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The best restaurants in our city, some will argue, are the ones that perfectly capture what it’s like to live and eat in Fort Worth. Think Angelo’s Barbecue and its walls of taxidermy. Or Reata, with its Texican-inspired menu. Bonnell’s, Fred’s, and Lonesome Dove are other Fort Worth restaurants that paint vivid culinary pictures of our city. When you’re eating at one of these restaurants, you know you’re eating in Fort Worth.
There’s another argument that I also tend to agree with: that the city’s best restaurants are not just the ones that remind you of Fort Worth, but the ones that offer you an escape from Fort Worth. Grace, Bocca Osteria Romana, Paris 7th — these are restaurants that transport you to anywhere else but Fort Worth.
It’s in this group of restaurants where newly opened The Chumley House belongs. From the second you walk in to a lively bar scene and softly illuminated dining room, to the time you walk out, wherein your server shakes your hand and helps you put your jacket on, you are somewhere else. Where that somewhere else is, though — that’s up to you.
In the eyes of Benji Homsey, the TCU grad whose Dallas-based company Duro Hospitality opened The Chumley House in November, it’s Europe, where handsomely appointed, low-lit, boisterous restaurants that serve beef Wellington, stroganoff, and steaks are the norm. For me, The Chumley House has Chicago written all over it, not because of the cuisine, which is decidedly not Chicagoan, but because of the laid-back luxe atmosphere. My wife’s vote: New York.
“There’s a reason food tastes better when you’re on vacation,” Homsey says a few days later during an interview. “That’s what we’re going for here — to take diners out of Fort Worth, out of the bad days they’re having, out of the argument with their significant others, or whatever it is they’re dealing with that day, and drop them in this other place where all that stuff just melts away. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re taken to one place and your wife is taken another. That’s what the restaurant is meant to do — be a transportive experience.”
Much of the restaurant’s charm rests on the shoulders of its snug dining room, which is divided into small rooms, much like a house. A room called The Study indeed feels like a study, with its mahogany walls, custom fireplace, and English hunting motif. Elsewhere in the restaurant are design and architectural appointments that further enhance the coziness of home: herringbone-patterned dark wood floors, Scottish plaid rugs, pumpkin-hued saddle leather banquettes, plush green velvet fabric decorated with mallard ducks.
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“We looked at the design of this restaurant through a residential lens,” says Homsey, who graduated from TCU in 1999. “We wanted the design to look like what you’d expect to see in someone’s home. We have four or five different styles of chairs because that’s what you have at home. The goal here was to create a very soulful restaurant — the design, the lighting, the music, the smells coming from the kitchen. We want you to feel at home.”
Design of the 3,500-square-foot space, which seats 90 indoors and 25 outdoors, is the handiwork of Duo Hospitality partners Corbin and Ross See of Sees Design, who worked with Patrick Craine of Dallas architectural firm Practice to emulate the feel of a British manor with contemporary touches.
The menu is made up of European classics with touches of American and Indian cuisine. Key dishes include beef Wellington, a center-cut tenderloin wrapped in a puff pastry; herb popovers with salted butter; a halibut “porterhouse” with chimichurri; butter chicken pot pie with coriander-glazed roots and ginger yogurt; tenderloin stroganoff with ricotta dumplings; and chicken schnitzel with lemon Parmesan cream.
The nearly half-dozen steak options include an eight-ounce tenderloin filet, a 10-ounce prime shortrib steak, and a dry-aged prime bone-in rib-eye that weighs in at 20 ounces.
Each table receives freshly baked scones, paired with a cup of rose lychee tea.
Founded in 2020, Duro Hospitality, which also includes Chas Martin, who grew up in the Fort Worth area, has opened a number of award-winning restaurants in Dallas that include The Charles, Mister Charles, Sister, El Carlos Elegante, Casa Duro, and Cafe Duro.
Two Duro restaurants — Mister Charles and El Carlos Elegante — were recently honored with Michelin recommendations.
The Chumley House marks Duro’s first restaurant outside of Dallas.
“Fort Worth has always been on our radar,” Homsey says. “I’m a TCU graduate, Chas grew up in Fort Worth — this city is very near and dear to our hearts, and we knew that someday we’d open something here.”
Although the atmosphere and food may transport diners somewhere else, the service is very old school Fort Worth, echoing a time when servers and bartenders cultivated relationships with their guests.
“It’s somewhat of a dying art, that kind of service where bartenders ask you about your day or your servers shake your hand and introduce themselves and ask you your name,” Homsey says. “It’s a difference-maker. It builds loyalty for the restaurant. I like it when a bartender remembers my name and my favorite drink. It makes me want to go back over and over.
“Those relationships also make our guests feel like we’ve been here for a long time, like home,” Homsey says. “That’s the best compliment we can get — that we feel like home, wherever that home may be.”
The Chumley House, 3230 Camp Bowie Blvd., thechumleyhouse.com
