Holiday Dining

Where to eat in Fort Worth right now: 10 best restaurants to take visitors

Crab-artichoke dip with grilled crostini at Twigs.

Twigs

It's that special time of the year: holidays, celebrations, and house guests from out of town. It won't be long before you're searching for places to visit to get you out of the house. You need to form a plan now.

The ideal place will satisfy a variety of tastes and have the capacity to handle a group. Even better if the place also, in one way or another, says "Fort Worth."

Here's our list of suggestions for where to take your holiday company in 2018:

Babe's Chicken Dinner House
Homey chain specializing in fried chicken is the perfect place to take the family. After all, they serve their sides family-style, just like home. There's fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, fried catfish, hickory-smoked ribs, chicken tenders, smoked chicken, fried catfish, and fluffy biscuits, at affordable prices. The location to visit is the massive new one that just opened in North Richland Hills, right off the freeway, where it occupies a 73,100-square-foot building that was once NRH's library, municipal court, and rec center.

Blue Mesa Grill
Local chain specializing in Southwestern food is now down to three locations and one of them is in Fort Worth. They were doing sweet potato chips way before those became a thing, and they have margaritas served in a shaker you can pour yourself. Their food remains consistent and good, the prices are reasonable, and there's a reason their weekend brunch has won many awards: It's a table of bounty with representative dishes from just about every food group and a real show-stopper.

Buffet at the Kimbell
With company in town, you'll want to show off Fort Worth's world-class museums including the Kimbell Art Museum, whose two current exhibits are dedicated to Spanish artist Goya and revered fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. This calls for a stop at the Buffet Restaurant, open for lunch Tuesdays-Sundays, and dinner on Friday nights. Dig into soups such as Southwestern vegetable and creamy chicken and barley, plus salads such as smoked turkey and rice salad, or greens with blue cheese dressing. There's usually a quiche, a sandwich, and a casserole of the day. All for $12 and with a gorgeous view of the museum courtyard.

Cannon Chinese Kitchen
Some people crave Chinese during the holidays, and you'll wow them with a visit to this perfect mom-and-pop. Cannon places a major emphasis on freshness and quality, with many dishes and sauces prepared from scratch, making it stand out from your typical Chinese restaurant. The setting — a restored 1930s home, with plush furniture and eye-catching wallpaper — is also a charmer and one-of-a-kind.

Food Hall at Crockett Row
The foodie phenomenon known as the food hall continues to spring up in cities across the country, and now Fort Worth has its version, as well. Located at Crockett Row in the West 7th district, the 16,000-square-foot hall features a wide array of top-notch vendors, such as chef John Tesar, serving barbecue, burgers, Mexican, sandwiches, coffee, pastries, doughnuts, and more. With that much variety, everyone can find something they like.

Heim Barbecue
Fort Worth has a bounty of barbecue, making the cuisine a must-get for any out-of-towner, and Heim has risen to the top of the heap. Texas Monthly's Daniel Vaughn proclaimed it "the current gold standard of Fort Worth barbecue," a sterling endorsement. They're known for their brisket and burnt ends; their vegetable sides, not so much. But they have expanded their menu with a new feature: burgers made from 44 Farms ground beef mixed with their chopped brisket, topped with bacon burnt end jam.

Joe T. Garcia's
This venerable Mexican restaurant has been a Fort Worth institution since 1935 and remains family-owned to this day. Be sure to warn your guests that the menu is ridiculously limited in scope — fajitas, enchiladas, a few appetizers. Be sure to mention to whomever's footing the bill that they don't accept credit cards. Somehow, this does not hinder their allure amongst the locals. Nope, people still line up for an hour to get in. The margaritas are potent, the courtyard setting idyllic, and that's all it takes.

Love Shack
Burgers are one of Fort Worth's major food groups — you could spend a month dragging your guests to burger joints and not hit them all. You don't need your company in town that long. Stockyards spot from chef Tim Love was an early "better burger" player, putting fried eggs on their burgers before the idea became widespread. They've expanded the menu, adding chicken sandwiches and nachos to their lineup of burgers, hot dogs, fries, onion rings, and dynamite milkshakes. And you can walk off your burger wandering the Stockyards.

Spiral Diner
You could visit Spiral Diner because it's a vegan restaurant in "Cowtown" — tongue cluck, such a curiosity. You could visit it to see the original location that started a wildly successful mini-chain with locations in Dallas and Denton. You could visit it to show that you're up on the latest foodie trends, vegan being the top trend of 2018. Or you could visit just to grab some great diner food that happens to be vegan, and some of the best cakes, pies, and baked goods around.

Twigs
When cabin fever strikes, you and your clan will be more than ready to spend entire days at the Shops at Clearfork, Fort Worth's shiniest new shopping adventure. Dining options are plentiful; you kind of can't go wrong. For a fancy-but-casual meal, Twigs fills the bill with sandwiches, pizza, pasta, seafood, steak, and a novel crab mac and cheese. This Washington State concept may not be home grown, but this one's the first in Texas, and the seasonal spiced pear martini with Tito’s vodka and pear puree is persuasive.

lists bests holidays

Sandwich News

Where to eat in Fort Worth right now: 5 essential sandwiches to try

Facebook

Shredded chicken sandwich from Taste Project.

Summer is (almost) over, we're all headed back to school and back to work. We need lunch plans. We need a great sandwich.

When it comes to sandwiches, Fort Worth has its favorites. If this were that list, it would include classics like the — well, you know who you are: the Rachel at Carshons, the Italian grinder at the Colossal Sandwich Shop in Bedford, the Italian beef at Weinberger's Deli in Grapevine.

But this is not that list.

Instead, this list is five newcomers on the sandwich scene — whether a newly opened restaurant or else a new handheld from a restaurant we know and love.

For this month's Where to Eat, we present five new classic sandwiches in Fort Worth:

Po’ boys at Always Cooking Nola
Always Cooking is a new restaurant inside a Chevron station in River Oaks, at 5001 River Oaks Blvd., serving New Orleans and Cajun-inspired classics: dirty rice, etouffee, crawfish mac and cheese, gumbo, and jambalaya. Po'boys are a big deal here — good news for DFW which has a fondness this crusty Louisiana sandwich. Always Cooking owner Damian Crockem, a New Orleans native, stuffs his generously with choice of soft shell crab, fried shrimp, or fried catfish, and insists on using appropriately crusty French bread he brings in from New Orleans.

Italian beef at Chicago Deep Dish Pizza
Whether you credit Portillo's, the Chicago hot dog chain which entered the Dallas-Fort Worth market in 2023, or else FX series The Bear, this Italian beef sandwich — basically a pot-roast sandwich served on a soft hoagie roll, topped with provolone and pickled peppers — is having its moment. As you can guess by the name, this year-old, indie spot in south Arlington specializes in deep-dish pizza, but owner Ashraf Ghousheh also serves an excellent Italian beef. His is not quite as messy as others: the au ju, which the sandwich is typically dunked in, comes on the side, allowing you to control the napkin factor. The roast beef, sliced wafer thin, is topped spicy giardiniera, and served with a bag of chips - not a bad deal for $10.

Philly cheesesteak at Philly Dave’s
New sandwich shop in far north Fort Worth specializes in its namesake dish: the super cheesy, meaty and bready sandwiches known as Philly cheesesteaks. Opened recently in the old Stevie’s Diner space, the restaurant comes from 70-year-old David McCurtain, who ran a similar restaurant in Watauga, The Burger & Philly Shack, from 2009 to 2022. McCurtain’s experience shows: He builds his cheesesteaks out of shaved rib eye meat and Amoroso's rolls from Philadelphia, and douses them in your choice of cheese: provolone or melted yellow cheese whiz. Other toppings include hot and sweet peppers, grilled onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms. Many say there is no better Philly cheesesteak in town.

Jambon beurre at Swiss Pastry Shop
Long-running bakery on Fort Worth’s west side is famous for its Black Forest cake, pies, and other sweet and savory treats. Owner Hans Peter Muller loves to throw down a special — who could forget his epic burgers — and he recently introduced a sandwich that's startling in its simplicity. Called a jambon-buerre, it's a fancy take on a ham sandwich from France where it's typically made with just three ingredients: baguette, butter, ham. In Muller's version, he tricks it out with two extras — Dijon mustard and Gruyere cheese — and of course he makes the French baguettes in-house. To ramp up the specialness, the sandwich is available on Fridays and Saturdays only.

Eggplant parmesan at Taste Project
Fort Worth’s non-profit, pay-what-you-can restaurant on the Near Southside recently debuted several new dishes, including an eggplant Parmigiana sandwich. They use roasted Japanese eggplant, layered with various Italian cheeses and housemade marinara, and serve it on a toasted ciabatta roll — like a luscious Italian casserole in sandwich form. Even if this were not a fantastic sandwich, not to mention a fantastic vegetarian sandwich, it would be notable if for no other reason than the fact that you do not see eggplant Parmigiana sandwiches around DFW too often. The restaurant also introduced a new barbecue chicken sandwich, featuring shredded chicken and two sauces — Alabama white sauce and peach barbecue sauce — on a toasted bun.

bests lists where-to-eat