New restaurants headed north Fort Worth. And live music, too.

If you live near the intersection of I-35W and Heritage Trace Parkway, you know that huge restaurant/retail complexes frame both sides of 35.

And more development is coming, this time north of Heritage Trace, where there’s already a Chuy’s Tex-Mex, a Panera Bread, Chipotle, Pei-Wei and more.

Those restaurants are all close to Bluestem Park, a peaceful, nature-walk respite from the nearby traffic.

Hillwood, the big developer in the area, announced Thursday that Parkside at Alliance Town Center, which will overlook the park, will launch with two more restaurants — with more to come.

Grub Burger Bar, which has headquarters in Bryan and locations in Dallas and Plano, and Carrollton-based Shell Shack, which has locations in Arlington, Dallas, Plano and Mesquite, are the first two.

Shell Shack offers “infused seasoned seafood” and is fairly offbeat for the area, which has a Razzoo’s Cajun Cafe but not too many seafood-specific restaurants. Shell Shack has all sorts of ways of serving all sorts of shellfish, but if cracking open a crab isn’t for you, it also has wings, a few sandwiches, catfish and more. (Or you can just get it served “Uptown style” — de-shelled by the restaurant for an extra charge.)

Grub Burger Bar, which boasts of “Burgers, Shakes, Cocktails and Life,” comes to an area loaded with burger joints, including the not-dissimilar Liberty Burger, as well as a Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, a Kincaid’s and seemingly every fast-food burger joint you can think of (OK, maybe not every one), from McDonald’s to Whataburger to In-N-Out and more.

Grub does have a more exotic menu than most of them, though, with such options as the Voo Doo Mushroom (featuring absinthe-sauteed mushrooms, Swiss cheese and Tabasco mayo) and a Thai Peanut Burger, complete with creamy peanut butter, roasted peanuts, cilantro-lime coconut flakes and sambal mayo (sambal is a hot relish used in Indian and Southeast Asian cooking). Take that, McDonald’s Sriracha burgers!

Grub also has excellent shakes (including a few alcoholic ones), beer, wine and a few cocktails.

Ground has already been broken on Parkside, described as a “3.5-acre food and entertainment destination integrated within a beautiful parklike setting” and as offering “several new options for savoring a delicious meal or enjoying a refreshing drink on a patio overlooking scenic Bluestem Park.”

The development will also include a live music stage and recreational activities such as cornhole and bocce ball. Bluestem Park, created in co-collaboration with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and other partners, features dozens of species of native grasslands and plants, 500 native trees and shrubs, as well as some relatively serene walking trails.

Grub and Shell Shack are expected to open by summer 2018. The releases promises that they “will soon be joined by other popular food and beverage concepts that are new to the north Fort Worth market.”

Alliance Town Center, on the east side of 35, and Presidio Towne Crossing, on the west, are both already booming with restaurants and retail. And recent traffic improvements are making it easier to get in and out of the area. A new set of toll express lanes recently opened stretching from Heritage Trace Parkway to just south of Western Center Boulevard, alleviating some traffic in the area, with longer express lanes to come.

This story was originally published November 2, 2017 at 5:11 PM with the headline "New restaurants headed north Fort Worth. And live music, too.."