Three days after Chris Jordan and his partners signed the lease on their new steakhouse, a Dodge Challenger ran off White Settlement Road and drove straight through the storefront. The explosion made the local news. A few months later, once repairs were mostly finished, a second Dodge Challenger, nearly identical to the first, did it again.
That’s the origin story behind Seared, and if a restaurant can survive two cars through its front wall before it even opens, it can probably survive anything Fort Worth throws at it afterward. The space on White Settlement Road used to be Pearl Snap Kolaches. Now it’s a steakhouse built by Jordan, Kristin Peaks-Thomas, Jywon Young, and Bailey Batts, four people who between them already know how to run a neighborhood bar. Jordan owns Rabbit Hole Pub and Mad Hatter Neighborhood Pub, and the idea for Seared came out of trips to New York, where a particular steakhouse stuck with him enough that he wanted to build something like it back home.
What he built is a prix fixe steakhouse without the stuffiness that usually comes attached to that phrase. Every dinner runs through the same structure: fresh bread, the Seared Mini Romaine salad, a choice of New York strip, filet, or a tomahawk built for sharing, and hand-cut fries that keep coming as long as you want them. The whole thing lands in the $45 to $50 range, which is a real number for a steak dinner that still leaves room for a cocktail and dessert.
Running the kitchen is chef Joshua Donovan, who most recently led the kitchen at the well-regarded Heirloom FW inside Archie’s Gardenland. He’s building out family-style sides, higher-end desserts, and a rotating weekly dish for the table that isn’t ordering steak. Weekend brunch runs its own menu, further from the prix fixe format, with a burger topped with a fried egg, omelets, chicken-fried classics, and, predictably, steak and eggs done properly.
The room itself aims for something specific: upscale enough to feel like an occasion, relaxed enough that nobody’s uncomfortable in jeans. That’s a harder balance to hit than restaurants make it look, and it’s the same balance a lot of Fort Worth’s better recent openings have been chasing. Seared’s version of it comes with the added credibility of having already weathered actual vehicular disaster before the doors opened, which tends to put the rest of the opening-week jitters in perspective.
Seared is open Monday through Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m., Friday 4 to 10 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 10 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 9 p.m., at 4006 White Settlement Rd. in Fort Worth. Reservations are encouraged but walk-ins are welcome, and the restaurant can be reached at (682) 224-3716. More at searedfwtx.com.
The room itself aims for something specific: upscale enough to feel like an occasion, relaxed enough that nobody’s uncomfortable in jeans. That’s a harder balance to hit than restaurants make it look, and it’s the same balance a lot of Fort Worth’s better recent openings have been chasing. Seared’s version of it comes with the added credibility of having already weathered actual vehicular disaster before the doors opened, which tends to put the rest of the opening-week jitters in perspective.
Seared is open Monday through Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m., Friday 4 to 10 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 10 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 9 p.m., at 4006 White Settlement Rd. in Fort Worth. Reservations are encouraged but walk-ins are welcome, and the restaurant can be reached at (682) 224-3716. More at searedfwtx.com.
