Closure News

Fort Worth's award-winning Vietnamese restaurant Four Sisters to close

The restaurant won many awards including Best New Restaurant of 2019.

Photo courtesy of Four Sisters

An award-winning Vietnamese restaurant in Fort Worth is closing: Four Sisters - Taste of Vietnam, the acclaimed, family-centric restaurant located at 1001 S. Main St. that is literally named for the owner's four sisters, will close after four years.

According to owner Tuan Pham, the restaurant's final day will be December 23.

"So much is happening down the street, and Four Sisters being the only tenant on my side of Main Street was tough," Pham says. "It was a tremendous run, but this chapter is coming to a close."

Pham, a Fort Worth native, worked as a chef at renowned restaurants such as Shinjuku Station and Tokyo Café, before opening Four Sisters in late 2018 — named for his sisters, with a cuisine inspired by his mother that honored the Vietnamese cooking of his childhood.

Pham and his restaurant earned much acclaim including winning the award for Best New Restaurant in CultureMap's 2019 Tastemaker Awards as well a a nomination for Pham for Best Chef of the Year.

Four Sisters also made the 2019 list of Best New Restaurants in the state by Texas Monthly magazine, the only restaurant in Fort Worth to make the list that year.

The menu ranged from shaken beef and lemongrass tofu, to trendy items like bao buns, pho, stir-fried lobster, and crab fried rice. They frequently turned out creative specials like the "lobster Bao," their version of a Maine lobster roll with brown butter poached lobster on bao buns.

The restaurant also had a full liquor license, with craft cocktails served at a well-appointed bar.

Like many restaurants, Four Sisters closed during the pandemic, before reopening in May 2020, but then facing the aftermath, including factors such as labor and supply issues. In spring 2022, they shortened their hours, closing Sunday and Monday and offering lunch Wednesday-Thursday-Friday only, due in no small part to the lack of foot traffic in their building.

Pham says he has no immediate plans other than to double down on family time, which he's sorely missed in the past few years as a restaurant owner and chef.

"I'm hoping to give my kids the time they deserve, and make up for my absence from them in the past couple years," he says.

awards closings

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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