Dallas Fine-Dining Restaurants, Get Ready for a Golden Age

Tens of thousands of finance-sector workers are moving to Dallas.

by Andrew Chalk

Hospitality was the worst hit sector by COVID. Since then, it has come back but the chef or family-owned sector has clearly lagged the better capitalized corporate sector. That may all be about to change.

Wall Street, the New York City financial sector, is moving almost wholesale to Texas, and Dallas is getting more of it than the rest of Texas put together. The jobs are across the scale but disproportionately skewed to the upper half of the income range.

There are few more reliable statistical regularities than the strong positive correlation between the growth of fine dining establishments and growth in the local equivalent of GDP (basically, total wage bill). And Wall Street is bringing a disproportionately high number of high-income jobs, the kind of people for whom going out for an expensive meal is a whim, not a plan. Both expense accounts and personal budgets are going to fuel this.

Nana that Anthony Bombaci impressed with at The Hilton Anatole, FT33 that was Matt McAlister’s peak, the Pyramid Room that Andre Natera built as a destination at the Fairmont Dallas that all needed “just one more customer” to make it, would now be getting a lot of the spending planned for Manhattan.

The lesson for chefs and restaurateurs is: Put together the plan for that Michelin-aspirational restaurant and go after backers - now. 

The lesson for backers is, get the checkbook out. Existing and transplant chefs will be looking for funding.

Behind this is a move by Wall Street out of an increasingly hostile and therefore expensive New York City. This has fomented a number of moves. Top bank Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000 square foot campus for 5,000 employees in downtown Dallas. Completion is slated for 2028. The nation’s largest bank (by deposits) J P Morgan Chase just celebrated the opening of a new HQ in New York City, but has quietly moved more employees to Texas than it has in New York (31,000 versus 24,000). Fortress Investments, a major ($53B) money manager moved its HQ in 2024 to a 50,000 square foot building in Dallas. Behind individual moves there is a brand new national stock exchange, The Texas Stock Exchange (TXE), opening in 2026. Backers include BlackRock, Citadel Securities, Charles Schwab, and J.P. Morgan. The NYSE Texas is New York Stock Exchange’s announced reincorporation of its electronic Chicago exchange and move of its headquarters to Old Parkland in Dallas.      

New York City remains the center of the US financial industry, but Dallas has become a credible number two, with 384,000 financial sector jobs. Texas as a state has 519,000 financial sector employees versus 507,000 in New York, according to Partnership for New York City President, Kathryn Wylde.   

Such massive growth will occur over several years, so Dallas fine-dining restaurants will not see a flash-in-the-pan change in sales. Rather, they are looking forward to a “Golden Decade” of favorable market growth. Some New York City stalwart restaurants will move  or expand with them. Carbone is an example, with its owner now having three establishments in Dallas open already.  

It is going to be fun!