Nadya L Sanchez
They have the meats: The Sicilian Butcher.
Restaurants serving housemade pastas have been one of the city’s biggest culinary trends over the past few years, with restaurants such as Piattello, 61 Osteria, and Il Modo offering diners freshly made spaghetti, pappardelle, and ravioli — a welcome reprieve from the boxed noodles that many local Italian eateries serve.
Far North Fort Worth is now getting a taste of that trend, thanks to a new spot called The Sicilian Butcher. It’s a concept born in Scottsdale, Arizona, not exactly the pasta capital of the world. But it was founded by a chef with strong ties to the city that bears the restaurant’s name.
Opened in July, the restaurant comes from Joey Maggiore, a Scottsdale-based celebrity chef whose name is attached to several other food and beverage concepts, including Hash Kitchen, a brunch-all-day-every-day restaurant that recently opened a Fort Worth location — not coincidentally, in the same shopping center as The Sicilian Butcher.
Maggiore says the butcher in his restaurant’s name is his own father.
“My father was a Sicilian-born master chef,” he says of the late Tomaso Maggiore, a lifelong restaurateur. “He cooked all over Italy. He’s the main inspiration for this restaurant, his recipes, his style of cooking. I took a lot of his ideas and philosophies and put them into a new setting. It’s high-end but still casual.”
1 of 5
Rudy Ramirez
2 of 5
Nadya L Sanchez
3 of 5
Nadya L Sanchez
4 of 5
Nadya L Sanchez
5 of 5
Nadya L Sanchez
In addition to housemade pastas such as tagliatelle, spaghetti, rigatoni, and gnocchi, the restaurant serves charcuterie boards, salads, sandwiches, and various flavors of meatballs, including a vegan option made with eggplant.
Like its other locations, there’s also an in-house bakery, called The Sicilian Baker, that offers hot and cold Italian coffee drinks, gelato, and fresh pastries, along with a build-your-own-cannoli bar.
“The cannoli bar is a lot of fun — for kids and adults,” Maggiore says. “You can choose the shell you want, the filling you want. But it’s not just a novelty. We make the cannoli shells in-house. The cream is a Sicilian recipe, so when you taste it, it takes just like the cream in Sicily. Cannoli is one of the hallmarks of Italian food, so we want to do it right.”
The Fort Worth store is the first location outside of Arizona, where there are three. Maggiore says he landed on Fort Worth after spending time here; he has family in Plano, he says.
“I love Fort Worth; I feel like it’s a second home,” he says. “What I’ve noticed is, people in Fort Worth have a deep appreciation for good food — food that’s made by hand, the old way. That’s why I’ve opened two restaurants there. It’s a growing city full of people who know, love, and want food that’s different and delicious.”
The Sicilian Butcher, 3200 Tracewood Way, Ste. 110, thesicilianbutcher.com.
