At Radici, Chef Tiffany Derry's Ambition Knows No Bounds

In our 2023 Best of Dallas issue, we named Tiffany Derry's Roots Southern Table as the area's best spot for Southern Cooking. Former Observer food critic Brian Reinhart had previously declared Roots as 2021's Restaurant of the Year, but we wondered aloud whether, given her two restaurants and her burgeoning television career, Derry might be stretching herself thin. To find out, we revisited Roots again before the Best of Dallas awards and learned that our fears had been unfounded.

That didn't stop Derry from gently calling us out on Facebook about our misplaced concerns, while crediting her "amazing" staff who "work their butt off every day." Although it's a little jarring to get a clapback from a James Beard-nominated chef, we're in the honesty business, so voicing our concerns (and admitting when we're wrong) is part and parcel of our trade. Trust, but verify.
Derry's empire has grown with Radici, the wood-fired Italian restaurant next door to Roots Southern Table in Farmers Branch. Most of Dallas' food-obsessed scribes, ourselves included, assumed that Derry's newest venture would be delightful. It's also our responsibility to test those beliefs against reality, and as we recently learned, Radici's early praise is well-founded.

Radici (the Italian word for "roots") is a two-part homage, first to Derry's culinary beginnings working in Italian restaurants and learning the cuisine, and secondly to Derry's business partner, Tom Foley, who grew up with an Italian mother and had been eating Italian food since childhood. To develop Radici's menu, the duo traveled to Italy for culinary and cultural inspiration.

Similar to Roots, Radici is a small restaurant, with perhaps 16 tables, plus room for half a dozen at the bar. The walls, ceiling and floor all share the same shade of institutional gray, with a few pops of color and warm beechwood chairs and tabletops. The sameness serves to make Radici's open kitchen jump out, highlighted by the wood-fired grill that's imbuing much of Radici's menu with chargrilled flavor.

Family style is synonymous with Italian cooking, and the servers will point out that Radici's menu is designed for sharing. It's possible to start your meal lightly with Radici's pillowy focaccia ($10), topped with rosemary and creamy cloves of garlic confit, flavorful but not overpowering. The prosciutto e melone ($22) also impresses, with shaved pieces of prosciutto artfully plated over filets of honeydew and cantaloupe, sweet and salty and playing perfectly against one another.
On another visit, our duo of appetizers were gems that leaned into fried themes, but still left room for the rest of our meal. Mozzarella in carrozza ($16) takes the classic fried mozzarella upmarket by blending in nduja pork before frying golden; it's served along side a bright pesto. Suppli al telefono ($17) arrived as fried risotto croquettes filled with chicken liver, pork sausage and pomodoro that sparkled with a subtle touch of spicy heat.

Speaking of pomodoro, it's fair to judge any Italian restaurant on this classic, and Radici's offering ($18) is exquisite in its simplicity. Squared-off chitarra pasta was cooked to a textbook al dente, and it gathered copious amounts of the velvety sauce with each twisted forkful. If Derry ever decided to sell Radici's pomodoro by the jar or the bucketful, we would happily pay whatever she charged without batting an eye.
Radici's influence for lasagna ventures north with a Lasagna Bianca ($28). Instead of the Southern Italian standby of traditional pasta with a meaty red sauce, Radici goes with spinach pasta and a savory white Bolognese, topped with plenty of parmesan and mozzarella. Equally decadent is the coniglio alla gricia ($26). Braised shredded rabbit is the star, blended into a pecorino and guanciale sauce, then tossed together with twisted pasta and a few bitter greens to contrast the richness. Wild game has never been so accessible. All of Radici's pastas are plated for one, which is nice if you've ordered something from the Secondi portion of the menu.

And order you should, because the main dishes are where Radici and the wood grill truly shine. There's a ricotta-and-mozzarella-stuffed eggplant that's collected plenty of flame-kissed flavor, served in a miniature cast iron pan. For $27, though, we think the serving size could be bigger. A generous side of grilled broccolini, simply dressed with olive oil and breadcrumbs, for $8 rounded out the meal nicely.

More appropriately sized is the striped bass ($32), cooked to flaky perfection and seasoned right up to the edge of too salty. The seasoning didn't stop us from eating nearly the entire filet, with a bed of Kalamata olives and stewed tomatoes providing some needed balance. The half chicken ($36) is also brilliantly prepared. The skin-on bird is moist and tender, with lightly dressed greens, cubes of focaccia and golden raisins providing melodic accompaniment.

Radici offers just two desserts. There's a pistachio olive oil cake with blood orange if you're in the mood for something lighter. We opted for the tiramisu ($12), noteworthy for the shavings of fried phyllo dough on top that add a unique texture to the traditional dessert. There's also a modest selection of coffee drinks and aperitifs to put a bow on your meal.
Service is generally spot on, and little time passes before empty plates are whisked away or water glasses refilled. On our first visit, our waiter struggled to make suggestions from Radici's impressive wine list (over four dozen bottles, and several affordable red and white options by the glass). It's a minor complaint to voice, because for all of Derry's mastery in the kitchen, her ability to train her teams to execute her vision in her absence may be even more impressive. During another visit, a staffer pointed out that we were dining on the first night that neither Derry nor Foley were in the restaurant, and we had nothing but positive experiences throughout our meal.

A recent profile of Derry by Courtney Smith of Eater brilliantly paints a picture of a driven chef and businesswoman whose abilities to develop and run multiple restaurants and manage a television career, all while mentoring the next generation of chefs, seem to defy the realities of time and space. We couldn't agree more. Also noteworthy was news out of Grand Prairie that Derry and Foley would bring a second Radici location to the sprawling Epic development off Highway 161, announced before the first Radici had even opened its doors.

We have little doubt that the new location of Radici will be just as brilliant as the original. If we've learned anything about Derry's skill and ambition, it's that her limits are nowhere to be found.

Radici Wood Fired Grill, 12990 Bee St., Farmers Branch. Wednesday – Thursday, 5:30–9:30 p.m.; Friday – Saturday, 5–10 p.m., Sunday, 5–9:30 p.m.