Pretty much everything at chef Tiffany Derry’s new Dallas-area restaurant, Radici Wood Fired Grill, gets cooked over the restaurant’s namesake flames. No gas or electric burners here. “I wanted to kiss the fire and play with it and just have this aroma when you walk in the building,” she says. Derry and her business partner Tom Foley designed the menu around decidedly Italian dishes: a seafood salad with prawns, calamari, and octopus; a Kurobuta pork chop with charred radicchio, grilled Borettane onions, and balsamic glaze. That’s not to say there’s no crossover with Derry’s long-beloved spots, Roots Chicken Shak in Plano and Roots Southern Table, which is located along the same stretch of road as Radici, in Farmers Branch. She says that she sees some patrons order the cast-iron cornbread to go at Roots Southern Table, walk it down the street, and dip it into Radici’s cannellini beans cooked with Parmesan rind, olive oil, and sage. She gives the coupling her seal of approval: “It’s like simple perfection.”
Southern Agenda