News You Can Eat
Fort Worth has the tastiest tidbits in this edition of restaurant news
There's lots of restaurant news emerging from Fort Worth this week, including openings, closures and openings. Menus are changing, lunches are lunching and brunches are brunching.
In Fort Worth, the bad news first: Love Shack Oui, the branch of Tim Love's burger joint on Bluebonnet Circle, just south of TCU, will close. The landlord issued a press release saying that "the landlord of Oui Lounge and Love Shack have agreed to split ways after they could not agree on the direction for the space" and described it as "a mutually beneficial parting of ways." With the Love Shack closure, Love will no longer oversee the operation of the adjacent Oui Lounge.
Fort Worth's Sundance Square announced that a cigar bar will open this fall in its new Commerce Building development. The Silver Leaf Cigar Bar will be on the ground level of the building with a 351-square-foot patio, which would seem to be essential for a smoker joint. The cigar bar comes from Tom Cavinder, who also owns Southwest Elevators. It'll join two other previously announced restaurants at the project: Del Frisco’s Grille and Shannon Wynne's Bird Café.
Popular Fort Worth food truck operation Salsa Limón now has a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, dubbed "Museo," located at 929 University Dr. across from the Modern Art Museum. As befits its location, the restaurant has handcrafted masks and wall art, along with a patio featuring log benches made from pine tree trunks. The menu includes new breakfast items; fish and shrimp tacos; aguas frescas; and beer, wine and champagne. Salsa Limón currently has three food trucks — two in Fort Worth and one slated for the Greenville Avenue area and Klyde Warren Park in Dallas this fall.
The fractured Village Marquee Texas Bar & Grill at Highland Park Village will change its identity entirely, closing in July and reopening in August as two restaurants. Downstairs will become Village Kitchen, featuring executive chef Andre Natera. Upstairs will become Toko V, an Asian sushi spot, which will feature its own sushi chef. The Marquee Bar will remain the Marquee Bar.
After 13 years, the Uptown branch of Frankie's Sports Bar and Grill closed last week after being unable to make a deal with the landlord. Owners Bill and Johnnie Katz said goodbye via a letter in which they thanked their customers and reminded them that there are two other Frankie's located in Lewisville and Fort Worth. Katz vows that he'll find another location in Dallas, and it will go in a new direction.
On the menu
Smashburger has a new shake flavor: peanut butter and jelly, made with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, strawberry syrup and crushed Nutter Butter cookies. It'll be available July 1 through September 30, at all Dallas-Fort Worth locations.
Seasons 52's summer menu includes heirloom tomatoes, basil, corn and watermelon. Heirloom tomato "carpaccio" has tomato slices, goat cheese and basil. Turkey skewer sits on a bed of farro. Steak salad comes with corn, tomatoes and blue cheese.
Chiladas Fresh Mex Grill now offers brunch every Saturday and Sunday, 9 am-1 pm, at the new Park Cities location on Lovers Lane. Menu will include huevos rancheros; breakfast quesadillas; spicy scrambled eggs with green onion, jalapeno, roasted chile and flour tortilla; breakfast tacos; chile relleno; chicken enchiladas; churros; and mimosas.
HG Sply Co on Greenville Avenue is open daily for lunch, 11 am-2 pm. Menu includes beet salad, ginger-garlic hummus, sandwiches, and Chipotle-style "bowls" in which you get to specify your choice of "base" — quinoa, curried cauliflower, greens, sweet potato hash, spicy chickpeas, parsnip-celeriac mash — plus meat and vegetable toppings. Sounds good, even at $14.
Pappas Bros. Steakhouse is better known for steak. But under the impression that seafood is "lighter" than steak, the restaurant has added a couple of seafood dishes designated as summer menu items: oysters on the half shell and sea bass with Maine lobster.
Central 214 has a new dinner menu with summer items from chef Graham Dodds. Not sure how seasonal bacon-wrapped trout or pork chop with cream cheese grits is, but the black-eyed pea fritters with pickled jalapeños and rouille sauce and panzanella salad sound summery. Chef Graham Dodds has also introduced a line of flatbreads as a tribute to chef Randall Copeland, made from a recipe Copeland developed.