John Tesar famously banned a restaurant critic and cursed her out online. And he had once leaned into his moniker of being “the most hated chef in Dallas.” Now, the founding chef of Knife, the restaurant that reshaped the Texas city’s steakhouse culture, is in New York, running Palladino’s Steak & Seafood in Grand Central Terminal. He says the temper is behind him.
“I’m really a wise, pragmatic old man now who’s been in the restaurant business for five decades,” Tesar says.
He started in early September as Palladino Restaurant Group’s corporate executive chef, overseeing the Grand Central restaurant and the Dallas location that opened about six months ago. He remains based in Dallas; he travels between cities. “Wherever I’m needed is where I go,” he says.
Palladino’s
Bourdain referred to Tesar with the pseudonym “Jimmy Sears” in Kitchen Confidential. In Medium Raw, he said he’s “probably the single most talented cook I ever worked with,” adding that Tesar “pretty much wrote the book” on self-sabotage, D Magazine reported in 2011.
Tesar calls his recent shift away from his Dallas steakhouses a business decision: “I feel my talents can be better used with someone who wants to build a brand, who has infrastructure, who has large money behind it.” Licensing ties remain – he’s still connected to the Knife brand, but not involved in the day-to-day. Palladino’s is his focus.
Owner Joseph Palladino, a Bronx-born former NYPD officer, spent decades in Las Vegas and Dallas, where he founded steakhouse Nick & Sam’s. Tesar has known him for more than 20 years, through Nick & Sam’s chef Samir Dhurandhar. Palladino first approached Tesar years ago; he wasn’t available.
He opened Palladino’s in New York last year in the former Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse at 23 Vanderbilt Avenue, near East 43rd Street. Rockwell Group designed the roughly 250-seat restaurant, with a formal dining room, bar and lounge, and 2,000-square-foot all-season patio. Opening chef Sam Hazen has since left, ownership confirmed.
In addition to steak, Palladino wants diners to consider the rest of the menu that he says stands up to the steak selection: that includes sushi, seafood, and Italian dishes. Tesar, he says, “legitimizes” the Italian side of his namesake restaurant. Tesar notes that in his early career, he was focused on seafood and looks forward to getting back to it. In short: Don’t expect Knife’s dry-aging program here.
“This is purely Joe’s venture and Joe’s vision,” Tesar says. The prime beef comes from Allen Brothers and menu changes target Grand Central foot traffic, which means more varied prices. He’s adding cuts like flat iron, culotte, skirt, and baseball steak — thick, center-cut sirloin trimmed like a filet — for around $40 to $45, versus roughly $100 for filet mignon. Also coming: tableside Dover sole with brown butter and capers. Raised in the Hamptons, Tesar calls himself “a seafood guy”; Knife “made me the meat guy.”
Palladino’s Steak and Seafood
It’s Tesar’s first New York kitchen job since a three-month stint at David Burke’s Fishtail on East 62nd Street ended with a one-star review in 2009. Tesar is known for cooking at and then buying Club Pierre in Westhampton in the early 1980s. In Manhattan, he opened 13 Barrow Street before it was Anissa, and worked at 44 & X, Vine, and the Supper Club alongside Bourdain. After 9/11, he left for Lake Tahoe, returned to work for sustainable seafood evangelist Rick Moonen, then followed him to Las Vegas’s RM Seafood. By 2006, he took over the Mansion in Dallas in 2006 and earned five stars from the Dallas Morning News in 2008.
Within a year, he was out. The hotel called it a resignation; D Magazine reported staff complaints about thrown pans and name-calling, which he partly denied. The publication’s 2011 cover dubbed him “the Most Hated Chef in Dallas.” He told Eater Dallas in 2024 that it made him “a pseudo-celebrity.”
After opening seafood restaurant Spoon (now closed), in 2014, he launched Knife inside Highland, a Dallas hotel, touting dry-aging. That same year, he banned Dallas Morning News critic Leslie Brenner after a three-star review, a week after tweeting that she “really suck[s],” Eater reported. Twitter suspended him in 2022 for threatening Sean Hannity. In 2023, he left an Orange County Marriott restaurant project after being filmed yelling obscenities at picketing union workers.
When Eater asked about that history, he cites “great amounts of therapy,” connected to his father’s alcoholism, and finding his birth parents late in life. He calls the Mansion and Top Chef stories “urban legend” and says that people today care less about chef behavior. The celebrity chef era is over “unless you’re Guy Fieri or Bobby Flay,” he says. He’s done with television competitions.
Tesar says new hires at Palladino’s will be announced within weeks, with Midtown catering planned. With the Tesar hire, Palladino plans on expanding the restaurant, he confirms. It “will be somewhere New Yorkers like to go.”
As for his new gig, “I’m not just here to do John Tesar,” he says. “I’m here to do Joe Palladino.”
Palladino’s Steak and Seafood
Dining and Cooking