Dahl takes great pride in using the best ingredients available. Photos by Eric Wolfinger, courtesy of Lisa Dahl.
Traveling through a sweeping vista of the Verde Valley to a scheduled interview, the last thing you expect is a call from the subject 30 minutes before the meeting. Was I hungry? Would I prefer a quieter, more intimate setting? What did I need from her? Lisa Dahl is the embodiment of hospitality.
Owner of five unique restaurant concepts—one with two locations— Lisa Dahl is well known both in her neighborhood of Sedona and beyond for creating memorable dining experiences and some badass burgers. This year marks the 29th anniversary of Dahl’s first restaurant—Dahl & Di Luca Ristorante Italiano—a significant milestone considering half of businesses fail within their first five years, and the survival rate plummets to one in four after 10 years. Not only has the flagship restaurant flourished, but Dahl has added other concepts throughout the years.
Dahl grew up “learning how to make people feel good.” Her mother owned four women’s clothing stores around Indianapolis, the first of which was located in a plaza across from the Indy 500 Speedway. She says, “My mother didn’t just do any old clothing stores. They were very fashion-forward specialty boutiques. She was a trendsetter.”
Dahl watched her mother place as much emphasis on the stores’ interiors as on the inventory they carried, a trend she adopted as well. “I’ve been fortunate enough to really design these gorgeous restaurants in a way that people create memories. These are places they have experiences in; they aren’t just another place to go out to eat.” If you haven’t yet had the experience, Dahl’s restaurants go out of their way to create a sense of place. Whether it’s Cucina Rustica’s Old World European charm or Butterfly Burger’s modern lounge feel, your senses are already having a feast before your plate finds your table.
“The visual is so important,” she says. “Food is fashion. Fashion is food. How do we design a plate? How do we keep things looking different, fresh, and more contemporary? My way of being a chef and a restaurateur is to be able to express through a canvas of constantly changing moving parts, which makes it all the more fun. Things don’t need to get stale.”
Dahl, a consummate “foodie,” takes great pride in sourcing ingredients from purveyors with the highest of standards, such as Creekstone and McClendon’s Farms, and seafood sources that meet Monterey Bay Aquarium’s sustainability guidelines. She readily admits that upholding those standards isn’t easy, especially when operating at scale; she served nearly half a million guests last year.
Her eye for doing what’s right extends beyond the plate. She says, “It’s a consciousness that started in my old hippie days where you try to compost and recycle. It gets to be a bigger challenge the more you take on. I can’t promise you that every water bottle that shows up in the restaurant gets recycled. But I can promise if I see it in the trash, I will take it out and show you where the recycling bin is.”
In operations that large, it’s inevitable something will occasionally be amiss. Dahl says, “In my daily walk through all of the restaurants, I see things we can always work on, but I also realize the longer I do this that it’s such a challenge and I’m also grateful to see how many things we do right. I’m working on myself to not go into any one place and immediately see the wrong thing or the person having an off day. Instead, I’m trying to breathe a little, not react to it right away, and then turn it into a way we can better ourselves.” Her words resonate as a gentle reminder to us all. There are plenty of opportunities to see what’s wrong. It’s more important to recognize what’s right.
Dahl attributes her success to remaining true to her style of cooking and utilizing the best ingredients she can source. Her cooking style prioritizes allowing ingredients to speak for themselves and then coaxing complicated layers of flavor that combine to form truly memorable dishes. She says, “We capture that magic in a way that can change a simple Italian dish to something you want to live with and eat every day. Continuing that ethos over nearly three decades is the secret sauce.”
