One chef knew he wanted to make an onion bread. The other was intent on working with bone marrow. The result was a dish that centered on a savory slice of caramelized onion-enriched bread that was sautéed in rendered bone marrow.

And that, food friends, is called collaboration.

On Saturday night it was also called “Toast” – the fourth of a six-course dinner from the chefs Seth Siegel-Gardner and Terrence Gallivan who ignited their partnership called Pilot Light with the first of three special dinners held at Revival Market in the Heights. The dinners (the next will be June 25 and July 2) are BYOB affairs limited to 30 people each. Tickets sold out within half an hour the day they were put up on a first-come basis at Revival on June 11.

Saturday’s first outing of Pilot Light was something of a preview for the type of restaurant that Siegel-Gardner and Gallivan hope to open later this year in Houston under their Pilot Light Restaurant Group business partnership. The two, along with chef Justin Yu, collaborated last summer in the Just 8 pop-up restaurant project which left foodies wanting more. Siegel-Garnder left Kata Robata to begin focusing on a new restaurant concept with Gallivan who recently moved to Houston to strike a match under Pilot Light.

Gallivan said the courses served Saturday are a taste of what the two will be doing with their new restaurant.

What a taste.

First course snack: A play on dried shrimp: Photos by Greg Morago
The evening began with a “snack,” presented as a first course, that was an elaborate play on shrimp chips. A small bowl held a single, fragile dehydrated Gulf shrimp, which tasted like a seafood chicharron, garnished with freeze-dried and powdered salumi and shrimp crisps made from dried shrimp meat. (It looked like a beet chip and tasted like shrimp jerky.)

Second course: beef and salad in a canning jar
Course two was a “verrine” (a terrine in a verre, French for glass) – layers of jellied beef consommé, veal tongue, pickled mustard seeds, horseradish cream, short ribs and salad greens in a canning jar. Cool, refreshing and offering multiple textures, it might have been the evening’s most complex assemblage presented in the most casual manner.

Third course: Cold sesame noodles with hamachi and uni.
Next came what looked like a spiedini of noodles (cold sesame noodles strategically twisted to form a baton) on which was set slices of hamachi, generous amounts of sea urchin and baby bok choy.

Fourth course: Onion bread toast with marrow
That was followed by the onion bread toast, set like a crusty tombstone on the plate, warm and slick with marrow.

Fifth course: Chicken salad with a scrambled egg sauce inside an egg shell.
The final savory course was a salad of butter lettuce cup filled with slices of moist chicken and a dressing of smoky "scrambled egg." The warm egg emulsion was held inside egg shells that patrons cracked to dress the salad. Simple, gorgeous and delicious.

Sixth course: Citrus sorbet
Dessert was a complex tribute to uncomplicated flavors: orange and yuzu sorbet set on a smear of pistachio yogurt and garnished with watermelon and blackberry seeds.

It was an evening of firsts.

It was the first dinner host Revival Market held in its store.

It was the first step for Pilot Light and a first glimpse of what
Siegel-Garner’s and Gallivan’s partnership might yield.

The lucky patrons at the next two dinners are in for a treat. So, too, is the Houston dining scene when Pilot Light starts a new foodie bonfire with its restaurant.

We can hardly wait.