Zen Sushi and Restaurant Beatrice owner and executive chef Michelle Carpenter won this year’s Pride in Excellence Award for Outstanding Leadership in Business, according to a City of Dallas press release.
Photography by Kate Voskova
The Pride in Excellence Awards, announced earlier this month, recognized Dallas LGBTQ+ leaders across various fields, including business.
Born in Tokyo to Cajun and Japanese parents, Carpenter had a blended cultural upbringing. She spent her childhood in parts of Texas and in Louisiana.
Carpenter trained under Tokyo sushi masters in Japan before returning to Texas, where she worked at top sushi restaurants for over 10 years. She then opened her own concept in 2007: Zen Sushi in the Bishop Arts, also known as Oak Cliff’s first sushi restaurant. Her menu carefully fuses Japanese and regional elements from her upbringing to produce Japanese-American cuisine, and the restaurant remains a popular place for sushi in Dallas.
Photography by Kathy Tran
In 2022, Carpenter opened another Oak Cliff restaurant called Restaurant Beatrice, which she designed to be unique in serving contemporary Cajun and Creole dishes with many different influences. Carpenter named her second concept after her grandmother, whose first name was Beatrice.
Photography by Kelsey Shoemaker
Restaurant Beatrice was a 2023 James Beard Finalist and became the first B Corp-Certified restaurant in Texas. In 2023, Carpenter launched the Women in Restaurants Leadership Program with Dallas College.
Zen Sushi in the Bishop Arts is located at 380 West Seventh St., and Restaurant Beatrice is at 1111 North Beckley Ave.
