Where to eat
Where to eat in Fort Worth right now: 5 restaurants with new foodie picks
Spring has officially arrived and with it comes a culinary turning of the tide. At top Fort Worth restaurants, they're busy updating their menus to incorporate the freshest ingredients like artichokes, peppers, and leeks - drawing in discriminating foodies with new must-haves.
For the March edition of Where to Eat in Fort Worth, we present five local restaurants who've unrolled new menus for spring.
Ellerbe Fine Foods
Opened 15 years ago, in what was originally a 1940s service station, this Near Southside farm-to-table restaurant was a pioneer in Fort Worth, with chef and founder Molly MCook doing seasonal menus long before it was a thing. They're still going strong, still hewing to that ethic, updating their New Orleans-inspired menu with the season. The new menu for spring includes a marinated seafood salad, with Gulf shrimp, calamari, and blue crab; spring coq au vin with Jidori chicken, white wine, and pancetta; pan-seared New Zealand salmon; and sweet potato gnocchi with praline pulled pork.
Magdalena's
Popular pop-up “Supper Club” dinner series from Fort Worth chefs Juan Rodriguez and Christopher Spradlin is back with a new spring prix fixe menu for March. Spradlin says the new “rustic cuisine” menu was greatly inspired by the Basque Country in northern Spain. Starters include a seared ahi tuna salad with charred romaine, Spanish olives, and a housemade citrus vinaigrette; and flatbread with brie, artichokes, and wine-roasted grapes. The entree is a braised leg of lamb stew with leeks, red peppers, enoki mushrooms, in a lemon-thyme couscous puff pastry, designed to recall a Southern pot pie.
Pizza Verde
Vegan pizzeria on Fort Worth's west side has to be one of the only pizzerias out there doing updates seasonally. They recently introduced several new menu items, including a plant-based rendition of shrimp scampi, made with white wine, black pepper, garlic, and parsley. There are four new pizzas, such as a fajita pie with beefless chipotle beef, charred red bell and poblano peppers, refried black beans and salsa from next-door neighbors Mariachi's Dine In, and a buffalo chicken-inspired pizza with buffalo sauce, carrots, green onions and meatless chicken.
Restaurant 506
Found inside the 25-year-old Sanford House boutique hotel in downtown Arlington, this contemporary American restaurant recently unveiled a new spring menu, with items such as a spring beet salad with citrus-glazed beets, goat cheese, and candied pecans; brown butter seared scallops; and boursin cheese-stuffed chicken breast. There’s also a pork chop with veal stuffing and an apple butter fig glaze, and, the real show-stopper, a dijon-marinated, pistachio-crusted rack of lamb, with a parsnip puree.
Taste Project
Fort Worth’s non-profit, pay-what-you-can restaurant, which recently received a nod and sizable donation from influencer Keith Lee, has new spring menus for breakfast, lunch, and brunch. New breakfast and brunch items include strawberry French toast, made with brioche bread stuffed with cream cheese and housemade strawberry jam; spicy carrot soup; and pan-seared salmon served with garden veggies in a white wine and butter sauce. New lunch dishes include a grilled cauliflower steak with pickled veggies; an achiote chicken burrito; and birria tacos made with seared oysters instead of meat, served with avocado relish and cilantro lime slaw.