Over the past few years, Italian fine dining has enjoyed a renaissance in Fort Worth. It started with the 2018 opening of Piattello Italian Cuisine, a restaurant that emphasized its modern décor as much as its housemade pastas.
It wasn’t, in other words, your typical Italian restaurant, with piped-in Sinatra music and dishes heavy on red sauce.
Piattello opened the door for other local like-minded Italian restaurants, including Il Modo, found on the first floor of the Kimpton Harper Hotel downtown; Tre Mogli in the South Main area; and, even more recently, Caterina’s, chef Tim Love’s modern Italian restaurant in the Fort Worth Stockyards.
All subscribe to similar aesthetics, eschewing the usual Italian restaurant trappings — dishes draped in the aforementioned red sauce, tables draped in checkerboard tablecloths — in favor of modern vibes and modern food.
New to this circle of restaurants is 61 Osteria, the highly anticipated new spot from the same culinary team — owner Adam Jones and executive chef Blaine Staniford — that brought Fort Worth two of its finest eateries: opulent fine dining spot Grace and its more casual sibling, upscale diner Little Red Wasp.
61 Osteria opened in January at 500 W. Seventh St., on the ground floor of the First on 7th building, known to most Fort Worthians as the First National Bank building.
If Piattello was the first to rejuvenate Italian fine dining in Fort Worth, 61 Osteria, with its crisp, sophisticated design and expansive menu, perfects it.
The menu brings together food inspired by more than a dozen regions in Italy.
“We didn’t want to focus on just one region, but all 20 regions of Italy,” says Jones. “Over the years I have developed great relationships with local farmers and vendors and wanted to showcase Texas products in an Italian way.”
Practically everything, Jones emphasizes, is made from scratch, from mozzarella cheese to the wide assortment of pastas.
“We always use fresh, seasonal products, and the same goes with our pasta program,” Jones says. “All of the pasta is made using local farm eggs and handmade in our pasta kitchen. We have a crew of about six that makes the pastas by hand or by using our pasta extruders daily.”
The lunch and dinner menus feature a half-dozen pastas, such as Bucatini Cacio e Pepe, a semolina pasta with cracked black pepper and pecorino fulvi; serpent tail pasta stuffed with house ricotta cheese, with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, black truffle, and preserved lemon; and Tagliatelle Bolognese made with braised brisket, veal and pork-based sugo, and topped with aged Parmesan.
The menu also includes grilled meats, fish, and vegetables, prepared in a custom-made wood-burning hearth, and housemade salumi, which will rotate, Jones says. The restaurant’s brunch menu is made up of items from the lunch menu, plus dishes specifically for bunch, such as a Dutch baby, housemade granola, and a shaved porchetta sandwich.
There’s a large wine list, with an emphasis on Italian producers, plus a cocktail program, and bottled and draft beers, from imports to locals.
Designed by Fort Worth-based architecture firm Ibañez Shaw Architecture, the restaurant cooly combines design elements that are both modern and midcentury modern.
Hovering above the main dining room is the restaurant’s visual centerpiece: A series of rectangular sculptural elements designed to emulate the famous chandelier at the Four Seasons hotel in New York. A wall made of rain forest marble separating the bar from the dining room is equally impressive. And there’s art everywhere, including the stunning “Fly Away,” a collage of butterflies created by Jones’ wife, Joey, a noted visual artist. It’s on display in the main dining room.
There’s a bit of Jones in each of his restaurants, but 61 may be his most personal yet. He jokes about the number of coincidences that led to the restaurant’s numeric name.
“The building was originally completed in 1961,” he says. “And last year, when we announced the restaurant, was the year I turned 61. And what’s even funnier is, I was born in 1961.”
61 Osteria, 500 W. Seventh St., 61osteria.com
