Texas’ ‘Most Hated Chef’ Takes Over Grand Central Steakhouse

John Tesar spent years wearing a nickname most chefs would run from. D Magazine put him on a 2011 cover as “the Most Hated Chef in Dallas.” Now the founding chef of Knife, the restaurant that reshaped Dallas steakhouse culture, is cooking in Midtown, and he says the temper is a thing of the past.

“I’m really a wise, pragmatic old man now who’s been in the restaurant business for five decades,” Tesar told Eater New York. Since early September he has been corporate executive chef for Palladino Restaurant Group, overseeing Palladino’s Steak & Seafood in Grand Central Terminal and the group’s Dallas location, which opened about six months ago. He stays based in Dallas and shuttles between the two cities. “Wherever I’m needed is where I go,” he said.

The Grand Central room sits at 23 Vanderbilt Avenue, near East 43rd Street, in the former Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse space. Owner Joseph Palladino, a Bronx-born former NYPD officer who spent decades in Las Vegas and Dallas and founded the Dallas steakhouse Nick & Sam’s, opened it last year. Rockwell Group designed the roughly 250-seat restaurant, which has a formal dining room, a bar and lounge, and a 2,000-square-foot all-season patio. Opening chef Sam Hazen has since left, according to ownership.

Don’t expect Knife’s dry-aging program to follow Tesar east. “This is purely Joe’s venture and Joe’s vision,” he said. The prime beef comes from Allen Brothers, and the menu changes are aimed at Grand Central foot traffic, which means a wider range of prices. Tesar is adding flat iron, culotte, skirt and baseball steak, a thick center-cut sirloin trimmed like a filet, for around $40 to $45, compared with roughly $100 for the filet mignon. Tableside Dover sole with brown butter and capers is also on the way. Raised in the Hamptons, Tesar calls himself “a seafood guy” and says Knife “made me the meat guy.” Palladino wants the sushi, seafood and Italian dishes to hold their own next to the steaks, and says Tesar “legitimizes” the Italian side of the menu.

This is Tesar’s first New York kitchen job since a three-month stint at David Burke’s Fishtail on East 62nd Street, which ended with a one-star New York Times review in 2009. His earlier New York résumé includes opening 13 Barrow Street before it became Annisa and working at 44 & X, Vine and the Supper Club alongside Anthony Bourdain. In Medium Raw, Bourdain called him “probably the single most talented cook I ever worked with,” and also said Tesar “pretty much wrote the book” on self-sabotage, D Magazine reported in 2011.

The Dallas chapter was loud. Tesar took over the Mansion on Turtle Creek in 2006 and earned five stars from the Dallas Morning News, but was out within a year. The hotel called it a resignation; D Magazine reported staff complaints about thrown pans and name-calling, which he partly denied. In 2014, after opening Knife, he banned Dallas Morning News critic Leslie Brenner following a three-star review, a week after tweeting that she “really suck[s],” Eater reported. Twitter suspended him in 2022 for threatening Sean Hannity, and in 2023 he left an Orange County Marriott restaurant project after being filmed yelling obscenities at picketing union workers.

Asked about that history, Tesar credited “great amounts of therapy.” He calls the Mansion and Top Chef stories “urban legend” and says he’s done with television competitions. The celebrity chef era, he argues, is over “unless you’re Guy Fieri or Bobby Flay.”

He says new hires at Palladino’s will be announced within weeks, with Midtown catering planned, and Palladino confirms he plans to expand the restaurant. Tesar framed the job simply: “I’m not just here to do John Tesar. I’m here to do Joe Palladino.”