Closing news
Fort Worth chef-run restaurant The Fitzgerald to close after 3 years

Oysters from the Fitzgerald
A chef-run restaurant in Fort Worth has closed: The Fitzgerald, a steak and seafood place that chef Ben Merritt opened on Camp Bowie Boulevard in 2022, is closing its doors.
Merritt posted news of the closure on the restaurant's Facebook page, stating that "we’ve made the difficult decision to close the doors to The Fitzgerald this June."
Their final day of service will be Saturday, June 7. Merritt was unavailable for comment.
The restaurant's stated goal was to serve Gulf Coast seafood and steaks in a comfortable but elegant environment, with a covered patio, wine list, and loungy jazz music.
The menu featured dishes such as seafood gumbo with oysters & crawfish tails, Mexican-style redfish, and ribeye steak. They also did a Sunday brunch with crab cake Benedict, shrimp and grits, and crawfish omelets.
Merritt, who'd worked at places like Woodshed Smokehouse and Stephan Pyles, has had two other recent closures including Fixture, an upscale comfort food restaurant he opened in 2016 then closed post-pandemic in 2022; and Ben's Triple B, a restaurant he opened in 2019 near TWU featuring burgers, biscuits, and beer, and another pandemic casualty that closed in 2021.
The Fitzgerald was a step up from those more casual places, with steaks on the menu and decor that included chandeliers — earning it a CultureMap Tastemaker Awards nomination for Best New Restaurant in 2022, followed by another Tastemaker Awards nomination for Restaurant of the Year in 2023, which it went on to win.
The closure notice from The Fitzgerald thanked the restaurant's staff and customers, and said that Merritt would be "stepping away from the restaurant industry for a bit" to take a break and spend time with his family. "This isn’t the end, it’s just the end of a chapter," the post said.