A hole-in-the-wall Fort Worth Stockyards restaurant is known for chicken-fried steak
If your favorite steakhouse or Stockyards restaurant is moving or taking a vacation, here’s another cowboy cafe to try.
The Brand Room steakhouse and bar is now serving lunch and dinner again in the Stockyards, high atop the hill on West Exchange Avenue in a rustic storefront from Taylor Sheridan’s “1883.”
The Brand Room, 212 W. Exchange Ave., has been open intermittently for years as a bar. Now, it’s serving dinner Wednesday, lunch and dinner Thursday through Saturday.
This is about as far from fancy as you can get.
The restaurant is a tiny, dimly lit hole-in-the-wall.
But the kitchen turns out wood-fired rib-eyes, poblano-cream tenderloin and a perfect rendition of West Exchange Avenue’s fabled chicken-fried steak.
Lately, the Brand Room has added a full menu with soups, salads, pork chops, lunch specials and desserts such as buttermilk pie.
The chicken-fried steak remains fork-tender and lightly battered in the tradition of long-gone Horseshoe Hill Cafe or early Reata.
Sides include giant onion rings with the same light batter, mashed potatoes with a subtle gravy, deviled eggs and calf fries.
If you can, dine at the bar. It’s dark and mysterious like a Taylor Sheridan version of a Wild West TV saloon.
The building is a former custom boot shop built in 1948 as a machine shop and later used as an awning company and as a Tejano club. It was the lounge for stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw during work on “1883.”
There’s also two larger dining rooms decorated with the curtains and front-window lettering from “1883.” But they’re less charming and more functional.
By the way, it’s easy to park near West Exchange.
The Brand Room serves dinner from 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and lunch from 11 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 817-706-9628, facebook.com/thebrandroomftw.
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This story was originally published July 8, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
