Olaf Growald
Michael Thomson won his first food award before he could even drink — well, legally. “I was just a kid living in Florida at the time and listening to the radio one day,” he says. “All of a sudden, this radio station announced a recipe contest. Every 15 minutes they’d announce an ingredient, and you had to figure out the dish. I figured out that it was seven-layer bars and called in and won. My prize consisted of a ladies’ razor and a box of tampons.”
Ah, Thomson’s first taste of success. Years later, Thomson would helm one of the city’s very best restaurants. Opened in 1992, Michaels Cuisine and Ancho Chile Bar quickly found a place in the hearts of those who dared to venture into a restaurant with the words “ancho chile” in its name. It’s doubtful, Thomson laughs, that many people in Fort Worth were even familiar with that term. A chile pepper aficionado who can recite the names and flavor profiles of every pepper imaginable, Thomson punctuated many of his upscale, Mexican-American dishes with peppers. Matter of fact, his signature dish is his ancho chile pepper-crusted tenderloin, a bold, unforgettable dish that perfectly illustrates his inimitable style.
“Peppers are absolutely my favorite ingredient,” he says. “They’re so complex and, in the right hands, so versatile. I use them in just about every dish, even desserts.”
Thomson’s restaurant opened at the dawn of the southwestern culinary movement, fathered by Dallas chefs such as Dean Fearing. But Thomson set Michaels apart by developing a style all his own — a genre he called “contemporary ranch cuisine.”
"What I was doing and what chefs like Dean Fearing and Stephan Pyles were doing was completely different," he says. “I was using some of the same ingredients but accenting them with chile peppers in ways that no other chef around here was doing. People have realized that just because my dishes have peppers in them doesn’t automatically mean they’re going to be spicy. Peppers serve other purposes, too.”
The Florida native has had a lifelong love of food. “I was always in the kitchen cooking with my mom,” Thomson says. “When I was 13, one of our neighbors asked if I wanted to go to work with him at his restaurant. It was called The Snapper Inn. And ever since that day, I’ve been in this business.”
When Thomson was a teen, his family moved to Fort Worth, as his father joined the F-16 program at General Dynamics. Three days after arriving, Thomson landed a job at the Fort Worth Boat Club. College in South Texas offered a temporary detour, but he soon returned to Fort Worth, where he worked in several hotels and restaurants and served as a consulting chef for Burlington Northern Railroad.
Thomson credits his time as executive chef at the fondly remembered Forest Park Boulevard restaurant, Epicure on the Park, with fundamentally changing his life and cuisine.
“I think the chef who has been the biggest inspiration on me is Marina Bowers,” Thomson says of Epicure’s Spain-born co-owner, who ran the restaurant with her son, Peter. “I learned some French techniques from watching her and working with her. She really influenced a lot of my cooking style, but she also taught me the ins and outs of hospitality. Because of her, that’s something I’ve always held in high regard.”
Two years after Epicure closed, Thomson and business partner John Kennedy opened Michaels, taking over the Seventh Street spot where Zuider Zee and Dos Gringos once lived. Back then, this slice of Seventh was a haven for good restaurants — Cafe Aspen, Saint-Emilion, La Piazza, among them.
But with dishes that expertly fused the spices of Mexico with trademarks of Texas cooking, all within a white tablecloth setting, none were like Michaels. And Thomson knew it.
“I opened Michaels as a young cocky chef who was going to set the world on fire,” he says, laughing. “I didn’t even have salt and pepper shakers on the tables — because I didn’t think people needed to season my food.”
Time, experience, and hardships matured and humbled the chef. “You know, we’ve survived a pandemic, recessions, construction — all kinds of construction, construction that’s caused other businesses around here to close. I feel lucky to still be doing this, 34 years later. So if you want to put ketchup on your steak, I’m not going to stop you.”
Over the years, there have been small changes: Thomson eventually bought out his business partner; the restaurant’s Ancho Chile Bar has practically grown into its own entity, with its own upbeat vibe and separate food and beverage menu; and the restaurant’s name has been slightly altered to Michaels Cuisine, still missing that apostrophe.
But the restaurant itself, Thomson proudly says, has barely changed.
“I set out to become an institution, someone like Walter Kaufmann, who devoted his whole life to food and to a restaurant,” he says. “And I feel like I’ve accomplished that.”
