First bite: Black Walnut Cafe in Colleyville

Black Walnut Cafe, a Woodlands-based chain that already has North Texas locations in Flower Mound, Coppell, Frisco and Allen, opened its first Tarrant County location on Thursday in Colleyville.

But before it opened, it held several limited-menu preview meals to help the staff get into the groove. We attended a lunch preview on Sunday, and here are our first impressions.

The vibe: Cafe Express grows up. As you enter the restaurant, you pass by a wine display, racks holding sections of actual print newspapers (in this case the Sunday New York Times), a full-service bar and a gelato/pastry/coffee bar — all en route to the counter, where you place your order.

We define “fast casual” as a restaurant where you order at the counter and then there’s some pickup/delivery system when your order is ready. In Black Walnut’s case, you get a buzzer/pager that you take to your table, and the device goes off when your order is ready — much like at Cafe Express. And, as at many fast-casual restaurants, iced tea and soft drinks are self-serve (and it can get a little crowded at this Black Walnut’s drink station).

But in many respects, this Black Walnut feels like a full-service restaurant: A couple of nice, bright, big-windowed dining rooms out front; rows of booths near the bar (and the aisle between the bar and the booths can be a little tight when there’s two-way customer traffic); a patio that (mostly) overlooks a pond instead of facing a parking lot or Colleyville Boulevard. Inside, music was played at a low, conversation-friendly volume; outside, it was much more noticeable.

The menu: As noted, we visited during a limited-menu preview; the full menus — lunch/dinner and breakfast-lunch — are pretty huge. You’ll get one at the door, but considering that this is a place where you order at the counter, you might want to check out the menus online so you know what you want in advance, rather than holding up the line.

Breakfast entrees range from $6.25 for the “petite breakfast” to $14.50 for a lobster Benedict; there are some offbeat options such as a bacon-cheeseburger Benedict ($9) and Napoleon french toast ($10.25; made with spicy candied walnuts, English cream batter, lemon zest, strawberries and cannoli crème).

Lunch/dinner entrees range from $9 for a “Pork It Over” pulled-pork sandwich with mango-habanero sauce to a $22 for a steak dinner featuring a 12-ounce Angus beef steak and sides.

The lunch-dinner menu (at least the one online) includes several omelets, and has enough burgers on it to attract the attention of the always burger-obsessed DFW.com. The three-pepper burger ($12; made with roasted poblano, jalapeños and red peppers) is already calling us back. A turkey burger and a black-bean burger are available; most sections of the menu have at least one vegetarian item.

We were too full for dessert, although a sample of the amaretto gelato, which has almond pieces in it to add to its almond flavor, showed promise. The positioning of the gelato/pastry station en route to the main ordering counter is pretty smart, because it will inspire dessert cravings before you order your meal (and there are also cookies and pastries at the main ordering station). But it also caused some traffic problems when the ordering line at the dessert station got a little long.

What will bring us back: The breakfast menu has a lot of good-looking items on it, and the lunch-dinner menu is so eclectic that there are plenty of items on it that make us curious. It’s a bit of a drive for us (and for many Tarrant County residents), but there are things such as a Whole Foods Market not too far away that bring us to Colleyville, and we’ll drop in to Black Market when we’re in the neighborhood. If you’re already in the neighborhood, or in a neighboring Northeast Tarrant city, it’s worth checking out.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 11:28 AM with the headline "First bite: Black Walnut Cafe in Colleyville."