Dean Fearing is the chef and owner of Fearing’s, the restaurant inside The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas on McKinney Avenue in Uptown. He is one of the chefs most closely associated with Southwestern cuisine, the style that blends Texas and Southwestern ingredients with fine-dining technique.
Career
Fearing was born in Kentucky in 1955. He spent 20 years as executive chef of The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, where his cooking helped make the restaurant one of the best known in the country and put Southwestern cuisine on the national map. During the 1980s he appeared several times on the PBS series Great Chefs, and he later hosted Entertaining at Home with Dean Fearing on Food Network.
In 2007 he left The Mansion to open his own restaurant in partnership with Ritz-Carlton. The next year, Zagat named Fearing’s the top hotel restaurant in its survey, and the same survey ranked The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas as the top large hotel in the United States.
Books
Fearing has written three cookbooks: The Mansion on Turtle Creek Cookbook; Dean Fearing’s Southwest Cuisine: Blending Asia and the Americas; and The Texas Food Bible: From Legendary Dishes to New Classics.
His books, like his menus, center on Texas ingredients, from beef to Gulf seafood, and on the Southwestern dishes he refined at The Mansion.
Fearing’s today
Fearing’s serves breakfast, lunch, weekend brunch and dinner, and its Rattlesnake Bar stays open late. The restaurant is a regular choice for business dinners and hotel guests in Uptown.
Dinner runs from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 5:30 to 9 p.m. on Sunday, and reservations can be made at (214) 922-4848. Fearing’s is listed in the Portal of Dallas business directory under Restaurants and Food.
Recognition
Fearing was named to D CEO’s 2027 Dallas 500 in the chefs and restaurateurs category, alongside other Dallas restaurant leaders including Samir Dhurandhar of Nick & Sam’s Steakhouse and Chad Houser of Café Momentum.