Where To Eat Right Now

Where to eat in Fort Worth right now: 8 brand new restaurants in town

One of our eight new restaurants serves steak.

Photo courtesy of Mercury Chophouse

Like any city, Fort Worth has its highs and lows with openings and closures. Right now, the word is "openings." We're so on right now that it feels like a new restaurant opens just about every week.

That makes this month's Where to Eat easy. Here are our eight new arrivals:

Arrieros Mexican Food
Cozy Mexican restaurant at 4400 Benbrook Highway takes over the space recently vacated by longtime neighborhood fave Nueva Esperanza. Lunch and dinner options include standard enchiladas and fajitas, along with several surprises, such as the crispy tacos come stuffed with potatoes. The restaurant's specialty dish is Costillas Salsa Verde, comprised of pork ribs drizzled in a spicy green salsa and topped with cactus. Arrieros is even open daily for breakfast, with huevos rancheros, chilaquiles, and breakfast tacos made with housemade corn tortillas.

Chills 360
Fort Worth is now officially in on the rolled ice cream trend, thanks to the arrival of Chills 360, which recently opened in the Warehouses at Foch, at 1005 Foch St. Rolled ice cream, also known as "Thai-style ice cream," is like a souped-up version of Coldstone Creamery, in which ice cream mix is poured over an icy cold disc until it freezes. Then it gets rolled into cool-looking pinwheels and doused with toppings. This is the third location; other stores are in Rockwall and the original in Deep Ellum.

CRU Food & Wine Bar
One of the many new arrivals at The Shops at Clearfork, CRU is a small, classy wine bar from Dallas with an absolutely huge wine list, comprised of at least 300 bottles from around the world, plus 50 more by the glass. The menu focuses on gourmet pizzas, cheese flights, and shareable plates such as goat cheese beignet and crab and avocado bruschetta. When Sunday brunch launches in a few weeks, dishes will include steak and eggs and a crab cake benedict topped with housemade herb hollandaise.

Firenza Pizza
In the vein of Pizza Snob and Pie Five comes this Virginia-based fast-casual pizza chain, which just opened its first Texas location, at 724 Grapevine Hwy. in Hurst. The restaurant sticks close to the formula of other Neapolitan-style quick-serve pizzerias: pizzas are oven-baked at high temperatures and are ready in just a few minutes. There are more than 40 toppings from which to choose, from steak to asparagus, plus a half-dozen pizza sauces.

Mercury Chophouse
Arlington's fine-dining scene gets a major boost, courtesy of this new steakhouse, an offshoot of the downtown Fort Worth original. Housed on the ninth floor of the Brookhollow Two office tower at 2221 E. Lamar Blvd., better known as the former Cacharel space, the restaurant is all class: wood paneling, piano bar, killer views. The menu includes steak, lamb shank, pan-seared foie gras, and seafood. There are salads, too, including one named after owner and chef Zack Moutaouakil. Called the "Zack Attack," it features chilled shrimp and jumbo lump crabmeat with mixed greens and a champagne balsamic vinaigrette.

Meso Maya
Two years in the making, the latest branch of the Mexican-food mini-chain is now open in downtown's historic Kress building, at 604 Main St. At close to 10,000 square feet, the downtown location is twice as twice as big as the Tanglewood store, which opened earlier this year, and will seat up to 400 people on two floors. The limestone tile floor and original "Kress" signage are cool remnants of the building's original occupant, department store S.H. Kress Co., which opened in 1936. Meso Maya comes from the same Dallas-based group as El Fenix, but the menu is more upscale, focusing on Oaxaca- and Puebla-inspired dishes with gourmet ingredients, along with craft cocktails.

Khanh's Vietnamese Restaurant
Excellent new Vietnamese spot in south Fort Worth, at 6901 McCart Ave., comes from the same family behind popular north side haunt Lieu's Vietnamese Restaurant. The strip mall façade here gives way to a charming dining room decorated with flowers and colorful Asian art. Boasting more than 100 items, the extensive menu covers all the Vietnamese essentials, from vermicelli to broken rice, but zeroes in on pho, with more than a dozen varieties. A plus: Freshly made shakes come in uncommon flavors such as honey dew, jack fruit, and pineapple.

Texas Republic Bar & Kitchen
New spot in Foch Street Warehouses, at 941 Foch St., comes from Sam Sameni, who helped open nearby Landmark Bar & Kitchen and the now-defunct Brownstone, one of the first restaurants in the repurposed West 7th area. Take the "Texas" part of the name literally; the place is huge. The main bar is 8300 square feet. A rooftop bar, slated to open next year, will be an additional 6000 square feet. In the kitchen is a familiar face: Clint Connaway, former executive chef at Waters Bonnell's Coastal Cuisine. His menu includes bar food standards with "Texas twists," such as waffle-crusted chicken tender and a pizza topped with barbecue brisket.

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Fresh Pasta News

Where to eat in Fort Worth right now: 6 hottest new restaurants

Bocca Osteria Romana

Twirling the pasta at Bocca Osteria Romana

Restaurants seemingly open and close in waves, and right now, they’re opening. Over the past few weeks, there’s been an influx of new restaurants in and around Fort Worth, from a cool new Italian spot to high-end Tex Mex to Texas’ favorite cuisine, barbecue.

For this month’s Where to Eat, we take a look at six of the area’s latest restaurants.

225 BBQ
This beloved craft barbecue food truck has finally opened its first brick-and-mortar, at 601 E. Main St. near downtown Arlington. 225 fans will recognize the new restaurant's location: It was where owner/pitmaster Rene Ramirez operated temporarily last year, sharing the space with a bar. After the bar moved out, Ramirez took over the building, transforming it into a full-fledged barbecue restaurant. Ramirez’s menu includes ‘cue essentials such as moist brisket and meaty pork ribs, along with several Mexi-cue-inspired dishes that have become his calling cards, like excellent birria ramen, brisket elote, chipotle chicken nachos, and brisket quesadillas. His burgers are great, too.

Bocca Osteria Romana
New Italian restaurant in the South Main area, at 411 S. Main St. #104, specializes in housemade pastas, freshly made focaccia, and beautiful salads filled with seasonal ingredients. The restaurant comes from a trio of Texans - brothers Alfonso and Alessandro Salvatore and their cousin Eduardo Mariel - who have lived and cooked all over the world, including Puerto Rico, where they opened the original Bocca Osteria Romana. Pasta is their thing, and it comes in several forms, from spaghetti alla carbonara, made with guanciale, percorino romano cheese, and crushed black pepper, to the bacon-studded bucatini all’amatriciana, to a plate of classic cacio e pepe. Entrees include lamb chops, osso bucco, and gorgeous seasonal salads.

Los Guapos Mexican Street Food
Newly opened at 2708 West 7th St., Los Guapos Mexican Street Food is the latest concept from Angel Fuentes, the well-known Fort Worth chef who made a name for himself at the original location of Mariachi’s Dine In and Guapo Tacos, two Mexican restaurants born inside an east side gas station. Los Guapos is Fuentes’ first full-on brick-and-mortar. His menu includes many of the dishes he’s known for, like superb birria tacos, pozole, huge burritos, and a wide range of veggie dishes. New to his menu are street food-inspired items like huaraches, oblong-shaped pieces of fried masa dough topped with smashed pinto beans, vegetables, and proteins, and alambre, a traditional Mexican dish comprised of chopped meats and vegetables, held together with melted cheese, and served with tortillas.

Juicy Dumplings
The handmade Chinese dumpling trend hits the Fort Worth suburb of Euless, courtesy of this sleek new spot, originally called Home of Juicy Dumplings, in the Glade Parks shopping center. It’s a state-of-the-art restaurant where robots help deliver your food and the immersive decor is designed to make you feel like you’re under the ocean. There’ll be lots of oohing and ahing. But it’s not all show: Hong Kong natives, owner Rixin “Jimmy” Zheng and head chef Bosco Seung, offer a vast selection of Chinese dishes, including nearly a dozen variations of Chinese dumplings, including pan-fried pork buns, har gow (shrimp dumplings), Sichuan-inspired spicy wontons, vegetable dumplings, and soup dumplings. Elsewhere on the menu, there’s peking duck, Mongolian chicken, several noodle dishes, and cool desserts such as mango pancakes, made with razor-thin crepes layered with a mango-infused cream.

La Cabrona Cocina Mexicana
Long-awaited, high-end Mexican restaurant from Adam Shanaa and Jalal Chanaa, owners of the soon-to-reopen Terra Mediterranean, takes over the West 7th-area space originally occupied by Tillman’s Roadhouse at 2973 Crockett St. It’s a family-run spot whose kitchen is led by Rosario Ortega, a chef from Monterrey, Mexico, who’s using recipes passed down through generations. His menu includes dishes such as carne asada, camarones a la diabla, chile relleno, and whole fried snapper. There are plenty of tacos, made with your choice of skirt steak, slow-cooked pork, pan-seared tilapia, or grilled shrimp, and appetizers such as shrimp cocktail and ceviche. The restaurant is beautifully decorated with hand-painted murals and colorful furniture; there’s also a nice patio.

Tokyo Mizu
New sushi spot in North Arlington, at 2390 E. Lamar Blvd., in the space previously occupied by Take a Bao, puts a unique spin on the all-you-can-eat concept. Instead of going through a buffet-style line and loading up your plate, your server brings you five items at a time, all freshly made. When you finish those, you can order five more, and so on. Selections include a vast array of cooked and raw sushi, nigiri, tonkotsu ramen, pork dumplings, bulgogi bao buns, calamari, soup dumplings, and various fried rice dishes. The prices are a steal: $19.99 per person for lunch, $29.99 for dinner.

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