La Blue Casa and Grace take different roads to the same place

There’s exciting veggie news this week from two poles of Tarrant County’s dining scene, a quick-casual street-food joint and a fine-dining mecca.

▪ La Blue Casa, the funky little Frida Kahlo-themed place in Arlington’s College Park District, is going all-vegan.

Since March, owner Raj Attur and his wife, chef Gabriela Lopez, have been cooking up Mexican street food with some good veggie options. Now, inspired by the film Cowspiracy, they have become vegans (she was already vegetarian) and are hoping to take their customers with them.

La Blue Casa lunched a vegan menu Sept. 21 and will become entirely vegan early next year. Attur says the delay is “so that we can educate our customers a little.”

The food here is rustic and homey. (La Blue Casa started as a food truck, and that still shows — in a good way.) You order at the counter, choosing from 11 bases, such as wet burrito, street tacos, enchiladas or blue nachos, then add one of six sauces and two fillings or sides (protein substitutes, two choices of beans or just avocado, sautéed mushrooms or nopales).

We tried lightly fried potato flautas, thebestselling vegan base, which were good with fresh avocado to lighten up the plate, and with chipotle sauce, thesecond-spiciest option. We also liked roasted poblanos filled with Mexican-style soy protein, with avocado and rice on the side.

Attur says vegan cheese will be available starting this week, and they’ll keep rolling out new vegan menu items as they learn more themselves. Read more about their vegan philosophy on the restaurant’s website.

La Blue Casa, 441 Spaniolo Drive, Arlington. 682-706-3433; www.labluecasa.com.

▪ Though its menu includes the highest-end beef and seafood, Grace restaurant in downtown Fort Worth is a go-to place for inventive vegetarian dishes. I’m grateful that chef Blaine Staniford has a strong interest in vegetables and tries just as hard with his meatless dishes as he does with a rack of lamb.

Grace even did a special all-vegetarian wine dinner last year, and a mushroom dinner that had a vegetarian option. Both were among the best meatless meals I’ve ever had.

Now Grace is getting in on the citywide Blue Zones effort with a special Blue Zones dinner, 6:30 p.m. Oct. 9. It will have six vegetarian courses (vegan option available), all paired with wines. Some highlights are kohlrabi fritters with pickled mustard seeds and fermented Hatch chili aioli; roasted sunchoke soup with marcona almonds, crispy shallots and Espelette; salt-baked celery root with yellow curry emulsion, lentils de puy and coconut-oil-poached tomatoes; and Texas olive oil cake with parsnip ice cream, poached pears and Valrhona chocolate. Tickets are $95; reservations required.

Owner Adam Jones says he hopes to make this an annual event. He says his restaurant probably won’t become Blue Zones-certified because it can’t meet enough of the requirements overall, but, like his chef, he loves good plant-based dishes and wants to support the program. He endorses many of the Blue Zones prescriptions, such as “wine at 5.”

In fact, for those everyday “wine at 5” sessions, Grace’s new bar menu has several vegetarian dishes that show how extraordinary simple things can be in the hands of a real chef.

There’s a toasted pistachio guacamole ($12, and don’t worry, there’s plenty of avocado in there — this is not a New York Times-style crime against guacamole) served with house-made gluten-free socca (chickpea chips) and amazing grilled house-made pita. (It’s ridiculous how good this pita is. Turns out it’s brushed with the same herb butter Staniford uses on the steaks.)

There’s also Texas sweet corn bruschetta ($9) with local goat cheese, peaches, heirloom tomatoes and local honey, and burrata mozzarella ($15) with heirloom tomatoes, local melon, pea-shoot pesto and basil sorbet.

Those descriptions give you an idea of how much care goes into every ingredient and every plate here, and how much trouble Grace takes to use local products. Just a meal at the bar here is my idea of fine dining.

Grace, 777 Main St., Fort Worth. 817-877-3388; gracefortworth.com.

This story was originally published September 30, 2015 at 6:13 PM with the headline "La Blue Casa and Grace take different roads to the same place."