When Fort Worth fell in love with brunch: It all started with the biscuits
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The best brunch in Fort Worth
We asked, and you decided. Here’s the winner of our Reader’s Choice poll.
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Only lately has Fort Worth discovered brunch.
Now, it’s everywhere. We have restaurants that serve it seven days a week.
Somehow, avocado toast and Fruity Pebbles pancakes have replaced burgers or pot roast for Saturday or Sunday lunch, and this is considered an upgrade.
In the years B.B. — Before Brunch — we had one restaurant that advertised it on Sundays.
In what is now the Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel downtown, diners discovered the glory of the “brunch buffet.”
That also created confusion.
When other restaurants started serving brunch, readers would call and ask: “How come I went to [restaurant] and it wasn’t a buffet?”
Our newfound sophistication has delivered brunches of all kinds, including the new Star-Telegram Readers’ Choice winner at Brewed, 801 W. Magnolia Ave.
When guitarist Jamey Ice of Green River Ordinance and investors opened Brewed as a beer-and-coffee gastropub, I remember going one of the first nights and asking which beers or wines were local.
The server seemed surprised.
“I think we make all the beer and wine right here,” she said.
So I gave Brewed more time.
Fortunately, Brewed eventually found its niche as a morning breakfast and weekend brunch hangout with a sunny back patio.
By 2018, Brewed was shifting from beer to biscuits.
The partners discovered there was magic in three little words:
Biscuits. All. Day.
The Magnolia Chicken Biscuit with bacon and provolone became one of the city’s first brunch items available all day, every day.
Spurred by the weekend brunch at the Cane Rosso pizzeria next door — which borrowed from Little Red Wasp downtown — Brewed added a pulled pork-hash skillet, chicken-and-waffles and more daily items, and made a “Texas Top Ten Brunches” list along with the Wasp.
Ice bowed out along the way, and Brewed now seems like less of a hipster hangout and more of a family breakfast cafe.
The biggest news at Brewed lately has been across the street, where the Texas breakfast landmark Paris Coffee Shop is finishing up a months-long remodeling under new chef Louis Lambert.
Without the Paris, breakfast customers have been wandering the city in a daze, searching for the best bacon, eggs, pancakes or gravy.
Some found West Side Cafe. Some found the Dixie House Cafes. Some found the Old Neighborhood Grill.
And from the looks of the crowd, more than a few Paris customers have found their way over to Brewed.
I didn’t vote for any of the Readers’ Choice top five — the three above lead my breakfast list pending the Paris’ return, along with Café Modern and Wishbone & Flynt for brunch — but I understand why Star-Telegram readers loved them all.
Funky Picnic Brewery & Cafe is the best hangout. Lucile’s Stateside Bistro is for relaxed brunch, or when somebody else is paying. Restaurant506 at The Sanford House dominates Arlington, and readers north of Loop 820 have always loved both the original and new Beacon Cafe buffet north of Saginaw.
Above them all, Brewed has a well-rounded brunch menu served in a living-room setting with something for everybody. It’s a deserving winner.
This was a lot of fun for all of us, and I hope you had as much fun trying brunches.
Let’s do it again.
[ MORE: Check out all 35 of Fort Worth’s favorite brunch restaurants, based on reader nominations ]
