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Nancy Farrar
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Nancy Farrar
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Nancy Farrar
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Nancy Farrar
Fort Worth foodies partied like it was 2019 Thursday night at the Heart of the Ranch at Clearfork, where the Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival returned after a two-year hiatus.
It was 2019 when the last FWFWF took place. For the past two years, the annual multi-day event has been sidelined by COVID, although organizers have done a good job of keeping the fest’s name alive, hosting FWFWF-sponsored dinners, special events and, last year, a pared down mini-fest.
Thursday marked the festival’s full-throttle return, with two simultaneous events. At the Brik special events venue in the Near Southside, there was a $200-a-head, four-course dinner prepared by renowned, James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd - of Houston’s Underbelly Hospitality restaurant group - and Fort Worth chef Tuan Pham of Fort Worth’s Four Sisters.
But the real kickoff event was Tacos + Tequila, wherein guests paid $65 to gorge on tacos from more than a dozen local restaurants and wash them down with a variety of tequila-infused cocktails. The sold-out event was held on the spacious grounds at the Heart of the Ranch at Clearfork, where most of the festival is taking place this year.
A backdrop of eye-catching props, including an oversized pinata, live music from a roving mariachi band and cool, picture-perfect weather, created a lively vibe that echoed pre-COVID times. “I think everybody needed this,” said Angie Moors of Funkytown Donuts. “It feels good to be a part of something like this again. It feels normal again.”
The quality of the food at Tacos + Tequila was higher than years past. Here were some of the highlights:
Longest line: People stood in 20-minute-long lines for Fort Worth celebrity chef Tim Love’s excellent goat birria tacos, one of the signature dishes at his recently opened Mexican restaurant, Paloma Suerte. Love spent much of the event prepping and serving the tacos himself.
Best use of smoked meat: Dayne’s Craft BBQ served one of the event’s best bites – a slab of pork belly whose fat melted away at the touch of your tongue, topped with pickled red onions, feta cheese and, for a pop of hot, pepper-infused honey.
Absolutely, hands-down, shoulda-gone-back-for-seconds, can’t stop thinking about it, best bite: Magdelana Catering’s barbacoa taco, made with a mix of beef cheek and tongue. Four words: prickly pear pickled cabbage. Every taco in the world should be topped with that.
Best side: Enchiladas Ole served a nice smoked brisket taco, but the star of the plate was the side of papas bravas - red potatoes mixed with butter cream and hatch peppers. Owner Mary Perez says it’s available at her two restaurants as an off-the-menu special.
Best tortilla: While most of the vendors opted for packaged tortillas, Mi Dia from Scratch made its own, offering excellent specimens of street size flour tortillas for its cochinita pibil tacos. But Guapo Taco, former Mariachi’s Dine-In owner Angel Fuentes’ new endeavor, served a superior cochinita pibil taco, whose pork filling was simple, flavorful and accentuated with a nice, spicy punch.
Best we-went-all-out dish: Godley’s popular Del Norte Tacos upped its taco game, not only offering a very good pork belly taco, but also a shrimp cocktail side and a chips and salsa bar.
The Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival continues through Sunday. For event and ticket information, visit fortworthfoodandwinefestival.com.
