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Stephan Pyles
Chef/Owner
Stephan Pyles, a fifth generation Texan and a pioneer of New American Cuisine, has created 14 restaurants over the past 22 years. The founding father of Southwestern Cuisine, he was the first person in the Southwest to win a James Beard Award for Best Chef and was the first Texan inducted into Who’s Who of Food and Wine in America.
Bon Appétit has credited him with “almost single-handedly changing the cooking scene in Texas” while The New York Times called Pyles “an absolute genius in the kitchen”. In 2006, Esquire named Pyles “Chef of the Year” and included his newest restaurant, Stephan Pyles, in their list of "Best New Restaurants". Texas Monthly named Pyles one of the “twenty most impressive, intriguing, and influential Texans for 1998” and in their February 2007 issue named his restaurant, Stephan Pyles, “Best New Restaurant of 2006”.
In late spring, he will open a new restaurant in the Arts District named Samar that will serve “International Small Plates” inspired from India, Spain and the eastern Mediterranean. Pyles is cuisine consultant to American Airlines and The Dallas Museum of Art.
Pyles got his start at The Great Chefs of France Cooking School at the Mondavi Winery where he served as Chef’s Assistant and worked with Michelin 3 star chefs such as Michel Guerard, Jean and Pierre Troigros, Alain Chapel, Paul Bocuse and Gaston LeNotre. In 1982, he met and worked closely with Julia Child and continued a warm friendship with her until her death a few years ago.
While chef and owner of Routh Street Café and Baby Routh in Dallas and Goodfellow’s and Tejas in Minneapolis, Pyles was the recipient of numerous awards including the AAA Five Diamond Award; Nation’s Restaurant News’ Fine Dining Hall of Fame Award; Restaurants and Institutions’ Ivy Award and the American Academy of Achievement Award. He was the inaugural recipient of The James Beard Foundation’s award for Best Chef in America-Southwest in 1991 and has been given the Outstanding Restaurateur of the Year award by both the Minnesota Restaurant Association and the Texas Restaurant Association.
In 1994, Pyles opened Star Canyon and during his tenure there, it was on the lists of “best new restaurants” in Esquire, Bon Appetit and Town and Country. It was nominated for Best New Restaurant in America by the James Beard Foundation, and was named one of the top 25 restaurants in the country.
In 1997, Pyles opened AquaKnox, a global seafood restaurant, to critical acclaim and was named best new restaurant by Food and Wine. Pyles sold Star Canyon and AquaKnox to Carlson Restaurants WorldWide in 1998. He opened for them a Star Canyon in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel and Resort and developed two new concepts for the company, FishBowl, an Asian restaurant and a casual Mexican restaurant called Taqueria Cañonita. In 2001, he left the company and in consultation, created such concepts as the nationally-acclaimed Dragonfly restaurant at Hotel ZaZa and Ama Lur at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. Additionally, he traveled extensively and researched food for the next five years.
Pyles has cooked for dignitaries and celebrities from HRH Queen Elizabeth II and Mikhail Gorbachev to Mick Jagger and Sharon Stone. He has appeared around the world as guest celebrity chef and was one of five chefs worldwide invited to prepare dinner for Jimmy Carter’s 70th birthday.
Pyles’ first cookbook,The New Texas Cuisine, published by Doubleday, was named by Bon Appetit as one of the top ten chef’s cookbooks of the decade (1990’s) and is now in its ninth printing. Pyles has also co-authored Tamales, published by McMillan and New Tastes from Texas, which is the companion piece to his Emmy-award winning, nationally syndicated PBS television series by the same name. He also hosted a weekly cooking segment on the Texas ABC affiliate, which aired throughout the state.
In addition, Pyles has appeared on such national programs as Good Morning America and The Today Show. His fourth cookbook, Southwestern Vegetarian, was published by Clarkson-Potter, a division of Random House in 2001.
Pyles is a founding board member of Share Our Strength, an international hunger relief organization and in 1998, received the organization’s Humanitarian of the Year Award. In addition, he serves as a life board member of The North Texas Food Bank and is on The Board of Goodwill Industries. In 1988, he founded Dallas’ Taste of the Nation event, which has raised over $2,000,000 for local ministries and food pantries. He was co-founder of The Hunger Link, Dallas’ perishable food program which links restaurants and hotels with shelters and other feeding programs.
Under the auspices of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Foundation, Pyles offers a $15,000 annual scholarship in his name to a rising star culinary student in Texas.