The Fort Worth vegetarian dining guide that’s always with you.
We’re vegetarian.  We realize the irony of being vegetarian or vegan in a city best known to the world as “Cowtown,” and we saw the lack of info out there for our fellow veg-eaters living, working, and playing in Fort Worth.  That’s why we set out to change things.  To make it easier, more satisfying, and more fun to go veg in Fort Worth.

So we thought about how we might go about it, and we thought that it would be cool if you could always have a vegetarian dining guide for urban Fort Worth in your pocket.  Then we realized that we’ve all got our iPhones or iPod touches with us all the time anyway, so we set to work on taking advantage of that.

VegFortWorth is the result.   Read the rest of this entry »

Something of a reshuffling in the Downtown restaurant biz is underway.  After 15 years, Picchi Pacchi – the Italian eatery at 5th & Main, in the ground floor of the gorgeous Sinclair Building – has been sold.

They’ve been sold to another Downtown restauranteur:  none other than Al Muric, the man behind late-night Italian fav Sammy’s Pizza a couple of blocks away in the heart of Sundance Square.  Sez DFW.com:

Muric says the name Picchi Pacchi will still hold, but “I’m changing the whole atmosphere.”

Look for a menu nearly identical to Sammy’s, which serves pizza, spaghetti, gyros, chicken piccata and heckuva lot more.

What’s more, the new Picchi Pacchi will adopt Sammy’s hours, which is a great sign for those of us who like having some late-night/early morning activity in our urban areas.  The new hours will be 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM Monday through Thursday, and 11:00 AM to 3:00 AM Friday and Saturday.

We liked Picchi Pacchi, but we’ve also long had a soft spot for Sammy’s, and it’s great to see Al’s success growing.  Remodeling is already underway after hours, and it looks as though the new place launches around April 1st.

The newest eatery in the West 7th development is opening this week.  Terra Mediterranean Grill, the newest offering from the Chanaa family, has been chatting up their opening this week on their Twitter feed, and the Star-Telegram’s great Eats Beat man himself, Bud Kennedy, also mentioned the opening:

Now, the next major opening in the West Seventh area is days away:Terra Mediterranean Grill, a Lebanese restaurant from the owners ofAli Baba in Dallas.

The Chanaa family expects to open Terra next week.

Look for garlic chicken, gyros and hummus, maybe as soon as Monday at 2973 Crockett St., one block east of University Drive.

(Photo from Bike Friendly Fort Worth)

The roof of the Rahr Brewery in the Near Southside has collapsed due to the record snowfall.  Not a lot of information just yet.  When we hear more from Rahr, we’ll post it (obviously, the Saturday brewery tour is off).  Here’s what out friends at Bike Friendly Fort Worth had to say:

For those of you who have not heard, a Bike Friendly business suffered a lot of damage when their roof collapsed under the weight of last night’s record snows.

Rahr Brewing is temporarily closed and has halted production, and the timing is difficult for them, as they have several beers in the middle of the brewing process.

Rahr was bike friendly before being bike friendly was cool. They have donated beer to every bike event I have ever put on. They are current sponsors of a mountain bike race put on by the Fort Worth Mountain Bikers Association. And they have always happily allowed bicycle riders to park their bikes indoors on brewery tour day.

Please keep the Rahr Brewing family in your thoughts. Buy their beer wherever you find it available. And stay tuned; if there is an opportunity for BFFW to help this bike friendly business, we will let you know.

We finally had the chance to check out Yofé Fresh Fruit & Yogurt Cafe, freshly opened in the ground floor of one of the buildings of the West 7th mixed-use development.

One of the complaints about the Cultural District’s mixed-use developments is that their ground-floor tenants are almost all national chains or Dallas-based outfits.  There’s a lot of that, sure (we argue that the most important step is to first get the form of the buildings correct in a walkable style, and that the tenant mix shakes out over time), but it’s not all big names.

Yofé is, in fact, a Fort Worth-born-and-raised business.  Yofé aims to offer a fresh, healthy alternative to the typical ice cream, gelato, or Pinkberry knock-off by serving up real yogurt, fresh fruit, and more.  The main attraction is their live, active probiotic yogurt, available in three varieties – vanilla, fat-free vanilla, and plain.  The stars of the yogurt menu are undoubtedly the parfaits, available in three size with a wide variety of ingredients like mixed seasonal berries, blueberries, bananas, strawberries, vanilla wafers, honeydew and cantaloupe, and more.  Order up a pre-sorted style or create your own.  We tried the “banana pudding” parfait, with fat-free vanilla, bananas, and vanilla wafers, and we topped it off with granola.  The granola is in fact a Fort Worth-produced brand.  It was very flavorful and fresh-tasting, and a refreshingly unique change from the six million Pinkberry frozen yogurt knock-offs that crowd for attention these days.

If you do want frozen yogurt, they’ve got that as well.  Beyond the yogurts, there are breakfast options like cold cereal and oatmeal with fruit toppings, specialty smoothies ranging from chocolate & peanut butter to banana, orange, and pineapple, fresh soups & salads, sandwiches (though, disappointingly, none of the sandwiches are vegetarian), fruit & veggie cups, coffee, and a wide assortment of other drinks such as various teas and coconut water.

Yofé is located at 817 Currie, just around the corner from Movie Tavern in the West 7th development.  They’re open Monday through Thursday from 6:30 AM to 9:30 PM, on Fridays from 6:30 AM to 11:00 PM, on Saturdays from 10:00 AM to 11:00 PM, and on Sundays from 11:00 AM to 9:30 PM.

The So7 Bistro, the new restaurant from Jean Michel Sakouhi (owner of The Vault in downtown), is underway and as a result, its actual location in the So7 development has been revealed.  So7 Bistro will be going in on the south side of the loft/retail building up on 7th Street, along Stayton/Museum Way and one of the new interior streets.  There’s not much to see just yet – there’s a TABC permit application, and a small “coming soon” sign.  The web site URL on the sign, www.so7bistro.com, is active but not showing anything but a generic web server placeholder page.

Further improvements to the development are underway – along with the new sidewalks around the shops & lofts, a sidewalk is at last being poured around the Residence Inn.  This will improve connectivity between the townhomes and condos at the back of the development and the shops & lofts along 7th – previously, the hotel had no sidewalks at all.

Ground-floor tenants have been opening up left and right in the West 7th development out in the Cultural District area.  We noticed that Yofé Fresh Fruit and Yogurt Cafe has now opened in the ground floor of the Movie Tavern building, and next door to it will soon be Sweet Sammies and Pure Bliss.  Over on Crockett, besides Tillman’s Roadhouse there’s also Flirt Boutique, Toni & Guy, and Paciugo now open.  LA Fitness and Movie Tavern round things out currently.  Elsewhere in the development, interior work is underway on several more tenants, including Bailey’s Prime Plus Steakhouse, Delaney’s Irish Pub, Chef Casey Thompson’s Brownstone, Terra Mediterranean Grill, and Teskey’s Uptown.

It’s fun to watch as the “bones” of West 7th finally come to life with bright signs, merchandise, and activity.  We see people out enjoying the new urban form of the development even in the chilly weather, and are noticing several occupied lofts upstairs as well.  It’s amazing to see these developments all built up, especially once you take a look back at what the site looked like when construction first got underway – check out this post from August 2007, with a photo of one block of the site just as the demolition fences were going up.

Mamma Mia Italian Grill & Pizza on Magnolia in the Near Southside

We noticed this morning that Mamma Mia Italian Grill & Pizza, in the former Palermo’s space on Magnolia (between College and Washington) in the Near Southside, now has a banner up proclaiming their opening.  We checked the sign in the window, and Mamma Mia’s hours of operation are listed as 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM, Monday through Saturday, and closed on Sundays.

This is Mamma Mia’s second location – the first is located in the historic McAdams Building in the Six Points urban village to the northeast of downtown.

Via Eat This Fort Worth, it looks like Cat City Grill (the new eatery opening soon at 1208 West Magnolia in the Near Southside) has posted its menu on its web site.  Go there and check it out.  For the uninitiated, Cat City Grill is a new spot on Magnolia between 5th & Henderson that is the creation of Lili’s Bistro’s Vance Martin and former Del Frisco’s chef Martin Thompson.

According to an ad in this issue of the Sundance Square Insider (PDF link), Cowtown Diner will be opening in the former La Madeleine space at 305 Main on the 11th.  (Insert rant about the over-reliance on the “Cowtown” thing here.)  Cowtown Diner will feature a gourmet deli/take out market serving salads, sandwiches, prepared entrees and casseroles as well as full service, off-site catering and a home delivery family meal program.