Bar’s pickle-beer queso, ‘Big Dill’ burger make it Fort Worth’s ‘Year of the Pickle’
A South Main Street pub expanded its menu to become a restaurant, and just in time.
The Bearded Lady tavern added a full dining menu with specials. Now, food has become its biggest seller during a pandemic.
In a South Main Village lined with new restaurants and bars, the Bearded Lady has become the dining gateway.
At weekend brunch, it’s a family restaurant with a giant, canopied patio filled with parents and baby buggies.
At night, it’s the old Bearded Lady pub, serving one of Texas’ best-known Gouda burgers with poblano and avocado, the “L.U.S.T. Burger” ($13.50).
The new favorite is the “Big Dill” burger ($13.75), topped with Best Maid Sour Pickle Beer queso, bacon and two more kinds of pickles, celebrating the recently opened Best Maid Pickles Emporium nearby.
“It’s got a nice pickle-y flavor — I keep saying it’s like the Year of the Pickle,” said Shannon Osbakken, owner of the Bearded Lady, 300 S. Main St.
The “Big Dill” has brought more customers than ever back to the Lady’s patio, and monthly burger and grilled cheese specials keep them coming back.
“We’ve been steady, but we have to keep coming up with creative ideas,” said Osbakken, in her eighth year running a restaurant that began as a West Magnolia Tavern beer bar with only a short menu.
Lately, the restaurant has promoted its cheddar-provolone grilled cheese ($10.25, or $12.50 as a recent bacon-pumpkin grilled cheese special named “Oh My Gourdness”).
The weekend brunch menu also includes a “Funky Town” chicken biscuit ($12), egg platters, salads, sides and of course, plenty of macaroni and cheese options.
There’s a new chicken-fried steak sandwich special.
The new Lady ran way behind schedule and had been open only nine months when COVID-19 lockdowns and quarantines cratered the restaurant industry.
“We were already a new restaurant, and then when we reopened [after COVID-19 restrictions eased], we’d been closed so long it was like starting another new restaurant all over again,” Osbakken said.
“For a while, it was like, ‘What have I done, opening this year?’ — but now, I see more and more people walking the neighborhood and giving all these places a try.”
The opening of a new Nickel City bar next door (from Austin) helps. Hot Box Biscuit Club has a new parking-lot patio on weekends, and nearby Wishbone & Flynt is established as the village’s anchor restaurant.
The Bearded Lady serves lunch and dinner daily except Mondays, and serves food until midnight weekends; 817-349-9832, thebeardedladyfw.squarespace.com.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
