Agave Restaurant in Rockwall welcomes credentialed new chef

by Teresa Gubbins

ROCKWALL — Agave Tapas Grill Restaurant & Bar, one of the handful of restaurants clustered around the Harbor waterfront development in Rockwall, has some changes underfoot, including a new chef and menu.

Scott Hoffner, a graduate of the culinary program at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., joined the restaurant about three weeks ago, after having spent the last 10 years working at restaurants and resorts around the country.

"I’ve been all over the place -- Montana, Fort Collins, Colo., I was in California for eight years where I was executive chef at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa," Hoffner says. "But I'm from Plano originally. My wife and I had a daughter two years ago. My family is here. So we decided to come home and get closer to family."

He has lots of ideas for new dishes, which he recites with an admirable fervor.

"Everything I do is from scratch," he says. "In two weeks, we'll be launching a new menu that hopefully will blow this little area up."

That includes something he calls oyster tostitas -– blue corn tortillas with jalapeno cilantro aioli, with a lightly fried oyster topped with watermelon pico de gallo; a "Cajun kiss" -- jalapeno stuffed with Jack cheese and wrapped in bacon, then baked and fried; roasted airline chicken breast with sweet & spicy apricot glaze; "alfredo blue" -- chicken fettucine alfredo with blue cheese cream sauce and broccoli; seared tuna with Asian jicama slaw; smoky BBQ ranch shaved sweet Texas 1015 onion rings -- "like Tony Roma's loaf, knife-and-fork onion rings so thin they melt in your mouth"; plus steaks -- ribeye, 8-ounce filet, sirloin, and a petit filet 4-ounce with all the fixings for $16.

They're also launching a gimmick called "boat bites."

"Basically it's slipside service -- we'll have these little menus with 10 items that are laminated, and the servers will go out to where the boats launch," Hoffner says. "It'll be things like tuna sandwiches, potato salad, cole slaw, we'll have one of the girls run them down and deliver them to your boat."