Dinner and a show
Walk into Tony’s any day of the week and it’s celebration central — just how the restaurant’s namesake, Tony Vallone, likes it. Since 1965, he’s essentially cornered the market on Houston’s special occasion reservations. That’s 53 years of delivering pink, sparkler-lit cotton candy for birthdays and white dessert plates with “Congrats!” written in chocolate sauce for wedding anniversaries. Looking to pop the question? The maitre d’ will deliver congratulatory champagne on ice. Meeting with the ladies who lunch? Tony Vallone’s wife, Donna, might seat you herself. But millennials aren’t necessarily the milestone type. This new class of diners are into tapas and family-style shared plates. Thanks to Instafamous personalities like #SaltBae, the
under-40 porn with set their craves entree. a side of food Waiter, Tony’s 26, executive is angling chef to Austin bridge that as long gap. as He’s the restaurant been alive only has been half in stopping business, him but from that’s serving not the next what generation they want: of dinner Tony’s and patrons a social-media When Waiter show. rolls out Tony’s medieval-looking duck press, customers stop midbite to get a better view as he makes Vallone’s delicacy, Dry Aged Duck ala Presse, tableside. “It’s all part of Tony’s 2.0,” general manager Scott Sulma said. He rattles off a number of upcoming changes — interior remodeling in January and a $99 four-course tasting menu — though none whet the appetite quite like the duck dish the chef is preparing. Tony Vallone owns two duck presses. One is silver, approximately 50 years old and in need of repair; the one in service dates to the 1920s and, to his knowledge, is the only duck press regularly in use in Texas. Even the middle-aged men in business suits scuttle to snap photos of the brass contraption. “This reminds me,” interjected a pin-striped John Ross Palmer, the artist behind the paintings in Tony’s main dining room. “Where can I get a decent duck dish in Paris? I leave on Thursday.” Waiter’s duck is a modern update on the French classic, canard à la rouennaise. “We dry-age the duck for 14 days, just like you would a steak.” From start to finish, the duck takes two weeks of prep and two men to execute. Waiter and Sulma rehearsed “the switch” for months before the dish earned Tony Vallone’s stamp of approval and landed on the menu. Their well-executed pas de deux is a 12-step routine, with the duo trading off kitchen and floor duty. The duck is FedExed fresh from Crescent Farm in upstate New York. “First, Scott presents the bird,” Waiter said. “It’s taken from the cage and carved, then I wheel my cart out with the veggies and duck bones.” That’s when he gets to crank the duck press. Bordeaux-colored juices from the crushed duck bones and innards yield the liquid in which Waiter will cook Chanterelle mushrooms that hail from Washington state. Waiter adds butter and Grand Marnier to the jus, then lights the mixture on fire. It’s the kind of dazzling spectacle that Instagram’s Boomerang feature was designed for. Right on cue, Sulma emerges from the kitchen with two slices of duck breast, which Waiter plates and serves, typically to applause and a smartphone-wielding audience. This level of production doesn’t come cheap. Dry Aged Duck ala Presse will set inquiring foodies back $68 per person. But the restaurant has sold a couple dozen each week since early summer, and on one recent Saturday, six orders were placed. “It’s the sort of thing that one person sees and then everyone wants,” Tableside Waiter dishes said. are popular with diners of all ages in that way. Tartare, Caesar or spinach salad, Steak Diane au poivre, salt-crusted snapper and a number of desserts have long been prepared in Tony’s dining rooms. That’s where the action is. “We’re a guest-driven restaurant, not a chef-driven restaurant,” doesn’t mean said Austin’s Sulma. not “But that competitive. I’ve never worked with a chef like him. He’s incredibly talented and mature.” Waiter first joined the Tony’s team as a stage in 2012 while he was still a student at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. His impression. short stint made an Before graduation, the then 20-year-old rang up the restaurant and asked, “Hey, do y’all have a spot for me?” Waiter worked as a line chef, then sous chef before his big promotion to chef de cuisine in 2016. “I was surprised but happy they thought of me. I just love to cook and make good food.” His and Sulma’s zeal for change are spreading slowly across the menu and social-media platforms. But there’s no mistaking who’s name is on the door. And Waiter doesn’t intend to reinvent the wheel, or morph Houston’s fine-dining mainstay into a hipster dive anytime soon; he simply wants young gastronomes and Tony’s lifelong patrons alike to spring for something new, even inside one of the Bayou City’s oldest and most iconic dining rooms. “I figure, the restaurant’s been around for 50 years,” Waiter said. “They must be doing something right.”