At highly anticipated Dallas restaurant Mamani, the menu offers a $149 rib-eye at a generous 22 ounces alongside a $27 pasta that’s more like “a grandma dish,” according to the executive chef.
Comforting and chic: Can a Dallas restaurant be both?
“When I’m building a menu, I’m really thinking about all different kinds of diners coming here,” said executive chef and partner Christophe De Lellis, who created the menu.
Mamani opened Sept. 2, 2025, and serves “bites” like gougères and ham and manchego croquettes; a raw scallop starter topped with tiny towers of caviar; pastas; entrees like lamb chops and a coulotte steak; big, shareable mains; and four desserts.
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Everything here, from the place settings to the art to the menu, has been scrutinized. Mamani’s co-owners said it was their “biggest, most demanding project” yet after opening Japanese restaurant Namo and chic cocktail spot Bar Colette, both in Dallas.
They aim to make it look easy inside a luxurious dining room imparting chic French fashion on Uptown.
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Mamani’s terrace lends a more casual cafe feel than the stately dining room. Mamani is the largest restaurant in the new Quad development in Uptown Dallas.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
French-born De Lellis left a 14-year career at Joël Robuchon restaurants in Las Vegas to move to Dallas. Bryan O’Sullivan, “London’s buzziest designer” according to Forbes, created the custom dining room in Dallas, which boasts bespoke chandeliers and an onyx bar.
“We want to create a timeless restaurant that’s not going to go out of style,” said Henry Cohanim, who co-owns the restaurant with his brother, Brandon Cohanim.
Mamani is an L-shaped restaurant with two dining rooms. At the end of one, a private dining room seats 10.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
What to eat
As with many restaurants that are years in the making, the story of Mamani is a tour across the globe through the eyes of the people who started it. It’s a French restaurant, yes, but it has plenty of Italian inspiration, as informed by De Lellis’ Italian grandparents, who insisted on cooking a big family meal every Sunday when he was a child.
The $158 whole-roasted duck on the menu is an ode to the Cohanims, the Los Angeles-born entrepreneurs and Southern Methodist University graduates who come from a Persian family. Persian and Parisian, actually: The restaurant is named after their French grandmother, who they call Mamani. Tiny sketches of her apartment in Paris hang on the walls in the bar.
The duck dish “embodies the blending of two cultures together,” De Lellis said.
It costs $158, a number that some diners will find hard to forget. But is it really so expensive, challenge the Cohanims and the chef? The duck is dry-aged for 14 days and can feed three to four people.
Cavatelli with pork sausage and broccoli rabe is one of four pastas at French-Italian restaurant Mamani in Dallas. It opened Sept. 2, 2025.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Perhaps that’s what we should expect from Mamani: Higher-priced ingredients cost more but taste great, the co-owners said. If you want to have a blow-out dinner with Murder Point Oysters ($24 for a half dozen), scallops and caviar ($48), shareable portions of wild Dover sole ($135) and veal cordon bleu ($120), and desserts for the table ($16 each), that’ll cost you. A table of two could also share an endive salad ($18), a bowl of penne arrabbiata ($21) and Jidori chicken ($48) and spend less than $100.
One of the homiest dishes on the menu is the large-portion cordon bleu.
“In France, it’s what moms give to their kids,” the chef said. But you’re sensing a trend here. Mamani fancies theirs up by using veal instead of chicken, and it costs $120. It’s presented, then sliced tableside, with pommes purée inspired by the late chef Robuchon, a mentor to De Lillis.
The co-owners and executive chef had trouble picking favorite dishes on Mamani’s opening menu. So much time and thought has gone into each one.
Or, it could be they’re waiting to see how diners like them. The menu will change seasonally, but favorites will remain.
“The staples will be decided by the guests,” De Lellis said.
Tiny, framed sketches were added to the restaurant in honor of Mamani, the co-owners’ grandmother.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Diners won’t want to miss the basket of three breads, $15, made by chef Peter Edris. He’ll be a big part of the bakery next door, The Bread Club, which is expected to open before the end of 2025.
To finish, diners are offered four desserts, each created by De Lellis and his wife, pastry chef Nicole De Lellis. There’s chocolate cake, vanilla bean gelato, a parfait with passionfruit and caramelized banana crème, and Paris-Brest.
Classic French pastry Paris-Brest isn’t common on Texas menus. But “you see it in every Paris bistro,” Christophe De Lellis said.
This dessert is made with a wreath-shaped pâte à choux, cut horizontally and filled with praline creme. Bon Appétit calls the traditional French sweet “an incredibly flashy dessert that doesn’t aim to be demure.” At Mamani, they keep it classic.
Is Michelin on the mind?
Scallop and caviar, an appetizer at Mamani, comes with a grass-green sauce tinted with dill oil.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
The restaurant arrives just as Michelin is about to announce its second Texas Guide — a tectonic moment for fine dining in Dallas, because the French company had never critiqued businesses in the Lone Star State until 2024. With De Lellis’ French background and extensive experience as executive chef at Joël Robuchon, Michelin inspectors will surely visit Mamani. However, the restaurant is probably too new to be considered for the 2025 list, which will be released eight weeks after Mamani’s opening, on Oct. 28, 2025.
De Lellis said he doesn’t want to “chase” accolades.
“I’m just trying to do the best food we can do,” he said. “If [Michelin attention] comes, it comes.”
Bonne chance!
Mamani is at 2681 Howell St., Dallas. Dinner only. Closed Sundays and Mondays, for now. Valet available out front. Reservations not required but recommended.
Dining and Cooking