Feeling fancy? Dallas chef John “Chormaic” Sullivan is selling a caviar burger with fries, available from his Pablo Pete’s kitchen or via delivery.
Steve Nurenberg/The Dallas Morning News
Many Dallas diners will never see inside Pablo Pete’s, a new smashburger restaurant from a Mexico City transplant. Allow me to take you there.
It doesn’t seem like a place you should dine. But trust me and come this way, to a warehouse near Interstate 35E and Regal Row. Around the corner from the main entrance, and through a big gray door, we enter Pablo Pete’s dining room: a few metal chairs shoved in a small vestibule. This kitchen is one of more than 50 in the warehouse churning out many of the delivery meals you order on DoorDash or Uber Eats.
I brought you all the way here for a smashburger when you could have it delivered to your couch, it’s true. But savvy Dallas diners have already made the trek here and ordered online.
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You have arrived: This is Pablo Pete’s at 1499 Regal Row in Dallas.
Steve Nurenberg/The Dallas Morning News
Pablo Pete’s burgers have been hidden in plain sight for nearly a year, even though the Stemmons Corridor kitchen has been open about 50 days.
Some Dallasites sought out Pablo Pete’s double-double burgers and beef tallow fries because they found the restaurant on Instagram. Others grabbed a burger at Triumphs Espresso and Whiskey, a hangout in the Dallas Design District where 30-year-old Pablo Pete’s chef-owner John “Chormaic” Sullivan has hosted pop-ups.
Still others tasted chef Chormaic’s food in downtown Dallas at a World Cup party for Japan soccer fans. Some sampled slivers of his burgers at Chefs for Farmers, the Dallas-born food festival every fall.
In my mind, it doesn’t matter where you find a Pablo Pete’s smashburger as long as you eat one. Smashburger No. 2 is a customer favorite, the chef said. It’s a Wagyu burger with white cheddar, rosemary aioli and pickled jalapeños on a potato bun. Fried tater tots are stacked in there for crunch.
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The Smashburger No. 2 with fries from Pablo Pete’s in Dallas.
Steve Nurenberg/The Dallas Morning News
In its short life near I-35E, Pablo Pete’s has become a spot where truck drivers stop off for a filling meal. (And hey, there’s ample parking once they find it.) Chormaic stocks Red Bull for them.
The restaurant also offers catering for breakfast and lunch to the businesses nearby, and it has a menu of tacos.
If the chocolate chip cookies haven’t sold out, they’re worth a bite, too. That unexpected flavor in each cookie is dried guajillo chile, added because the chef accidentally ordered too much and is finding creative places to put it, he told me.
An alluring part of Pablo Pete’s is the lunch special: $15 for a burger or fried chicken sandwich, a side and a drink.
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Which is why another menu item is so surprising.
Dallas’ new caviar burger
It’s impossible to ignore the $69 Wagyu smashburger topped with Gold Kaluga caviar.
It starts with Wagyu beef and a slice of cheddar cheese. Then comes the pricey pièce de résistance — a top hat, really — of a fried hashbrown, a smear of creme fraiche, a sprinkle of chives and a few spoonfuls of caviar.
Never seen one of these? Same.
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Pablo Pete’s smashburgers — all worth a try — can come with french fries or tater tots.
Steve Nurenberg/The Dallas Morning News
More eye-popping still, you can order this burger via delivery. Stay-at-home diners receive the smashburger, undressed, with a 1-ounce tin of caviar on ice on the side. Why dress your own expensive burger? I asked. The chef explained that keeping the cold caviar separate from the hot burger prevents the sandwich from getting squishy during delivery. And it allows the diner to choose how rich and salty they want it. Also, scooping caviar with a tiny pearl spoon at home might make you feel like a million bucks.
As chef Chormaic builds it in front of me, I can’t decide if this extravagant burger created by a chef wearing Crocs is a brilliant marketing tactic for a new business or a scheme to get people with deep pockets to order it when they’re Netflixing and chilling.
Rest assured, Chormaic is in on it.
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Chef John “Chormaic” Sullivan cooks all his smashburgers in a commercial kitchen with a small dining room at the front.
Steve Nurenberg/The Dallas Morning News
He created it around Valentine’s Day as a menu item that’s “unique, special and kinda crazy,” he said. This burger offers caviar at a more affordable price than most restaurants, he points out.
True: Caviar service at sit-down seafood restaurant Truluck’s, as one example, costs $130 to $165.
“If you’re a huge fan of caviar,” the chef said, “I think it’s a fun thing to try.”
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I prod. So, are a lot of Dallas people looking for burgers to cost even more? Is this our new normal, eating caviar burgers on the couch? Does caviar even pair with a burger?
He wonders how to answer that. He’s careful with his words. Also, he’s got caviar to sell.
“I just think it’s hilarious,” Chormaic said.
Add another $30 to your order and you get two smashburgers (instead of one), two sides, two drinks and 1 ounce of caviar. It’s called the Super Special Caviar Meal Deal — the kind of name I’d be amused by, wouldn’t you? It costs $99.
The caviar burger from Pablo Pete’s in Dallas is called Smashburger No. 4.
Steve Nurenberg/The Dallas Morning News
A trained chef since his teens, Chormaic won a national championship in a culinary arts competition called SkillsUSA. From it, he received a full scholarship to the revered Culinary Institute of America in New York, where he studied until he dropped out to do another food competition, then re-enrolled in the culinary institute. He cooked in fine-dining restaurants for a few years.
Chormaic’s professional life took a detour when he moved to Mexico City, where he lived for nearly four years while helping to run a digital marketing agency.
Get this: He returned to Dallas and made his first smashburger less than a year ago.
You could say he left marketing and went back to cooking, but given that he’s selling a $100 delivery date-night burger to Dallasites, I’d say he’s doing both.
Pablo Pete’s is at 1499 Regal Row, Dallas. Go if you want to, but customers are also ordering delivery.