Dallas & Fort Worth Omni Hotels featuring Flavors of Chile on special menu

Jason Weaver

Dallas-based Omni Hotels and Wines of Chile have teamed up to offer a special menu that celebrates the food and wines of Chile.

Each year, Omni Hotels chooses a specific country or cuisine to feature in a special quarterly menu. This year, Chile is that destination.

To design the menu and choose the wine pairings, Omni sent an elite group of its best chefs to Santiago, Chile, to learn about the cuisine and wines, “and that’s what we’ve captured on this menu,” Dallas Omni’s executive chef, Jason Weaver, told me at a lunch he and Texas Spice’s chef prepared for me last week to showcase their Destination Chile menu.

The meal pivots around 11 food-friendly wines (served by the glass or bottle) and produced in growing regions all across Chile. Mix and match them to a range of a la carte dishes, from camaron empanadas (shrimp, cheese and spring onions in flaky pastry) to milcaos con pebble de palta (fired potato cakes with avocado, banana peppers, tomato and sea salt) to costilla con pure picante (pork ribs cooked in chile-spiked beer) and caldillo de salmon (yep, salmon in seafood broth).

Texas Spice, the hotel’s main restaurant, will be offering the Chilean dishes through the end of the year. Entrees top out at $36, but a savvy diner could get in and out for under $20++ for a glass of wine and an appetizer.