Cowtown Abbey

By Alistair Rawhyde aka Mark Lowry

Special to the Star-Telegram

Growing up with an adopted family in Gravesend, England, I had always imagined my real mum to be some wealthy wife of a lord from the Victorian era, like Lady Bellamy from Upstairs, Downstairs. Or, to use a comparison to something you Yanks are in a tizzy over, Downton Abbey's Dowager Countess of Grantham. Turns out, the mum who bore me was from a strange, faraway land called Texas. Fort Worth, to be exact. She met a lad who visited Texas in the 1970s, and then moved with him to England. Why she gave me up and then moved back home is a puzzlement, but I'm willing to forgive and forget.

So I came to Texas in 2006, hoping to find Mum and reunite. But a funny thing happened along the way: I fell in love with Fort Worth and stayed in North Texas, freelancing as a Texas correspondent for a British media company.

It makes sense. You Texans aren't so different from us Brits. You're attracted to our accents, and so are we to yours. We love fried food (especially fish and chips, or fries, as you call them). We have Big Ben, you have Big Tex. (Don't worry, chaps. He'll be back.)

Admit it. You love us, and that turns out to be good for us expats. When we get homesick for sticky toffee pudding or want to see a cricket bowler knock down a wicket, we can remedy that here in North Texas.

It's nice to see my countrymen adjusting so well. Take my mate from across the pond, Christopher Hackett. He's a London-born Army brat and son of Irish parents who has been in Dallas for 20 years, and is setting ears aflutter as a daytime DJ on KDMX/102.9 FM. He married a "crazy Cajun" from Louisiana whom he met here, and he has watched -- for longer than I have -- Texas' love for British culture and food grow. "It used to be that you were kind of isolated here in getting that stuff," Hackett tells me. "You had to have a relative send it over, or you stocked up on trips [home], or you had a special relationship with a shop back there."

With that in mind, we decided to round up the many ways expats and Anglophiles alike can revel in British-ness, right here in Dallas-Fort Worth (we're only including a few things billed as Irish, Scottish or, if there were something, Welsh).

So it's time to go Grantham style with our own "Cowtown Abbey." Cheerio!

A nosh and a pint

Christopher Hackett says there was a time when The Dubliner, the Irish pub on Greenville Avenue in Dallas (dallasdubliner.com), was the only place to find a decent selection of fare from the U.K. and Ireland. "Now every suburb has two or three," he says.

Although it's widely agreed among British expats that none are terribly authentic, there are plenty to choose from, with Hackett doffing his cap to the Fillmore Pub in Plano (thefillmorepub.com) for having pretty good fish and chips.

Many of these British-style pubs, in fact, have fish and chips as their one U.K. tribute on a menu littered with American bar food like chicken wings and cheese sticks. In Fort Worth, Baker St. Pub & Grill (sherlockspubco.com) on the west side is a decent place for fish and chips and bangers and mash, along with quesadillas and other American bar fare. There are also locations, under the name Sherlock's Baker St. Pub & Grill, in Arlington, Dallas and Addison. At From Across the Pond in Colleyville (3809 Colleyville Blvd., 817-428-2332), you'll find a shepherd's pie (of which Downton Abbey's Mrs. Patmore would approve), beef and Guinness stew, and "Beckhams" bangers and mash, which features hefty Cumberland sausages. As of now, it's BYOB. The Abbey Inn (theabbeyinndenton.com) in Denton is more upscale (Denton Abbey?), with things like tarragon haddock and "royal rib-eye" on the menu, but also Scotch eggs, bangers and mash, shepherd's pie, and fish and chips made with Atlantic haddock. In Dallas, the British Beverage Co., or BBC (bbcpub.com), in the Quadrangle is new, and serves several varieties of fish and chips (including traditional, herb brioche-crusted and a Texas-inspired jalapeño version), plus terrific miniature Scotch eggs, made with quail eggs.

Other area options, with varying degrees of authenticity, include:

Abbey Pub in Fort Worth (www.abbey-pub.com), which sports an ace shuffleboard table.

The Londoner, locations in Addison, Uptown Dallas, Allen and Frisco, with pubs in Colleyville and Fort Worth coming in 2013 (www.londonerdallas.com).

J.R. Bentley's in Arlington (jrbentleys.com).

The Holy Grail Pub in Plano (holygrailpub.com).

Fox and Hound, locations in Fort Worth, Arlington, Dallas, Lewisville and Richardson (foxandhound.com).

Shopping

Sheela Kadam, who was born in Bombay and raised in London, runs Grapevine's British Emporium, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary. It occasionally hosts a Monty Python festival in Grapevine, including a "silly walk" down Main Street. She says the event will return this spring or summer, and that Brit expats love Grapevine's Main Street because it's one of the closest things to London's High Street, with walking and shopping in a historic setting, that you can find around here. And that's not just codswallop.

The British Emporium (british-emporium.com) also has a fine selection of cheeses and frozen foods, including bangers (sausage), British sodas (try the dandelion and burdock) and shelves chock-a-block with other goods, such as pickled cockles, spotted dick and Devon cream. There are books, memorabilia, toys, teapots, DVDs and more, including several Downton Abbey items that she can't keep in stock.

Sport

A bushel of games and sports originated in England, from darts and shuffleboard to tennis and soccer. For more on North Texas' professional soccer team, FC Dallas, which begins its season in March, visit fcdallas.com. But you can play in Cowtown by joining the Fort Worth Adult Soccer Association (fwadultsoccer.com). And that phenom known as curling, made more popular at the last Winter Olympics? You can do that here, too (www.dfwcurling.com).

Rugby is the rough game associated with Britain, and there are plenty of teams in North Texas, including the Fort Worth Rugby Club (fortworthrugby.com), which plays at Gateway Park east of downtown.

But for sports, it doesn't get any more tea-and-crumpets-y than cricket. The league called the North Texas Cricket Association (ntcricket.com) formed in 1998, and there are about 20 cricket fields in DFW, with nearly 50 teams.

Probably 90 percent of the North Texas players are from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, says Satendar Bhatia of the Southlake United team. But there are British, Australian and players of other nationalities in the league.

There's a membership fee to join, but it's free to watch. Just be prepared for a long sit -- the games can last up to seven hours.

The arts

You'll find British artists at most area art museums, although the Kimbell Art Museum probably has the most important works. Its collection includes Turner, Raeburn, Leighton and Reynolds (kimbellart.org). The Dallas Museum of Art has four paintings by Winston Churchill (dm-art.org). And for contemporary art, look no further than the Goss-Michael Foundation in Dallas' Design District, which has shown Damien Hirst and has Dan Rees in April (gossmichaelfoundation.org). There's no dearth of works by British writers in the area, especially Shakespeare. Fort Worth's Trinity Shakespeare Festival (trinityshakes.org) has been stealing the show. For its fifth season this summer at Texas Christian University, look for The Taming of the Shrew and Julius Caesar. Cowtown's Stolen Shakespeare Guild (stolenshakespeareguild.org)has The Winter's Tale coming up.

The area's oldest Shakes fest is Shakespeare Dallas, which not only does an outdoor summer festival (this year it's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pericles, with The Winter's Tale in the fall), but last year started an exciting initiative with the AT&T Performing Arts Center called "The Complete Works," in which the group will do (mostly) monthly staged readings of all 37 works over the next five years. The chaps at Fort Worth's Stage West (stagewest.org) are also big-time Anglophiles. In April, they'll do Willy Shakes' Shrew, and later in the year, a return to their popular series of plays based on two veddy classic British characters, Jeeves and Wooster, with Thank You, Jeeves. Amphibian Stage Productions (amphibianproductions.org) shows simulcast productions from the National Theatre of London, one of the world's great theater companies. It also has several Brit writers in its season .

Also of interest: 2013 marks the 100th birthday of great British composer Benjamin Britten. Catch his opera Albert Herring at SMU this weekend (smu.edu/meadows). This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the first production of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw's quintessentially British Pygmalion, with iconic character Eliza Doolittle. You can catch another quintessential British heroine, Mary Poppins, in musical form at Dallas Summer Musicals (dallassummermusicals.org) in March.

And how could we not mention Dallas-based Theatre Britain (theatre-britain.com), which every Christmas does a traditional British panto in Plano. It'll have an additional show, Albert's Anthology, this summer.

Music

Where would rock 'n' roll be without the influence of British music. In North Texas, Beatles tribute bands of renown include A Hard Night's Day (hardnightsday.com) and Me and My Monkey (meandmymonkey.com).

As for British sounds invading North Texas in the next few months, look out for:

The xx, Wednesday and Thursday at Granada Theater, Dallas

Morrissey, the former Smiths frontman, Feb. 18 at Palladium Ballroom, Dallas

The Moody Blues, March 13 at Verizon Theatre, Grand Prairie

Guitar legend Eric Clapton, March 19 at American Airlines Center, Dallas

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra: Music of Queen, March 19 at Bass Hall, Fort Worth

Prog-rockers Yes, March 21 at Verizon Theatre

Boy band One Direction, July 22 at American Airlines Center

Musical diva-turned-pop star Sarah Brightman, Oct. 12 at Verizon Theatre

There's also a contingent of local mods who meet up occasionally for a night of '60s-style, Vespa-fueled revelry called The Smoke that recalls The Who of the Quadrophen ia era. Check out their Facebook page under The Dallas Smoke!

Whatnot

For British car lovers, check out the North Texas Austin Healey Club and the Jaguar Drivers Club of North Texas.

And although these aren't specifically British, look for these festivals:

North Texas Irish Festival, March 1-3 in Fair Park

Texas Scottish Festival & Highland Games, May 3-5 at UT Arlington

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