Graham Dodds Leaving Hibiscus To Open His Own Fresh and Local Concept On Greenville

If you’ve had the pleasure of dining at Hibiscus over the past couple of years, you know that chef Graham Dodds is capable of creating some pretty damn incredible food. The hearty farm-to-table fare that dominated the menu at Hibiscus and the cooking he’s done at New York City’s James Beard House, has made Dodds one of most Dallas’ prominent chefs.

Now he’ll have the chance to build his own menu from the ground up. Last week, This & That Concepts announced they would be partnering with Dodds in a new venture that is yet to be named. According to CultureMap, the restaurant is tentatively being called Wayward Sons, surely a reference to the Kansas song, right? Whether or not they finally settle on Wayward Sons as the name for this new spot, it is sure to be one of the most anticipated restaurants of the coming months.

The Dodds-helmed concept will take over the space formerly occupied by Kirby’s Woodfire Grill at 3525 Greenville Ave. Given the number of hotspots that have opened in this neighborhood over the last several months — Remedy, Rapscaillion, and Clark Food & Wine, among others — it’s clear that Greenville Avenue is still one of the city’s trendiest and most popular restaurant districts.

You can certainly expect for Dodds to maintain his farm-to-table approach to food, honed under the tutelage of chef Sharon Hage, a local pioneer in that respect. He will likely still have Falster Farms send over whole hogs and cows for the butchering, and hopefully continue with some iteration of that incredible charcuterie program that he’s presided over at Hibiscus. Here’s hoping that goat chorizo and the perfectly thin slices of melt-in-your-mouth lardo appear on this new menu.

The planned 200-seat restaurant will serve brunch and dinner only, and the cuisine will continue to be based on Dodds’ impeccable ability to source the best produce and meats in the city. No formal direction has been announced for the menu just yet, but you can expect more of Dodds’ “modern, seasonal, Texas cuisine.” Unlike at Hibiscus, a Henderson Avenue institution with revered dishes and a host of guest expectations, he’ll have more freedom to really stretch his culinary legs. 

Dodds’ move also puts him on a team that has had a great deal of success in Dallas. This & That Concepts has created Uptown’s So & So’s, and the newly opened High Fives on McKinney Avenue. Before that, they turned The Standard Pour into one of the neighborhood’s most impressive dining destinations. With a track record like that, and Dodds’ talent, there’s no doubt that Wayward Sons, or whatever it ends up being called, is going to be a killer.

The restaurant is slated to open by the end of the year, and Dodds will spend his last day in the kitchen at Hibiscus on October 7th. In the meantime, This & That Concepts will open The Whippersnapper, a cocktail lounge housed in the old Slip Inn space.