Crystal Wise
Jenna Kinard is back in a kitchen after pandemic setbacks.
During a recent photo shoot, chef Jenna Kinard leans back in her chair, kicks her feet up on the table, and gives the camera a smile as wide as Texas itself.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been this happy,” she says a few days later at a Starbucks in Willow Park, near where she and her husband have lived for the past few years. “It feels good to feel this good again.”
For all intents and purposes, Jenna Kinard is back. The former chef at Max’s Wine Dive and the winner of Fort Worth Magazine’s 2019 Top Chef competition will soon lead the kitchen at Jellico’s, a hot, new restaurant inside a hot, new hotel, the Westin Dallas Southlake. There, she will serve her take on upscale American cuisine — the style of food closest to her heart.
Crystal Wise
Roasted beets
Lunch and dinner dishes will include grilled shrimp tacos with sesame lime slaw, seared halibut in garlic white wine sauce and braised Brussels sprouts, butternut squash ravioli in toasted walnut brown butter, enoki mushroom confit, fried sage, and local honey. Interestingly, Kinard adds, she is being trained as a master beekeeper, which will allow her to make her own honey.
Her lunch menu will focus a bit more on sandwiches, such as a fried-chicken sandwich with chili mayo, a veggie burger, and bowls.
Crystal Wise
Kinard’s dishes will have a Southern flair.
Named after Jellico, the original 19th century settlement located where Southlake now stands, the restaurant will also be open for breakfast and weekend brunch, with menu items such as s’mores pop tarts, served with housemade horchata ice cream; blueberry cobbler pancakes; and, what she says is her signature dish, chicken and doughnuts. That is a mashup of fried chicken, a glazed cake doughnut, jalapeño-orange preserves, and fried sage.
Crystal Wise
Shrimp and grits
“It’s a menu that really illustrates who I am as a person and as a chef,” she says. “A lot of the recipes are based on recipes from my grandmother, or they’re based on dishes I loved growing up and we all made together as a family. I think more than any other menu I’ve developed, this one has the most me in it.”
This is definitely a déjà vu moment for the Texas-born chef, who was raised in the small southeast town of Waller. Two years ago, Kinard was set to begin a new career as executive chef of 97 West, the upscale Southern-themed restaurant inside the then-soon-to-open Hotel Drover, the centerpiece of a new development in the Fort Worth Stockyards called Mule Alley. The Drover was easily the most anticipated hotel to open in Fort Worth in recent memory, and Kinard was its star chef.
Halfway into 2020, during the midst of the Drover’s construction, Kinard was laid off, a victim of a growing pandemic that would soon obliterate the restaurant and hotel industries.
Crystal Wise
Chili garlic chicken wings
“As you can imagine, I was devastated,” she says. “And shocked. I remember being so shocked. No one had a clue of the destruction COVID would cause — millions of people losing their jobs. To think it would affect restaurants the way it did was unfathomable to me. It still is.”
Kinard turned inward and, save for a singular Instagram post in which she announced her departure from the Drover, she practically shut out the rest of the world. She spent time with her husband, reconnected with her family and, ultimately, used the downtime to recharge.
“It took a while for me to figure out what I was going to do,” she says. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get back into restaurants or do something entirely different.”
A friend told her about the opening at the Westin, and soon she met – and instantly clicked with, she says – the owners. She would be given full reign of the kitchen, they promised, free to make the food she wanted to make. Kinard was in.
“It’s an opportunity for me to finally be myself,” she says. “My grandmother was a huge influence on me and my life. She was a tremendous cook, and the most warmhearted person. So, what I’m trying to do with Jellico’s is recreate those parts of her life — great, home-cooking-style food served in a warm atmosphere. That’s my goal now — or my new goal now.”
Jellico’s and its accompanying Curve Lounge will open mid-to-late November; 1200 E. State Highway 114, Southlake; Marriott.com