Larry McGuire on Why Breaking Into Dallas Is Harder Than Buying a Hotel in New York
Observer · · g5128581
The MML Hospitality co-founder talks about waking up Austin’s Driskill, bringing April Bloomfield to Texas and why Clark’s Oyster Bar can be a chain.
Larry McGuire has spent the past year turning MML Hospitality into as much a hotel company as a restaurant group. In August 2025, he and his partners, Tom Moorman and Liz Lambert , bought Nine Orchard for $92 million. The 113-room hotel sits in the former Jarmulowsky Bank Building on the Lower East Side, and the deal included its restaurants, Corner Bar, Swan Room and Blue Room. It gave MML its first East Coast project. At home in Austin, McGuire took over all food and beverage at the Driskill Hotel, which dates back to 1886. With April Bloomfield , who joined MML as executive chef, he reopened the Driskill Grill as a 250-seat steakhouse modeled as much on Peter Luger and Keens as on Texas tradition. They also added a new bar, The Victorian, and the 1886 Café.
MML now runs 32 restaurants, including six Clark’s Oyster Bars; two hotels, Nine Orchard and Hotel Saint Vincent in New Orleans ; and retail shops in Austin, where it recently added Westside Market. In Dallas, where MML opened Neighborhood Sushi in June, June’s All Day follows in December, then two Swedish Hill locations and a Clark’s Oyster Bar in early 2027. McGuire is also opening the 59-key Mountain Chalet in Aspen next winter. In Austin, he’s building a 57-key hotel, members’ club and retail space at Sixth & Blanco, a 200,000-square-foot development that MML is co-developing. A 6,000-square-foot ByGeorge flagship will anchor it.
McGuire, a 2026 Nightlife & Dining Power List honoree, talked to Observer about the Driskill’s hold on Austin, what Nine Orchard needed and why new markets are harder than they look.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Growing up in Austin, Sixth Street and the hotel had kind of a mysterious and intimidating aura to kids because of the old buildings, the nightlife, Stevie Ray Vaughan . From a restaurant and culinary standpoint, chef David Bull really brought it to life and into my awareness. I was reading about restaurants and the Texas culinary scene in high school, and then I started working in restaurants while at UT. The Driskill has been pretty dormant for a while now, so it feels like we are just kind of waking it up. But people love it, and it holds so much history, so it already feels established as well.
It was really just a lot of coincidence and luck. Right place, right time and the right people involved to make it happen. Because we bring a lot of culinary and restaurant firepower, if we can get involved with a property with an existing great room product, we are able to put the pieces together quickly and create a whole experience. Nine Orchard was so close to being excellent that we have just been making small changes and learning from the team, the regulars and the neighborhood. We have everything to learn about doing hotel business in New York, but we have a lot of experience on our team from the city and London. We also developed and operated the Saint Vincent in New Orleans, which is a super challenging market.
Honestly, we haven’t changed much in terms of the concept at Corner Bar and Swan Room. We’ve really just been focused on the food execution, service culture, building the right team and taking care of our guests and neighborhood regulars. Back to basics. We’ve also really tried to lean into great events and parties, which is the most profitable part of hotel food and beverage and was being underutilized.
April has been one of my favorite chefs for a long time. We were introduced by our mutual friend and PR rep Becca Parrish , and we just started having coffee when I would be in the city. Then she came for a visit to Austin, and it just kind of built from there. We had existing projects that were a great fit for her and new projects like the Driskill Grill that she was excited about. I think the most surprising thing about April is that, even at her level in her career, she’s just in the kitchens every night. She is cooking every day, working with the chefs, developing new things. I haven’t met many chefs who continue to love the daily grind of kitchens and who also bring April’s overall taste level, eye and experience.
First, I think we have to be honest that it is a bit of a chain, and that’s OK. We just have to be a really good chain and grow for the right reasons. If people still want a Clark’s in their neighborhood, and we are excited about building beautiful restaurants, we can keep growing. They need to feel unique to their locations, build their own teams who connect with customers and source unique products. Any restaurant is only as good as its last service and how many great services it can string together.
We’ve just opened our first restaurant there, Neighborhood Sushi, so we are really in the middle of that first year of learning right now. I think the main thing is to have a great first 18-month plan. You are always going to have a nice little opening pop, but we’ve learned that there can be a very difficult honeymoon phase a few months in. We have to be ready to use all our tools to keep building awareness and loyalty in new markets, even if we think we know them. Dallas and Houston really seem like great markets, and lots of groups are thinking the same thing we are. But locals have a routine; they eat at the same few places. As an outsider, you’ve got to break into that routine somehow and then get them back over and over again. In Austin, we don’t have to work at it much, because we have all those locals who love MML restaurants. But in new markets, I think this challenge is overlooked, and customers’ loyalty to their restaurants is underestimated.
I focus mostly on new project development and design, while making sure MML is also growing to be able to execute across operations, construction administration, creative, HR and marketing. Tom is a bit more in the day-to-day at the restaurants, still involved with the culinary teams and managing overall store performance. Since Liz joined, she’s been helping us recruit talent to the hotel team and consulting on overall brand and concept for both MML and the hotels.
See all of Observer’s 2026 Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees.