Dallas Spot Makes List of Steakhouses 'Worth the Splurge'

The Wall Street Journal saved the cover of the Off Duty section of this weekend's print edition for a spread on upscale steakhouses.

"Steakhouses Worth the Splurge" profiled just three places in America, and none of them were Nick and Sam's — or Stillwell's or Tango Room or Al Biernat's — but rather the posh spot with a noted $20 million build-out, Nuri Steakhouse, from the Smoothie King founder and CEO, Wan Kim. The restaurant on Cedar Springs Road has already been named to the list of the World’s 101 Best Steak Restaurants.

The article starts with an ode to the steakhouse as the centerpiece of the American restaurant genre.

The article boasts that "Even as meat prices soar, a new wave of steakhouses is thriving while giving the genre a to-the-studs renovation."

For $20 million, Wan got a tiara atop the Dallas dining scene. At Nuri, you'll get an $18 black garlic Caesar salad and a $65 16-ounce prime strip (the cheapest cut on the menu). If we had the corporate card for a night, we'd go for the snow-aged Japanese Wagyu, which costs $120 for a 3-ounce strip.

The WSJ praised Nuri's tableside cheesecake show. The dessert is topped with a raspberry white-chocolate ganache that looks like Silly String (but, unfortunately, not from a Silly String dispenser, which would be so much fun).

More important to the refined carnivore, however, is the source of the meat. In the '80s, Wendy's popular ad campaign asked, "Where's the Beef?" But now diners literally want to know where the beef is from. An article we ran about the Snake River cuts at III Forks was one of our most-read pieces late last year. Nuri sources a lot of its meat from 44 Farms, which we've written about extensively. The large ranch sprawls over hundreds of acres of green rolling fields in Central Texas and supplies many steakhouses (and burger joints) in Dallas.

Nuri also uses Heartbrand Reserve, certified Akaushi beef that is USDA Prime Quality grade. Some cuts are also from Blue Branch Ranch in Oklahoma, and that expense account snow-aged dream is labeled as Japanese wagyu, specifically, which is quite pricey and hard to find in these parts.

And if we're in Dallas eating steak, you can bet we're acting like we understand everything the sommelier says. The wine list is as important as the steak menu. Barb Werley holds the keys to the wine cellar at Nuri. She is one of 14 master sommeliers in Texas and among 34 female master sommeliers globally. She has also worked at Caesars Palace and Pappas Bros. Let her guide you if you go.

We took a peek at the TABS report, which pulls alcohol sales each month from the Texas Comptroller. Interestingly, Nuri wasn't in the top 20 in June, as it had been in the past. Last December, just months after opening, Nuri reported a bit more than $475,000 in alcohol sales. In May, it reported about half of that: $220,178. In June, it was down to $153,709. For comparison, Al Biernat's steakhouse reported $458,924 in June and Nick and Sam's $446,878.

Oh goodness, Dallas loves shiny new things, but in the long run, it has to keep diners entertained. We haven't been to Nuri, but we hope the June numbers were just a blip in the fickle Dallas dining scene.

The other two restaurants noted in the article were Sunny's Steakhouse in Miami and La Tete d'Or in New York City, from Daniel Boulud.