Fort Worth already has one of the best Mexican restaurants in North Texas. Now it has two, and they share a wall.
Dos Mares opened last November at 3260 W. 7th St., right next door to Don Artemio in the Cultural District. Both restaurants come from the same family — chef Juan Ramón Cárdenas and his son Rodrigo, who serves as culinary director for both. Don Artemio, which opened in 2022 and earned a James Beard Award nomination the following year, draws from the interior and northeast regions of Mexico. Dos Mares goes somewhere else entirely: the coast.
Mexico has 17 coastal states, and the Cárdenas family spent two years researching the food of all of them — Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatan, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, and more — before writing a single menu item. The corn is ground daily for fresh masa tortillas. The moles take ten to twelve hours. The 30-hour flan serves three to four people and arrives looking like a minor architectural achievement. This is not a kitchen cutting corners.
The menu covers a lot of ground. Five ceviches, including a cauliflower option for non-seafood eaters. Aguachile verde with cactus-lime sorbet. Tostada de Atún with yellowfin tuna and anchovy sauce. Baja-style fish tacos with beer-battered sea bass on handmade tortillas. Grilled lobster with avocado mousse and black bean ancho purée. Pescado zarandeado — an open-fire technique from the Pacific coast — done here with red snapper. There is also a porterhouse, a prime skirt steak, and a rack of lamb, because they’re in Texas and they know it.
The wine program is worth noting. Rodrigo built the list around coastal wines only — nothing from more than 30 miles inland from a coastline, anywhere in the world. Portugal, Spain, Greece, New Zealand, Ensenada. There are also wines aged underwater. It’s a specific, committed point of view and it shows.
The room itself was designed by Luis González de León and Javier Lucio, with hand-painted teal tiles, fishing nets overhead, and palapa palms made by hand in Michoacán. It feels considered rather than decorated.
Dos Mares is open Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays. Reservations at (682) 480-2143.
