Team

Legendary Founding Father of Southwestern Cuisine

Stephan Pyles, Chef/Owner of Stephan Pyles Concepts was named Esquire Magazine's Chef of the Year for 2006, is a fifth generation Texan, pioneer of New American cooking and founding father of Southwestern Cuisine. He has created 15 restaurants in four cities over the past 26 years including Routh Street Cafe, Baby Routh, and Star Canyon. Texas Monthly named his eponymous restaurant Stephan Pyles, which opened in 2005 in the Arts District, "Best New Restaurant" in Texas that year.

In the fall of 2009, he opened his second Arts District restaurant, Samar by Stephan Pyles, which serves “International Small Plates” inspired from his travels to India, Spain and the Eastern Mediterranean. The restaurant was awarded “Best New Restaurant - 2009” by The Dallas Morning News. Pyles is a four-time cookbook author and has hosted an Emmy-award winning, nationally syndicated PBS television series called “New Tastes from Texas”. Stephan is currently a cuisine consultant for American Airlines and The Dallas Museum of Art. He has developed restaurants for Hotel ZaZa and The Gaylord Texan in Dallas and is currently creating a restaurant and food and beverage program for Èilan Hotel and Spa, a boutique property currently under construction next to La Cantera in San Antonio. Pyles has cooked for four American presidents, Queen Elizabeth and countless other heads of state and movie stars.

Bon Appétit credited Pyles with “almost single-handedly changing the cooking scene in Texas” and The New York Times called Pyles “an absolute genius in the kitchen. The Dallas Morning News noted “If anyone can lead this town to its next level of culinary evolution, it’s Stephan Pyles“. Pyles is 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 first person in the Southwest to win a James Beard Award for Best Chef, the first Texan inducted into Who’s Who of Food and Wine in America and awarded Outstanding Restaurateur of the Year by both the Minnesota Restaurant Association and Texas Restaurant Association.

Pyles received the Humanitarian of the Year Award from Share Our Strength, America’s largest hunger-relief organization, and was named one of the 20 most influential Texans by Texas Monthly. Pyles is a founding board member of Share Our Strength, America’s largest private source of funding for hunger-relief, a life board member of The North Texas Food Bank and co-founder of The Dallas Hunger Link, Dallas’s perishable food program. In 1988, he founded Taste of the Nation and has raised over $2 million for hunger relief with an emphasis on childhood initiatives. Additionally, he serves on the board of Goodwill Industries. For ten years, under the auspices of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Foundation, Pyles has offered a $15,000 annual scholarship in his name to a rising star culinary student in Texas.

Follow Chef Pyles on Twitter @ChefPyles