Drive into these Fort Worth restaurants for Pope Leo’s favorite chocolate cake
Pope Leo XIV’s favorite dessert is also one of the best you can buy without ever getting out of your car.
Illinois-based Portillo’s, the cult favorite retro Chicago-style restaurant chain known for hot dogs and Italian beef, also sells entire chocolate cakes, and a former Leo roommate says that’s his absolute favorite.
““I lived with him for a year,” Brother Joe Ruiz, a friar and native Texan, told ABC7 WLS in Chicago.
“I know that his favorite cake is chocolate cake from Portillo’s. ... He’s a very down-to-earth guy, very humbling guy.”
Portillo’s is known for chocolate cake, lemon cake and an exceptional strawberry shortcake, all also available through the drive-thru.
Portillo’s now has four Fort Worth-area locations with two more on the way.
It also has announced an Italian beef sandwich named “The Leo.”
It’s dipped in gravy — “baptized,” Portillo’s says — and comes with sweet peppers, hot giardiniera or both, the “holy trinity.”
Portillo’s recently filed paperwork to build new restaurants on McPherson Road at the Chisholm Trail Parkway in Fort Worth and also at an outlet mall, 15865 North Freeway.
Portillo’s is open at 8789 Tehama Ridge Parkway, Fort Worth (near Alliance Town Center); 4200 S. Cooper St., Arlington; 410 U.S. 287 North, Mansfield; 3102 Texas 161 South, Grand Prairie; and 460 Texas 114 West, Grapevine; portillos.com.
This story was originally published May 11, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
