You Like This: Featuring Chef Danyele McPherson and Remedy

Welcome to "You Like This," in which we ask chefs two questions: 1) What's the best-selling dish at your restaurant? and 2) What's your favorite dish at your restaurant? We hope the answer to the first question will open your eyes to the fan favorites and the Dallas palate, and that perhaps the answer to that second question will inspire you to go out on a kickass food limb once in a while. This week's You Like This features chef Danyele McPherson and Remedy.

Hey, chef! What's the best-selling dish at Remedy?

We have two dishes at Remedy that are neck-and-neck for first place: hot chicken & waffles and the cheeseburger.

After working at The Grape for almost three years, I knew I had to bring some serious burger A-game when we opened Remedy. I am personally a fan of the more classic burger. I don’t need a ramen noodle bun or a blah blah blah degree egg on my burger. I just want the basics, and that’s what I created for Remedy. Turns out, lots of other people love the simplicity as well. We get a great challah bun from Empire Baking Co. and griddle it in butter, then put a creamy mustard sauce on the bottom. Next come the thin-sliced house-made dill pickles, shaved sweet onions, shredded iceberg lettuce, Texas tomato and the 6-ounce American-cheese-covered Kansas City Kobe beef patty. The burger is cooked on the griddle, which gives the patty that great crust, just like the cast-iron version my mom made me as a (fat)kid.

The hot chicken & waffles was something I knew we would sell, but never in such an astronomical quantity. Classic hot chicken is served on white bread with some dill pickles. I wasn’t sure that I wanted a big pile of dill pickles smothered in maple syrup since I had already decided to go with waffles for bread. I decided to pickle blackberries and blueberries to give the dish the same acidic relief that the dill pickles provide in the original. Seems like a good marriage of two classic chicken dishes, and Dallas loves it some fried chicken.

What's your favorite dish at Remedy right now?

Elias, our managing partner, and I went on a trip to New York City over the summer and ate at numerous amazing restaurants. We never encountered anything unknown until we saw “slow-roasted porcelet.” I was relieved when Elias asked, "What the hell is porcelet?” I Googled it (under the table of course…) and found out it was a milk-fed young pig. We didn’t even know what cut it was, but ordered it because pig … it’s impossible to go wrong.

It came out to the table, and we were excited to see that it was a small, skin-on pork chop with a beautiful golden brown sear. It was the single best pork dish I have ever eaten. I don’t even remember what it was served with because the pork was so spectacular. It had the great juxtaposition between the crispy cracklin’ texture of the skin against the rib bone and the most tender, almost gamey, flavor in the loin.

After we returned to Dallas, neither one of us could shut up about it, so I began trying to source it and learn as much as possible about this delicious new gift from the pig gods. After a couple weeks of searching, I was able to source a Yorkshire porcelet rack. It was milk-fed, humanely raised and skin on, just like the version we loved in NYC. My chef de cuisine Robert Baloga and I set about trying to come up with a dish that would make Dallas love the porcelet as much as we had. We decided to go with the classic pork and apple combo and serve the porcelet chop over an apple rosemary purée with a few pieces of pumpkin-goat cheese-filled casoncelli (Robert is kind of a pasta wizard), whey compressed apples, toasted pepitas and simple herb salad utilizing herbs from the HG Sply Co. rooftop garden.

Apples, pasta, pumpkin and PORK! Nothing scary there, but Yorkshire isn’t the Berkshire or Duroc people are used to hearing about and porcelet … that might as well be vegan. I’m here to say that it is delicious pork, and if you know that going in, you won’t be disappointed. Instead of deciding against ordering the dish whose name you can’t pronounce or haven’t heard of before, Google that shit under the table and pretend like you’re a pro, or if that’s not your style, just ask. Our FOH staff is just as pumped about new food as the chefs and are armed with the knowledge to make you feel glad you asked, “What the hell is porcelet?"



After she sent me the photos of the porcelet, McPherson sent an additional email, with the subject line: "Dong appearance of porcelet"

So, I obviously opened it immediately.

The content of the email was as follows:

McPherson: So a couple people keep suggesting that they feel the photo of the porcelet looks too much like a dong? Thoughts? I have other angles.

Me: Yeah. Definitely a dicknballz. But, I can just make fun of that. Or not. Let me know.

McPherson: I guess fuck it, that's what it looks like.


So, before you make your joke in the comments about how it looks like a dong, know that she sees it and she says, "Fuck it." And also know that the next time you're going to go tell someone to "Eat a D," you can tell them to eat a porcelet instead. Get yourself to Remedy and try something new. I promise: You like this.