Best Of 2021: Food and Drink


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Vegging Out: Mariachi’s Dine-In Reader Pick: Tex-Mex, Hole-in-the-Wall | Very few Mexican restaurants in Fort Worth have bothered to target a growing audience: vegetarians.  

One of the few is Mariachi’s Dine-In, which has found much success in offering vegetarian and vegan Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes, along with traditional nonvegetarian dishes. 

People have gone nuts, in particular, for the restaurant’s burritos and bowls, stuffed with your choice of proteins and veggies. Their birria tacos are hard to beat, too, especially the veggie versions, which are made, ingeniously, with jackfruit.  

Up until May, the restaurant operated out of a gas station, east of downtown, in a run-down building that defines hole-in-the-wall with its faded signage and sketchy characters lurking about.

It’s this combo of excellent food and scruffy charm that landed Mariachi’s reader’s choice trophy for best hole-in-the-wall. 

In May, the restaurant got a major upgrade: a new location on the west side of Fort Worth in the Locke Avenue spot where Mariposa’s Latin Kitchen ruled for many years (and where FiVi’s Kitchen opened and abruptly closed last year).  

While the new location doesn’t have the hole-in-the-wall feel, its menu features most of the dishes from the gas station location, says owner Ashley Miller. There are a few new items, too, including some salads and queso fundido. (Founding chef Angel Fuentes isn’t a part of the new restaurant; he’s staying in Mariachi’s old digs to launch a taqueria called Guapo Taco). 

Plus, there will be a bar, something the gas station location lacked. It opened mid-May.

BEST BURGER: M&O Station Grill

If greasy burgers aren’t your thing - no doubt a curse with as much great home cooking as Fort Worth has to offer - we recommend steering clear of M&O Station Grill, where the grease is served with a side of beef patty. And don’t sleep on their chicken-fried steak, lowkey one of the best meals in town.

BEST DESSERT: Islas Tropicales

This new joint on the west side of Magnolia Avenue, a new arm of the ever-expanding Paco’s next door, serves up fruits with Tajin, smoothies, mangonadas, paletas, and other authentic Mexican sweet treats. The presentation alone will blow your mind and, once you take a bite out of tajin-laced fruits, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without such a perfect combination of sweet, spicy, and savory.

Fish Fry: Zeke’s Fish and Chips Editor Pick: Best Fried Whatever

For more than five decades, the fried cod at Zeke’s Fish & Chips has been quintessential Fort Worth eating, right up there with the fajitas at Joe T’s, a burger at Kincaid’s, and a sliced sandwich at Angelo’s. 

Original owners Otto and Harriette Zurcher opened Zeke’s more than a half-century ago, in 1969, although it wasn’t technically a restaurant. At that point, Zeke’s just had a walk-up window. In 1971, after the Zurchers decided to retire, young math major Craig Lidell acquired the restaurant, expanding it with a dining room, a drive-thru window, and patio.  

“The dining room used to be a head shop,” says Craig’s brother and longtime owner Mark Lidell, who worked at Zeke’s throughout the ’70s before he and his wife, Diane, took it over. “And we used to throw sawdust on the floor to cover it up; it was in such bad shape. We couldn’t afford to put in a new floor.”  

For years, it was a sibling of The HOP, a long-gone bohemian restaurant/live music venue also run by Craig. As a tribute, Zeke’s still serves The HOP’s crave-worthy spaghetti sauce.  

But most come for the fried cod — planks of soft, white fish cloaked in a dark, crispy, light-to-the-touch batter. Developed by the Zurchers, the batter recipe is a closely guarded secret. 

Zeke's does wonders with vegetables, too, expertly frying mushrooms, eggplant, okra, zucchini, and corn nuggets. Served in long wedges, the eggplant is especially good; the okra, a must. 

After more than five decades as the owners, the Lidells recently handed the keys to a new owner, Danny R. Ghimire, a local entrepreneur and former owner and investor in Jimmy’s Big Burgers. 

“My intent is to keep Mark’s legacy alive,” Ghimire says. “Everything will remain the same — the recipes, the signs. Everything is perfect the way it is.”

Ghimire also says he’s hoping to open additional Zeke’s locations. 

Early Risers: 5AM Drip Reader Pick: Best Vegan/Vegetarian

5AM Drip is, at its heart, a coffee shop. Housed in an 8-by-20 shipping container — one of several that make up the colorful Connex office park on Evans Avenue in East Fort Worth — 5AM Drip has been slinging lattes and cappuccinos out of its offbeat space since opening just before the COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020. And even then, the shop continued serving, giving back in the form of a pay-it-forward program that offered free drinks to frontline workers.

While 5AM Drip could easily get marks for coffee — seriously, the lemonade-espresso concoction known as the Raspberry El Patron is a story in and of itself — 5AM Drip got Best Of voters’ attention for its all-vegan food menu. The shop’s owners, couple Ashley Davis and Miguel Hernandez, went vegan about five years ago for health reasons and have worked to perfect their recipes ever since. Highlights of the menu include the Off the Block, a barbecue sandwich made from shredded jackfruit. There’s also El Cristo Rey — a powdered sugar-dusted, grilled Monte Cristo sandwich filled with tofu ham and melted vegan mozzarella cheese.

Bet you can’t even tell the difference. 

“There are a lot of people that’ll come, and they’ve been eating it for a while, and they’ll come back and say, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve been eating this for months and didn’t know it was vegan!” Davis says.

Davis and Hernandez initially launched 5AM Drip as a pop-up in 2015, selling coffee at farmers markets before going mobile via food truck in 2019. When Carlo Capua, co-founder of food business incubator Locavore, reached out about an opportunity to set up shop at Connex, Davis and Hernandez jumped at it; and thanks to their experience working in the small kitchen of a food truck, the shipping container wasn’t too difficult a transition. 

“After hours, we just shut down and do all of our prepping,” Davis says. The couple makes most of the “meat” themselves, smoking and seasoning jackfruit barbacoa, chorizo, and plantain burgers. They also make breakfast tacos, toasts, and baked goods that have become hits in the neighborhood.

“[We were] slowly just cutting things away and then it turned into this,” Davis says. “And then it turned into a love of making vegan food and wanting other people to know that you can have vegan food, and it tastes good.”

BEST NEW COFFEE SHOP: Lazy Daisy Coffee Bar

Anything but lazy, the staff at this new Camp Bowie hangout not only knows how to grind behind the bar but also takes the time to get to know its regulars. In tune with customer feedback, the shop recently added a selection of gluten-free food offerings to go along with classic espresso drinks and inventive specialty beverages like the color-changing Holly Blue.