3 Dallas restaurants, including Shinsei, shuffle ownership

After 19 years in Dallas running Asian restaurant Shinsei, Lynae Fearing and Tracy Rathbun have split up.

Fearing is now the owner of Shinsei and its sibling restaurant Lovers Seafood and Market. Their third restaurant, Perch Bistro and Bar, is majority owned and operated by Fearing. Rathbun has a minority share and isn’t involved in daily operations.

The three restaurants are on Inwood Road at Lovers Lane, near Dallas’ Bluffview, Devonshire and Highland Park neighborhoods.

Both Fearing and Rathbun said in Dallas Morning News interviews that the partnership has been fruitful for nearly 20 years. So why the change?

“My life and Tracy’s life have evolved,” Fearing said.

“I hope Tracy enjoys this next phase of her life, and I’m going to enjoy the next phase of mine.”

Rathbun is sending her youngest child to college this summer.

“I’m ready to do different things,” Rathbun said.

Fearing and Rathbun met decades ago in a dinner group that called themselves the Restaurant Wives. The two were married to two of Dallas’ best-known chefs: Tracy Rathbun to Kent Rathbun, formerly of Abacus; and Lynae Fearing to Dean Fearing, former executive chef of the Mansion Restaurant and current chef-owner of Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton. The Fearings have since divorced.

The women talked about owning a restaurant together, emboldened by their proximity to restaurants through their spouses. Both had worked in restaurants previously, though Rathbun also sold Porsche vehicles for 14 years.

“You’re the only one I want to do business with,” Rathbun recalls saying to Fearing some 20 years ago.

The plan was “a little taco stand,” The News reported in 2006. But Fearing was friends with the owner of Yamaguchi’s, who announced he planned to sell the Inwood Road restaurant. The Restaurant Wives ended up taking the Yamaguchi space and opening a two-story Pan-Asian restaurant, Shinsei, in its place in 2006. The word in Japanese means “new life” or “rebirth.”

The two had a lot to prove.

“No doubt there were some mean spirits who wanted to see a meltdown when the wives of two famous chefs started their own place,” Dallas Morning News critic Dotty Griffith wrote after the opening.

She stopped the gossip with her 4-star review.

“Lynae Fearing and Tracy Rathbun’s Asian fusion restaurant and sushi bar is a deserved hit,” Griffith wrote.

Casey Thompson, who formerly worked for Dean Fearing at The Mansion, was Shinsei’s executive chef. She bolstered the girl power at Shinsei when she appeared on Season 3 of Bravo TV show Top Chef in 2007. Fellow Dallas chef Tre Wilcox, who was Kent Rathbun’s chef de cuisine at Abacus, was also a Top Chef contestant on Season 3.

In essence, both Tracy and Kent Rathbun had their own Dallas chef to root for.

Thompson won fan favorite and tied for second place. Another win for the women.

Despite the new direction for Rathbun and Fearing in 2025, they told The News separately they’re proud of Shinsei’s start.

“We had a 10-year plan,” Rathbun said, “and it has been double.”

The two opened Lovers Seafood in 2017, followed by Dea (the former Fireside Pies) in 2022. Dea changed to Perch, a more casual pizza and pasta restaurant, in 2024.

Under Fearing’s ownership, she does not plan to make changes to menus, design or staffing.

She told The News she’s excited to be the boss.

“Any mistakes I make will be my own, and any victories I have will be my own,” she said.