and seafood-forward cookery within a 235-seat dining room encompassing 8,000 square feet.

You know you’re in Texas when a steakhouse’s sauce list includes béarnaise and salsa verde. Dallas’ Knife, the flagship of Top Chef alum John Tesar, offers old-school cuts like filet au poivre and pork porterhouse along with exotics like grilled short ribs and a 240-day dry-aged rib eye. Most of the beef comes from 44 Farms, a century-old, black Angus producer in Cameron, Texas. You can witness the dry-aging process taking place in the climate-controlled meat closet, which has a glass window facing the lobby.

Just when the American steakhouse started to grow stale, John Tesar found a way to reinvent it.

He’s the comeback kid. The semi-comeback kid. He’s something. John Tesar, Dallas chef and Top Chef’s own “stepdad” (as chef Brooke Williamson so gently put it) barely made it out alive during the first episode of Top Chef’s 14th season. Turns out, the judges didn’t particularly care for his take on a chicken dish. After he went head-to-head with Gerald Sombright, Tesar was saved and Sombright had to pack his knives and go. Sad.

Is every local food lover obliged to watch “Top Chef Charleston”? Not necessarily: The Post and Courier is keeping an eye on the show so you can take Thursday nights off. Throughout the season, we’ll provide a quick rundown of the latest episode, supplying you with all of the information you need to sound savvy at parties when talk turns to the reality cooking show.

This week on Top Chef, the producers wisely avoided any additional plantation controversy, taking the cheftestants (sorry, that’s what they’re officially called) instead to meet the local river troll and sample his buttery delights drawn from a magical chest. “Yarrr, answer me riddles and ye can taste of me tray-sure,” said the river troll, cackling wildly and sprinkling Old Bay on his nipples.

If you were looking for John Tesar drama on the second episode of Top Chef, which aired on December 8, you went home empty-handed. After a debut that focused on Dallas' favorite chef, the Bravo channel chef competition reality show kept Tesar in the background, instead going to its fallback plot device for this season: rookies versus veterans.

Last week, John Tesar said he was going to be a kinder, gentler Tesar this season on Top Chef. To which, the Reality TV Gods evil-laughed, “Muuuuuuhahahahahahaha,” while they excitedly rubbed their hands together, Mr. Burns-style.

After nearly going home on the season premiere of Top Chef: Charleston, Chef John Tesar totally redeemed himself during last night’s episode. Last night’s episode focused on South Carolina’s unique Lowcountry cuisine, and Tesar took a big risk — using okra. It might be one of the South’s most beloved ingredients, but Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio has made it endlessly clear that okra is one of his most-hated ingredients.

Top Chef season 14 premiered on December 1, 2016 on Bravo TV with returning judges Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, and Gail Simmons. Top Chef Charleston features eight returning contestants and eight newcomers. The season started with a Quickfire Challenge where the chefs prepared chicken dishes and Gerald Sombright was knocked out of the challenge.

Dallas reality show fans and chef groupies have a new reason to live with the December 1 debut of Top Chef, the cooking competition series from Bravo channel. Two words: John Tesar.

It’s been many long, Top Chef–less months. But as of last night, we’re back in the saddle! This year, Top Chef takes us to Charleston, South Carolina, where the grits are hot, the tea is cold, and our lady of perpetual sorrow Padma Lakshmi seems as mournfully stoned as ever.

“I better win this time,” Orange County chef Shirley Chung proclaims in the first few minutes of the premiere episode of “Top Chef,” which aired Thursday night on Bravo.

Welcome back, everyone! Or, if you didn’t read last season’s Top Chef recaps, welcome. Season 14 premiered last night, and this year, we’re in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the best food cities in the country. This season, the powers that be at Bravo have decided to shake it up by bringing 8 newbies and 8 veterans of the show who are seeking redemption.

Well, 2016 has been a challenging year. We've endured a nasty election cycle, a deep political divide, and countless painful celebrity deaths — plus Jared Leto's method acting. The one shining light in the dark hallway to hell that has been this year is that we wrap up our 365-day nightmare with a new season of Top Chef. See, it's not all trash.

Welcome back, food fans. Top Chef‘s Thursday, December 1, season 14 premiere took place in Charleston, South Carolina, with eight new chefs and eight returning veterans facing off in the best (according to host Padma Lakshmi) cooking competition on television. Will a seasoned chef take away the title from a hungry newbie, or will the fresh meat come out on top? Here’s the dish.

On last night’s Season 14 “Top Chef” premiere set in Charleston, the knowledge that half the cheftestants were returning veterans—a cohort that includes Shirley Chung from right here in O.C., a formidable, and favorite, competitor in Season 11—should have given us a hint that there were other shakeups to the show’s now-familiar formula.

The premiere of “Top Chef: Charleston” has now officially come and gone — and what a premiere it ended up being! While we still don’t love the concept of newbie chefs facing off against returning ones, this episode did at least give us a good sense from a storytelling point of view as to why now was the right time to bring some people back.

Following the end of “Top Chef: Charleston,” we saw a moment where it looked as though we were about to lose John Tesar from the competition. Judging from the preview for what is still to come a little bit later this season, the show really should be thanking its lucky stars that this didn’t happen since it would’ve cased this to be a very different season the rest of the way.

After a heralded opening in Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point, Dallas chef John Tesar has decided to flip the seafood-focused Outer Reef into a West Coast branch of his beloved steakhouse Knife. Called Knife Modern Steak, the menu here in California should differ from Tesar's Texan steakhouses, weaving in some seafood dishes that may have been more apt for Outer Reef once it opens on June 22.

Across America, the steakhouse has become an institution, a place where big slabs of beef are given the sheen of refined décor and service. They’re the kind of restaurant that’s able to meld an air of fine dining and comfort food. But for as much as Americans love steakhouses, Michelin is very particular about the ones it will give its stamp of approval. After all, there are more Michelin three-starred restaurants in American than there are one-starred steakhouses in the entire world.