5 things to try at the Dean & DeLuca store at Colonial

The PGA tournament that takes place every May in Fort Worth is now known as the Dean & DeLuca Invitational, the new name reflecting the upscale grocery store that is the tournament’s new sponsor.

Naturally, Dean & DeLuca has a grocery store on-site. The Prince Street Marketplace, as it’s called, is near a chipping green, and you can hang out on the store’s patio and spot the pros (or during Wednesday’s pro-am, maybe Bill Murray) getting in some short-game practice.

Inside, there’s a coffee bar, pastries, a rotating menu of sandwiches, a produce section, a large selection of savory and sweet treats designed for on-course snacking, and some fancier stuff such as multiple and colorful varieties of sugar and salt.

The 1,800-square-foot store is about 15 percent of the size of a regular Dean & DeLuca, says the company’s managing director, Jay Coldren, who adds that the store was pulled together in about three weeks. Coldren says that the store is designed to complement, rather than compete with, on-course concessionaires.

Consider it a preview. Dean & DeLuca has stores in New York; Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Leawood, Kansas; St. Helena, California; and overseas. There have been rumors for a few years about it entering the DFW market, and Coldren told the Star-Telegram that the company plans to have two retail markets in North Texas within the next 18 months. Coldren was not ready to specify locations but did say that the company is looking at both Fort Worth and Dallas.

The Colonial store opened Wednesday and will continue through the end of the tournament. We went on a little shopping spree there Wednesday morning and here are five things that impressed us.

The kitchen menu: It’s a small menu, rotating three sandwiches daily: a porchetta sandwich, a falafel salad sandwich and a roasted turkey and brie on Thursday and Saturday; a “Texas-style BBQ,” and Italian hero and a curry-roasted cauliflower salad sandwich on Friday, Sunday (and what’s left of Wednesday). Vegetarians take note: the falafel salad and curry-roasted caulfilower salad sandwiches are meatless.

But we’re omnivores, and we’re curious, so we investigated Dean & DeLuca’s take on a “Texas-style BBQ” sandwich ($12). Its full name — Texas Style BBQ Certified Piedmontese Brisket Sandwich — is a giveaway that it’s not for Texas-barbecue purists (and it comes on a very ciabatta-esque cornmeal roll). But the slice brisket wasn’t bad and was fairly generous, and the toppings — balsamic-caramelized onion marmalde, “super-food” slaw with roasted jalapeño dressing, smoked-chili cheddar — gave it a spiciness that we liked. So we’re not sure about “Texas-style,” but it’s a pretty good sandwich.

Chocolate and cinnamon babkas: For a lot of us, chocolate babka calls to mind a Seinfeld episode, but leave any memories of that behind and tear (literally) into these doughy pastries, which look like bread loafs but have a texture that’s a little closer to coffee cake. On first bite, we preferred the chocolate a little more, but cinnamon-roll fans will be pleased with the alternative, especially when they find the thick, gooey pockets of cinnamon filling within. ($13.50 a loaf for either.)

Specialty coffees and teas: The coffee menu here is minimalist compared with a Starbucks or many local coffee bars, but getting a cup of hot or iced is one of the best excuses for hanging out on small store’s surprisingly spacious patio. It’s often hot and humid during tournament time, so we sampled the frozen, blended drinks: a matcha green tea frappe ($6.50 for 16 ounces) and a caramel frappe. To our surprise, we leaned toward the matcha green tea, which has a pleasant, almost vanilla flavor; the caramel was good, but we got a lot more coffee flavor out of it than caramel. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (to make another Seinfeld reference).

Ice-cream sandwiches: The sandwiches ($7) come from Jenis, a Columbus, Ohio-based company, and use cookies as the “bread” — sandwich flavors included oatmeal cream and salted caramel (Jenis has an impressive array of flavors on its website, but the selection inside the Colonial store is pretty small). We especially liked the oatmeal cookies that held together the oatmeal cream and lived up to their promise of molasses and a “hint” of cinnamon. These won’t replace local shops like Melt Ice Creams and Gypsy Scoops in our hearts, but they are flavorful and cooling on-course treats.

Gazpacho: Speaking of flavorful and cooling, these cold soups come in a trio of flavors, including “garden” (i.e., tomato), white (chunkier and heavy on the cucumber) and watermelon. Our favorite was the “garden,” which had a rich tomato flavor and a spicy zing. They’re served in 12-ounce cups that you can take on the course, if you’re feeling virtuous and want soup instead of something more decadent like a babka.

There’s a long list of salads, juices (from lemonade to carrot-orange-ginger and “power up,” saides, cheese plates, parfaits, macaroons (and macarons), cookies (we hear the lemon shortbread was popular in the players’ locker room; we somehow missed the golf-ball,Texas- and putting-green-themed iced sugar cookies), whoopie pies, brownies and more.

And there’s produce, if you want to skew healthy. Hey, Thursday is apparently National Eat More Fruits and Vegetables Day, so you can celebrate during the tournament’s first round.

This story was originally published May 25, 2016 at 4:55 PM with the headline "5 things to try at the Dean & DeLuca store at Colonial."