The Babe's Back

The brothel burgundy that drenched everything--including the sagging velvet curtains--has been stripped away. The acoustical ceiling has been blown out and replaced by a glossy surface, recessed lighting and crystal chandeliers. Plus, there's more window real estate now, so you can actually see the Dallas skyline instead of just a building-and-a-half peeking through the fuzzy pleats.

Amazingly, you don't really notice the changes so much because, taken as a whole, the alterations are so understated they let the room breathe, allowing it to come to the forefront. Before, you had to wade through a slew of vulgar visual schlock before the room could speak.

This isn't to say that Nana Grill (as it was christened in 1984) was designed and outfitted with tin vision. Back then, the room duds were posh and plush. "It's hard to believe, unless you look at old pictures, how oppressive it really was," says Nana Executive Chef David McMillan, who last year replaced Doug Brown (now at the Melrose Hotel). That's why it all had to go, from the tables to the flatware and dishes, to the draperies, the artwork and the ceiling. Everything was sold off wholesale. The only thing that returned was Nana herself, a 6-by-9-foot portrait of a reclining, Rubenesque nude painted by Russian-Polish artist Gospodin Marcel Gavriel Suchorowsky in 1881.

But Nana almost didn't return. McMillan says a fresh frame on Nana resulted in a change in the picture's dimensions, a variance that no one had accounted for. The result was Nana didn't fit into the elevator to make her return voyage to the 27th floor when it came time to reinstall her. So workers carried her up to the floor above through the stairwell, opened the elevator doors and set her down on top of the elevator car one floor below. "A bare-assed naked lady went bare-assed naked up the elevator shaft," McMillan says.

Now she shares her digs with an assortment of priceless Asian art from the 7,000-piece collection owned by Trammell and Margaret Crow, who have amassed one of the largest private collections of such art in the world. Nana pieces include a pair of Thai gilt-bronze Buddhas, a collection of jade horses weighing in at 300 pounds each, two pairs of cloisonné vases and two Siamese watercolors that measure more than 7 feet.

All of this art fares well in a room with unobtrusive sage green curtains, colorful carpeting and newly installed banquettes. The clear glass windows wrapping the raised open kitchen--resembling an air traffic control tower--have been replaced with ribbed, sandblasted panels, subduing the severe visual thrust of this culinary cockpit. McMillan says the new glass reminds him of the check-in window in a dentist's office.

But instead of ruinously expensive bridges and crowns, McMillan installs ruinously expensive nibbles and grub. The cheapest appetizer is 12 bucks, while the most expensive (Beluga caviar and whole roasted foie gras for up to eight) are more than $100. Entrées range from $32 for roasted chicken to $45 for a wild Texas antelope chop. (McMillan says his food costs on the latter breach 50 percent.)

This is a special-occasion restaurant by almost any measure. And the food is, for the most part, flawless--as should be expected at these prices.

It starts with a complimentary appetizer in regalia: a tiny dollop of crab salad in a large silver spoon with a handle curved back on itself so that it can be perched on a plate. The components were refreshing, if a little fishy.

But entrants on the paid appetizer roster shined brightly.

Two coated and fried lobster claws served as meat parcels on the plate, which was crowded with four sauces that melded seamlessly. These included a gently brisk truffle vinaigrette splashed on an accompanying patch of scallion herb salad, dots of pink ginger aioli, oozing green swirls of coriander oil and splashes of sweet chili sauce. Coated with a delicately brittle chestnut flour layer that successfully dodged chalky, gummy consistencies, the claw meat was sweet and firmly fibrous. Callously dragging pieces of it through this congestion of fluids detracted from the meat in no discernable way--such was the thought that went into this heap.

Often the best thing about dining in the fine is being flabbergasted by a particular convergence of flavors a chef has come up with. It's a marvel how some can harness a battery of assertive tastes without them clashing into, stumbling over or neutralizing each other. Grilled Texas quail is one such forum. McMillan assaults it with Armagnac poached prunes, caramelized onions, a pinot noir gastrique (a sauce fashioned of sugar, wine and game stock) and props the whole thing on a thick pumpernickel-dark slice of medjool date cake. Medjool dates are a rich, moist fruit that McMillan hauls in from California. He combines the dates with currants in a buckwheat flour medium, stuffs it into pineapple juice cans and steams the melee until it mutates into a tubelike cake. This is an avalanche of palate-blunting sweetness. Yet somehow in the mingling, these gustatory powers elegantly wrap around the juicy fresh quail without squeezing it breathless.