Where’s the best Mexican food in Fort Worth? Maybe it’s now in Sansom Park
When anyone asks, “Where’s the best Mexican food in Fort Worth?’ I say, the 1500 block of North Main Street.
If you’re looking for a new Tex-Mex hangout, go look at La Playa Maya, Los Asaderos and the four other restaurants within a block, I promise you;ll find one you like.
But that question might have a new answer.
The opening of Bernardo’s Fresh Mexican Griil, by a Chavez sibling from the Los Molcajetes family, makes Sansom Park a formidable Tex-Mex destination.
The 5500 and 5600 blocks are now home to the new Bernardo’s, reliable Mezcales Mexican Bar & Grill and all-time fajitas favorite El Paseo.
(If you stretch it a few more blocks each way, you’re at trusted Arizola’s in Lake Worth and the El Palenque Mexican Restaurant and Bakery in Fort Worth.)
Bernardo’s brings the Jacksboro Highway a Mex-Mex restaurant and weekend breakfast hangout.
Crowds were already finding it last weekend for menudo and huevos rancheros.
The menu includes enchiladas and fajitas ($8-$11 lunch, $9-$15 dinner), but also quail, carne adobada, barbacoa and carnitas along with Molcajetes-style margaritas.
“They are Tex-Mex,” Bernardo Chavez said, gesturing toward the restaurants across the street. “We are Mex-Mex. They are good. But we are different.”
On a stop for lunch last week, I found the fajitas “a la Mexicana,” grllled in a sort of marinade with chopped peppers, tomatoes and onions.
The portions are large and the spices and sauces are rich and flavorful.
One notable highlight at Bernardo’s: thin, light chips and three salsas, ranging from a chipotle salsa to a green jalapeno sauce (not creamy) and a hot “salsa vaquero” similar to a chile arbol.
The charro bean soup ($4.25) is warming.
Bernardo’s is open for lunch and dinner weekdays, breakfast through dinner weekends at 5601 Jacksboro Highway, 682-385-9577.
Mezcales for Tex-Mex, but also for steak
Kitty-cornered from Bernardo’s, Mezcales Mexican Bar & Grill has a new dish that renews an old tradition.
In a 70-year-old former western steakhouse from Jacksboro Highway’s 1950s gamblers-and-gangsters heyday, Mezcales now serves a rib-eye.
Grilled dishes have always been among the best at Mezcales, which still has the steak grill and smoker from the longtime Williams Ranch House.
The “Slate steak” is a 12-ounce rib-eye with three bacon-wrapped shrimp, rice and sauteed zucchini and squash.
It was delivered with a perfect cross-hatch grill pattern and tasted like it should cost more than $17.99.
Ask for a side order of Mezcales’ housemade chipotle barbecue sauce.
(How many Tex-Mex restaurants have barbecue sauce?)
There’s also a steak Mexicana version.
They’re among the best Tex-Mex steaks in town. (Although La Rueda in Meadowbrook still serves the best.)
The regular menu is familar: fajitas, enchiladas and burgers, with $7-$9 lunches and $5.50 senior/child plates.
Mezcales is open for lunch and dinner daily; 5532 Jacksboro Highway, 817-625-0004, mezcalesrestaurant.com.
At El Paseo, everything’s big. Including the soup
The old-guard hangout on the Jacksboro Highway is El Paseo, and it hasn’t changed.
More than 30 years after the Lerma family opened the original El Paseo in a tiny Azle shanty that used to be the sales kiosk for a used car lot, the family carries on with the same oversized portions and tortilla chips dusted with chile powder.
Here’s something El Paseo doesn’t even promote, and it’s outstanding: the tortilla soup.
You’ve tried tortilla soup that’s all broth, a few lame tortilla strips and maybe a couple of precious strands of chicken floating with an avocado slice? (I’m looking at you, Jason’s Deli.)
El Paseo’s tortilla soup is hearty and packed with chicken. It’s so warming and spicy, it should qualify as an over-the-counter cold treatment.
Everything is big at El Paseo, and that includes the bowl-sized “cup” of soup. (A “bowl” is the size of a platter.)
It’s one of the best tortilla soups around, for $6.49-$7.79.
El Paseo’s dinners cost about $10, with the lunches about $8.50.
El Paseo is open for lunch and dinner daily, breakfast through dinner weekends; 5436 Jacksboro Highway, 817-625-9755, elpaseomex.com.
This story was originally published February 10, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
