Chef Preston Paine’s Tasting Menu Updates The Blue Room

Chef Preston Paine opened The Crescent Hotel’s restaurants in 2024, both Emilia’s and The Blue Room. At Emilia’s, his menu features some of the most authentic Mediterranean and Italian dishes in town, and the vision for The Blue Room was to be an elegant sanctuary with an elevated fine dining atmosphere and pace. Beginning this week, Chef Paine is taking The Blue Room in a new direction, relaunching it as a multi-course tasting menu experience.

Chef Paine has been featured on Food Network shows, including season one of Ciao House, and most recently on season 37, episode 10 of Beat Bobby Flay. The episode titled Ciao, Bella! Aired in early March. Both high-profile shows reinforce his flair with Italian cuisine, and his celebrity chef status.

His menu at Emilia’s features handmade pasta dishes, as well as fresh seafood and wild game. It is inspired by the flavors of Italy, France, Spain, Greece, and Morocco. It’s a taste of the best the Mediterranean has to offer

About The Omakase and Tasting Menu Craze

Chef Paine is already known for his impeccable sourcing, blending the best products and produce from local farms and ranches, with imported Mediterranean delicacies like Spanish chorizo, Castelvetrano olives, Spanish picual olive oil, pecorino, and scamorza cheese.

The transition to a new tasting menu experience at The Blue Room will give the chef and his staff plenty of room to explore new products and flavor profiles. Paine tells Fort Worth Digital Diary that he intentionally does not put his name on the menu because it is a group effort to plan and design the tasting menu. He wants it to be a motivating opportunity for his kitchen staff to see their vision come to life.

Tasting menus are all the rage, but still a rarity in Fort Worth. You may have heard a lot about the multi-course dining experiences called omakase in Japan. These tasting menus allow chefs to select what is the best and most seasonal and craft chef’s choice of dishes to present to their audience.

One of the best meals of my life was at a tiny home in the hills surrounding Kyoto. The two-star Michelin restaurant had very limited seating and presented each dish in dramatic fashion ― like little jewel boxes. Every creation was a feast for the senses. Some seemed too pretty to eat, and every bite was a revelation.

The trend has been picked up stateside with tasting menus gaining notoriety. For example, Phillip Frankland Lee, who planted one of his NADC Burger joints downtown this spring. He is also famous for his Sushi by Scratch Restaurants with locations in both Austin and Dallas. While omakase is linked to Japanese fare, tasting menus can be whatever the chef dreams up.

A Taste of The Blue Room’s Trendy New Evolution

Paine invited me to check out the new Blue Room experience. He plans to roll it out to the public on Friday, June 20.

The six-course tasting menu, which begins with an amuse-bouche and ends with a collection of sweet petit fours, will run $125 per person. You can add a wine pairing to elevate the experience for $55 per person. In case not everyone in your party chooses the full six-course meal, they can order individual courses a la carte. And, if they choose that route, you have every right to guard your plate from unwelcomed advances by their utensils. Choices have consequences, after all.

“The menu will change weekly, if not daily, depending on what is at its peak,” Preston Paine says. So, each dining experience promises something new.

The amuse-bouche was a grand gesture featuring three perfect bites, presented on pedestals. First, a Gulf oyster with mignonette sauce, next wagyu beef tartar inside a crispy croustade shell, and finally an elegant artichoke beignet topped with a fried artichoke leaf.

The next course was an appetizer of amazing dips served alongside Navajo fry bread. The smoked white fish dip was heady, a seasonal cultured butter was topped with salt crystals, and a unique red pepper Muhamarra dip was sweetened by pecans (instead of traditional walnuts) and pomegranate molasses.

A final appetizer featured a fanned display of venison carpaccio. It was served with al pastor appeal including fermented pineapple, candied serrano peppers, and translucent rings of marinated onions.

The Six-Course Tasting Menu Will Change Frequently

Now that we were thoroughly amused and appetized, the dishes kept rolling out.

The next course was a twirl of bucatini tossed in tangy sun gold tomato and charred corn. The unexpected flavor additions of miso and white soy, were topped by wagyu bacon bread crumbs.

It was followed by another main. Pan fried Gulf grouper was an homage to fishing trips the chef enjoyed with his grandmother. It was resting in a blue crab remoulade with fried potatoes, okra, and grilled summer squashes.

Finally, roasted duck was sous vide, and grilled, served alongside a pool of mole with a delicate watermelon salad.

Dessert was a creamy grilled corn flan (one of the best flans I’ve ever tasted). It was served with variations of strawberry from macerated to freeze-dried and powdered, along with lavender corn milk ice cream. A final surprise of intense pates de fruits and bonbons capped the evening.

Each dish was an exploration. Every presentation was creative. Each plating was polished and tweezered to perfection. That’s what’s in store as The Blue Room shifts to its new tasting menu focus.