Crystal Wise
Mark Hitri
Mark Hitri moves from table to table, meeting and greeting the guests who fill the dining room at Paris 7th, the Cultural District restaurant where he serves as executive chef and co-owner.
In a way, on this busy Friday night, he’s carrying on a tradition long established by the restaurant’s previous owner, Bernard Tronche, who often floated from one table to the next, shaking hands, chatting, and often befriending his restaurant’s guests.
But in other ways, Hitri and business partner Chris Salvador — who purchased the restaurant from Tronche last year, with Salvador being the majority owner — are helping steer Paris 7th in exciting new directions.
Gone is the somewhat prim vibe of Le Cep, the French restaurant that occupied this space before Tronche’s Paris 7th took over. In its place are popping interior colors and youthful energy, an upbeat dining room filled with laughter, buzzing servers, and an overall sense of fun.
Dinner specials are handwritten on blackboards, which are then transported, by Salvador or servers, from one table to the next. Each table is given this white-glove treatment — a five-star level of service orchestrated by Salvador, a Dallas native and hospitality veteran who has known and worked with Tronche for several years.
Paris 7th’s menu consists of the many French classics for which the cuisine is known: roasted duck cooked in a wood-fired oven, one of the restaurant’s signature dishes; French onion soup; caviar and charcuterie and escargot; seared duck foie gras; and steak frites, a pairing of french fries and a 16-ounce rib-eye steak.
On the blackboard of revolving specials is where Hitri often stretches his legs. Recent specials included sous vide, bone-in veal chop with Yukon whipped potatoes and a rosemary Dijon soubise sauce; prawn gratin with roasted salsa butter and sunchoke puree; and trout with marble potatoes and fresh veggies dressed in a squid ink butter sauce.
“The key is to make Paris 7th a chef-driven restaurant, where I engage with the guests, develop daily and weekly blackboard specials, and develop a trust with our diners that will allow them to try new flavors,” he says. “But I also want to maintain the classics of our mission: No. 1, to honor the guest; No. 2, honor the cuisine, and No. 3, honor the tradition of fine dining.”
For Hitri, becoming chef and co-owner of Paris 7th is a full-circle moment. Among the many Fort Worth restaurants where Hitri once cooked are Sapristi Bistro & Wine Bar, which he opened with Tronche in 2000, and Saint-Emilion, the acclaimed French restaurant that Tronche opened with his wife Karin Kelly in 1985. “He became a mentor to me,” Hitri says of Tronche. “He was the reason I got the job at Saint-Emilion, and he was my connection to buy Paris 7th with Chris.”
Hitri, a native of Cleveland who lived in Pennsylvania and Cleveland before his family moved to Texas in 1984, initially envisioned himself taking a far different path through life. A writer, poet, and musician who once played in one of North Texas’ most popular bands, pop poppins, Hitri spent much of his youth infatuated with the art of music and words.
Crystal Wise
“When I was in high school, I was into literature and writing,” he says. “The plan was to be an autumn-in-New-England-foliage-enjoying, patched-elbow-tweed-jacket-wearing literature teacher in some Ivy League school. But then I got sidetracked by rock-and-roll.”
Needing musical equipment meant needing a job. “So, I started working at a Dairy Queen,” he says. “The first things I cooked professionally were Hungr-Busters and Blizzards.”
At that point, restaurant work was only meant to fund his budding musical career.
The turning point in his life in which he decided to embark on a career in food came over dinner at a fine-dining Italian restaurant in Dallas called Mi Piacci.
“It was penne arrabiata, rosemary half-chicken, and tiramisu,” he says. “That meal was life-changing. After that meal, I decided I wanted to be a chef.”
Thus began a lifelong career in Fort Worth’s restaurant scene. Over the years, he has worked at the Petroleum Club, City Club, Texas Motor Speedway, Glen Garden Country Club, World of Beer, and Billy Bob’s Texas, where he helped rebrand the honky-tonk’s food menu and catering business.
Hitri also spent years at the Worthington Hotel; that time shaped him into the chef he is today, he says.
“All of my training came from the Worthington,” he says. “It was a completely different place then. There was a butcher shop, a bakery, a fine-dining restaurant. I was able to work in all the different restaurants and departments, and it was the equivalent of a culinary school. James Morris and Jeff Glick took me under their wing and really mentored me.”
Before he and Chris purchased Paris 7th from Tronche last year (Tronche still owns Saint-Emilion), Hitri had left the restaurant industry to become a teacher at the Culinary School of Fort Worth. It was gratifying work, he says, teaching students what had been taught to him — a major perk of the job. Married and a father of four, Hitri was also able to spend more time with his family.
Six years in, though, he started to miss the life of a chef.
“Seeing all the students go off and do fun and cool things in kitchens, I was starting to get a bit envious,” he says. “But I would not have gotten back into it without Chris. Even though I’m a chef, I understand that service is the most important thing in a restaurant, and that’s where he excels. Feeling like I still have it in me to be a good chef, I think we make a great team.”
Paris 7th - 3324 West Seventh St. - paris7th.com
