Brewed gets toasty with trendy new dishes

Brewed, the delightful Near Southside coffee bar and gastropub, is hipster ground zero in Fort Worth. I love it, but I also love to gently make fun of it.

As with a couple other places along Magnolia, it can feel like you’ve stepped out of Fort Worth and into Portlandia.

It’s fitting that Brewed, of all places, is going all in with two current food trends that are great for vegetarians but had not yet hit Cowtown with full force.

They are: cauliflower and elevated toast. (Stop that sniggering.)

Toast is so, um, hot right now that it’s getting its own restaurant in Dallas: Toasted Coffee + Kitchen on Lower Greenville.

In the past year, I’ve had trendy toast in Denton (940’s Kitchen and Cocktails), Oak Cliff (at the bookstore Wild Detectives) and Fort Worth (for breakfast at Market + Table). All of these were versions of avocado toast (although Wild Detectives offers quite a few carnivore varieties, too).

Brewed is doing something different: hot dishes that might be more attractive at dinnertime than cold avocado mash. The restaurant launched a new menu a few weeks ago, and there’s now a section devoted to three varieties of what it calls Savory Toasts, which are shareable plates of toasted bread topped like open-faced sandwiches.

The veggie option is the wild mushroom ($9 at lunch or dinner), which has toasted sourdough covered with feta, chives and three varieties of sauteed mushrooms: portabellini, moon and shiitake (please, restaurateurs, learn to spell that last one — it really needs the two i’s, if you look closely). It’s my favorite thing on the new menu and it’s easily enough for a vegetarian main meal, if you’re not in a sharing mood.

Brewed has boosted its number of veggie options overall (responding to the neighborhood, a server told me), most notably on the entree list, which now features a cauliflower steak — a trendy item that’s showing up all over Dallas but that I’ve seen here only at Woodshed a couple of years ago.

Amusingly, the menu specifies that it’s a “center-cut” cauliflower steak. It’s seasoned with smoked paprika, and they could have kicked that up a bit for my taste, but this was served atop a terrific wild-mushroom risotto. Get some of each in every bite, and it’s wonderful. The price tag is hefty ($18 at lunch and dinner), but in line with the vegetarian main-course pasta dishes you’ll find at better restaurants in town.

Cauliflower stars, too, in another trendy preparation on the new menu, A Play on Wings. This is fried cauliflower florets served with buffalo sauce, blue cheese dressing, and carrot and celery sticks.

These were tasty — the bigger the piece, the more the cauliflower flavor managed to shine through the batter and those sharp sauces. But, alas, strict vegetarians must skip them. After I scarfed half the plate, I thought to ask our server why there wasn’t a “V” (for vegetarian) next to this item on the menu. I sometimes take a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” approach to dining out as a vegetarian. If I really want to try a soup, say, that doesn’t list any dead animals, I’ll just proceed without pestering the staff with the third degree.

The waiter told me that the only fryer in the kitchen is filled with 95 percent vegetable oil and 5 percent duck fat. I should have thought of this, the duck-fat fries being a cult item here that I’ve watched friends eat many times. This explains why the fried Brussels sprouts on the menu are also not safe for vegetarians.

Another new meatless main dish is a pretty-good roasted portobello burger ($10), with a balsamic-dressed portobello, caramelized ale onions, blue cheese and Lakewood Temptress stout sauce on a challah bun. Beware those fries, though. Some menu versions say it comes with fries, some with fruit. Ask for the fruit or one of the five other vegetarian sides (a la carte Serrano grits, seasonal veggies, etc.).

Brewed has tweaked its salads menu, too.

There’s a kale salad that works for vegans, and the super foods salad has changed a bit to become the power-house salad ($7.50 and $12), with spinach, napa cabbage, baby kale, sweet potatoes, flax seeds, edamame, blueberries, pumpkin seeds, green onion, radishes, soft-boiled egg and a berry balsamic dressing.

The new brunch menu has no big news for vegetarians, but the good egg white omelet ($8.50) is still there, thankfully. I always ask them to make it with the yolks — you know, the part with all the flavor and nutrients. And they’re happy to oblige.

Brewed, 801 W. Magnolia, Fort Worth. 817-945-1545; brewedfw.com

This story was originally published May 25, 2016 at 1:58 PM with the headline "Brewed gets toasty with trendy new dishes."