Dallas-Fort Worth is about to get loud. The next six weeks bring a run of arena rock, honky-tonk legends, and a few genuine bucket-list pairings, and the calendar only gets busier once the theaters and orchestras open their seasons behind them.
The building at 9812 Camp Bowie West Blvd. has already played a restaurant on television. It was the Patch Cafe on Taylor Sheridan’s “Landman,” the Paramount+ series with Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Hamm, and Demi Moore, filmed on location in the Westland Shopping Center before the crew packed up and left the storefront empty again. Now it’s becoming an actual restaurant, and the family behind it already runs one of the most recognized names in Fort Worth hospitality.
There’s a martini for a dollar at Walloon’s next month, and the fine print is that you have to eat a dozen oysters to get there. Fair trade, honestly.
The restaurant is throwing its first Yacht Club Week starting Sunday, August 2, and the concept fits a room that was already halfway there. Chef Marcus Paslay opened Walloon’s in the summer of 2023 inside the old Fort Worth National Bank building on Magnolia Avenue, his fourth restaurant under the From Scratch Hospitality banner alongside Clay Pigeon, Piattello, and Provender Hall.
Duong DeVille doesn’t open until August. But if you want a seat at Hao Tran’s table before then, Meals with Meaning is giving you one.
On June 7 at 6:30 p.m., the Fort Worth nonprofit hosts a special edition of its monthly Supper Club at Brewed on Magnolia Avenue, with Chef Hao Tran and Chef Luu Lac cooking a menu drawn directly from the Duong DeVille kitchen. Tickets are $99 and limited. The event is at 801 W. Magnolia Ave in Fort Worth.
Queso is not a side dish in North Texas. It is a belief system. Dallas and Fort Worth have been arguing about it for decades — what goes in it, what goes on top of it, whether it should be served in a bowl or rolled into a tortilla, whether Velveeta is a shortcut or a tradition worth defending. Both cities are right about different things, and both cities have places that the other side has never heard of. What follows is not a ranking of the obvious names. You already know Torchy’s. You already know what you think about El Fenix. This is the list you bring up when the table needs a real conversation — four Dallas bowls and four Fort Worth bowls that hold up under any scrutiny, from the ones that have been doing it since before you were born to the one that does it entirely without dairy and gets away with it.
Fort Worth has been waiting on this one for a while. Hao Tran — the chef behind Hao’s Grocery & Café on the Near Southside and the closest thing Fort Worth has to a dumpling institution — is building her first full restaurant. It’s called Duong DeVille, and if the five-month construction timeline holds, it should open sometime this summer.
If you have not made it to The Usual on Magnolia Avenue in Fort Worth lately, April gives you several good reasons to fix that. The bar — which opened in 2009 and has the quiet distinction of being the second oldest craft cocktail bar in Texas — is rolling out a new seasonal menu, launching a weekly creative gathering series, and hosting a dinner on April 26 that pairs sous chefs from Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine with one of Fort Worth’s best bartenders. Three different things happening in one month is more than most bars manage in a year.
Fort Worth is about to pick up one of Austin’s more inventive nights out. Dirdie Birdieis opening in the West 7th district, exporting a concept that treats miniature golf as backdrop, centerpiece, and social glue all at once. What began in Austin as an indoor 12-hole course wrapped inside a full restaurant and cocktail bar is now positioning itself squarely in Fort Worth’s nightlife corridor.