Here’s a first look at the new Cafe Modern inside the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
If there is any question what Café Modern means to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, take a look at the sign on Camp Bowie Boulevard.
Where the museum usually promotes exhibits, the sign now reads in big letters: “Café Modern now open.”
So far, the revamped museum cafe relies on a lunch menu combining a few local specials with traditional dishes from the new management, California-based chef Wolfgang Puck’s catering company.
The cafe is reopening slowly.
Lunch and brunch are served daily except Mondays, and the cafe has more patio seating. But Friday night dinners won’t start until at least June 4.
“We are just getting started,” said chef Jett Mora, a 10-year veteran of Puck Catering restaurants including the red|seven restaurant at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.
“This is an opening menu. We’ll do more depending on what’s available.”
In its reopening week, the cafe filled up with a mixture of regulars who had missed it for months and tourists from around the world visiting the Modern or the Kimbell Art Museum next door, Mora said.
He learned something quickly about the Fort Worth crowd.
“What has surprised me is Texans’ love for spice,” he said.
I could have told him. Fort Worth wants more jalapenos, more cayenne, more Thai chilies.
“People here are not shy about spice,” he said.
He’s serving the Puck chicken tortilla soup and fine-tuning the house kimchi.
Mora has also been in Fort Worth long enough to discover one of our favorite spicy foods: the peppery brisket at Panther City BBQ.
“It’s great — barbecue with a Latino spin,” he said. He’s taken other Puck Catering chefs from LA there, and he’s also made regular stops at Whataburger.
Mora’s first menu is clearly Puck-heavy, relying on the 80-year-old Spago chef’s dishes, such as his original Chinois chicken salad.
But there’s also a house-ground cheddar burger made from a blend of chuck, short rib and brisket, topped with house pickles and a fistful of caramelized onions that any Texan could love.
The opening brunch menu also includes a couple of Texas-flavored items that might make locals smile. There’s a pork-belly eggs Benedict platter and a South Texas migas omelet topped with birria.
They’re served with the light Southern “angel biscuits.”
The restaurant is open from 11 a.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, with a lighter menu in late afternoon; 817-840-2186, themodern.org.
