The best little lunch secret in Fort Worth: It’s a $16 prime rib deal on a nice patio
Where’s the best little patio lunch in Fort Worth?
How about Lonesome Dove Western Bistro?
On Fridays and Saturdays until 2:30 p.m., Lonesome Dove, 2406 N. Main St., serves a 1-pound prime rib, potatoes and horseradish sauce for $16.
It’s easy to park in the Stockyards at lunch. And the Dove has several small tables and one larger table on the banks of Marine Creek.
When I asked readers to suggest the best obscure little patios nobody knows about for a safely distanced lunch or dinner outdoors, Lonesome Dove’s name kept coming up.
Seven years ago, chef Tim Love added outdoor dining. It’s hidden behind the rustic Stockyards restaurant, sort of like a secret enclave where you can dine on garlic-stuffed tenderloin while hearing the music from the Love Shack beer garden nearby.
Lonesome Dove’s lunch menu makes it one of the best places to take out-of-town guests Friday or Saturday before a museum trip or after watching the Fort Worth Herd.
The lunch menu includes dinner items. But it also offers a simple, inexpensive Stockyards lunch.
The feature is the “soon to be famous” prime rib with whipped potatoes.
But there’s also a tenderloin-New York strip double cheeseburger with fries for $12. (That’s cheaper than at the midprice restaurant around the corner.)
A prime rib sandwich with Muenster cheese and fries is only $10.
There’s a salmon platter with cucumber salad for $15 and a grilled chicken-kale salad for $12.
A bowl of chili is $10.
And if you really want to show off the restaurant’s signature dish, the garlic-stuffed beef tenderloin, it’s $37.
Desserts include Lonesome Dove’s traditional Tuaca flan or molten-lava chocolate cake.
Lonesome Dove is open for lunch Friday and Saturday only, for dinner Tuesday through Saturday; 817-740-8810, lonesomedovefortworth.com.
Another forgotten patio perfect for safe dining:
▪ Pulido’s Mexican Restaurant, 5051 Benbrook Highway, is open again at its 50-year-old flagship store with its El Jardín patio along Marys Creek.
Pulido’s is as old-school as Tex-Mex restaurants get. If you order the “old fashioned” enchiladas, you’re getting the same cheese-and-onion enchiladas in a mild chili sauce that Texans learned to love decades ago..
The chips, tortillas, tamales and pralines are fresh from the Pulido’s commissary nearby. The table salsa has snap. Everything is a throwback to retro Tex-Mex dining, with simple enchiladas, tacos, fajitas and margaritas.
It’s open for lunch and dinner daily. Mineral Wells, Saginaw and Stephenville locations have also reopened; 817-732-7871, pulidos.net.
(The oldest location on Pulido Street has not reopened yet.)
▪ Righteous Foods, 3405 W. Seventh St., has a garden patio behind a screen of plants along West Seventh Street,
Chef Lanny Lancarte II’s good-food-good-for-you restaurant is one of only a few serving breakfast on a patio.
The menu includes omelets, breakfast sandwiches and lunches such as a Gouda cheeseburger, pork tacos or a salad with beets, goat cheese, apples, a choice of chicken, bison or meatballs and a musard vinaigrette.
It also offers curbside pickup of menu items at eatrighteously.com or its Tex-Mex cousin, eatfajitas.com
It’s open for breakfast, lunch and dinner weekdays through Saturdays, breakfast and lunch Sundays; 817-850-9996.
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
