Frisco Has a New Culinary Gem That Could Redefine Dining in the Dallas ‘Burb

Step inside Palato at Hall Park in Frisco and you’ll immediately realize this is not your basic hotel restaurant. The open-concept kitchen, complete with a view of the wood-fired oven, puts the craft front and center. Recently, they leaned into their Italian roots with a Ferragosto celebration — an age-old holiday marking the peak of summer that’s all about unwinding, indulging and savoring the finer things in life — a spirit they aim to deliver year-round.

Executive chef Eric Sakai’s résumé reads like a culinary passport stamped with Michelin stars. He trained at fine dining legends like Acquerello and Rubicon in San Francisco and Le Bernardin in New York, with prestigious stints at the Ritz-Carlton properties in Jackson Hole, Dallas, and Las Colinas. Food & Wine even named him Best New Chef for the Northwest and Pacific region.

Despite being classically French-trained, he fell in love with Italian cooking and spent two years in Italy essentially undoing everything he’d learned. French dishes are notoriously complex, but the philosophy in Italian cuisine — and that Palato embraces — is deceptively simple: quality ingredients done well are what shine. Instead of thinking about what needs to be added to a dish to make it “more extra,” Sakai is always looking at what he can remove to still make it taste great with its most minimalistic integrity.

That ethos is what drives Palato’s menu. Instead of piling on flavors and flourishes, Sakai strips dishes down to just the essentials. A quite literal example, the New York Strip, is seasoned just with salt, no pepper in sight — and cooked so perfectly you’d never dream of adding anything else. Each decision is strategic and intentional, like using bucatini, a hollow noodle, instead of spaghetti as a vessel to hold more sauce.

The pastas are all made in-house, and you’ll want to keep an eye out for the brown butter ravioli making its debut this fall. The wood-fired pizzas are another standout, as is the branzino, flaky and bathed in red pepper cream. Don’t skip the house-made limoncello — steeped for two months until it’s silky smooth and dangerously drinkable — or the espresso, also made in-house, whether you take it straight for a jolt or with a chilled martini nightcap to close out the night. The wine cellar’s 1,200 bottles are there for exploring, with the staff more than happy to play matchmaker.