[DFW] Duce in Ft. Worth

[joiei]

Last weekend, I met up with Theabroma and we had dinner in Ft Worth at Tim Love's newest restaurant called Duce. It is on Camp Bowie in the Ridgelea area.

Duce is a modern room with light woods and light colors. A bar sits along one wall with a frosted window that separates the dining room from the kitchen.

The menu is divided into three sections, Little Food which is further divided into sea and land. Then Green which is salads and last is Big Food.

We decided to start with a selection of little foods, Chef Tim's version of Tapas, and we ordered the Halibut sausage with cool red lentil salad and citrus butter nage, Wild Boar empanada with lingonberry creme fraiche, Giant shrimp with smoked crawfish stuffing and crispy serrano hollandaise, and rabbit manchego ravioli with Spanish chorizo sweet cream.

The halibut sausage was fantastic, richly flavored and slightly spicy with the lentils and the citrus butter working well with the flavors. The empanadas were to die for, nicely seasoned meat inside packets of flakey buttery dough about the size of a soup spoon. The Giant shrimp were grilled to a nearly perfect doneness and the crawfish stuffing and hollandaise complimented very well not too spicy but with a nice flavor. My favorite was by far the rabbit manchego ravioli. We did ask for bread to sop up all the chorizo sweet cream, I was not letting that stuff go away without a fight.

Then we ordered a couple of salads to break up the meal and decide which direction we wanted to go from there. We ordered a crisp frisee with poached egg, bacon lardon and meyer lemon vinagrette and a fresh endive with garden tomato, bleu cheese vinagrette and spicey pumpkin seeds.

the frisee salad was a huge plate of cool crisp frisee with several roasted bacon lardons and the poached egg (which was just a tad overcooked, it could of been runnier) with the light vinagrette. The Endive salad was diced fresh tomato, chopped endive pieces, a shaving of red onion and the pumpking seeds tossed in the bleu cheese dressing over 3 endive spears. Delicious.

Instead of going on to large plates because we realized that we had gone too far for big plates, we went back to the small plates to continue. We ordered the panfried white-bait with roasted red pepper aioli and chile piquillo gnudi with sage brown butter and a side order of frites, we saw the frites on the menu with another dish and decided to ask, they were very kind and let us order them as a side. The White Bait was a bit dissappointing, it was not all that seasoned and was rather plain even with the micro greens salad that it came with. The gnudi was excellent, buttery warm and just very poppable.

The waiter helped theabroma choose a white wine to drink with dinner. I opted for water, and saw his face slump. But later he did smile when he realized that we were in it for the complete tasting experience even though he had a small wine sale. The manager came by and seemed excited that someone would drive all the way from Tulsa just to dine at Duce.

There is an open air enclosed patio out back that will be great once the temperatures are less than 103 which was what it was last weekend in the DFW.

The clientel is a very interesting mix of every thing from country club to twentysomethings. The dress was Ft Worth casual, I didn't see any of the Dallas black spandex, but did see some pretty tight jeans. THe room can be very noisy to being hard to carry on a conversation because of all the hard surfaces. But the meal more than made up for that little deficiency.

Get in your car and go on over to Ft Worth and dine at Duce. It is worth the trip. I will be back down for the Firey Foods show and fully intend on dining there again. Maybe this time I will try a big plate.

Tim Love is the owner, chef de cuisine is Zac Wilber and general manager is Michael Pennington.

With Lanny's and now Duce, Ft Worth is quickly becoming my dining destination of choice in the metroplex.

edited to add that I forgot, we had dessert. A Sweet Tapas plate that had peach gelee, root beer float, banana and white chocolate bread pudding and a chocolate espresso cup and the other dessert was the chocolate torte spiked with saffron and cayenne topped with pot du creme. Both were wonderful. Interesting that I have not had as interesting desserts anywhere in Dallas that I remember.

Edited August 31, 2006 by joiei (log)

[Kevin72]

Thanks for the report. That is interest that Ft. Worth has managed two big dining destinations in the past couple years. Where's Tim Love worked before?

Maybe I missed it, but what's the price like?

[Richard Kilgore]

Thanks for the great report, joiei. What's his wine list like?

[joiei]

Thanks for the report.  That is interest that Ft. Worth has managed two big dining destinations in the past couple years.  Where's Tim Love worked before?

Maybe I missed it, but what's the price like?

←

Tim is the Chef/Owner of the Lonesome Dove Bistro over by the Stockyards in Ft Worth and is opening a Lonesome Dove in New York City coming up in the middle of September.

I will get back with you on the prices, I do not have the menu in front of me.

[joiei]

Thanks for the great report, joiei.  What's his wine list like?

←

I really didn't pay that much attention to the wine list, from a glance it looked limited but some nice pours by the glass. Theabroma seemed to enjoy the wine selected for her.

[Richard Kilgore]

Here's a FT Worth Business Press article on Time Love and Duce, as well as his Lonesome Dove Western Bistro that opened in 2000 and it's upcoming Manhattan outpost.

[joiei]

Maybe I missed it, but what's the price like?

←

Little food ranges between $6 and $15 mostly around 8 - 12.

Green ranges between $5 and $12

Big Food ranges between $14 for A Big Burger with Good Cheese and Bacon, Good Fries to $28 for a Grilled all natural Uruguayan Beef Tenderloin, Chive Potato Pancake, Tarragon Hollandaise and white Truffled Rocket Greens. Some of the interesting big plates besided the burger is Rabbit Duce, Fried Leg, Grilled lion, truffled sweet pea hash and Kick-Ass Tuna, corinader Cumin Crust, White Beans, Fried greens.

They do offer

A Gorgeous Selection fo Meats and Cheeses from almost Everywhere - little 39 big 70. I wonder how that is?

Something else that I forgot, as soon as they seated us, the waiter poured us a small juice glass, probably 4 oz of sangria. Nice touch.

Another interesting menu item - A Daily offering of Pure Flavor in Shot Form - priced daily, I will have to check this out next time.

[Kevin72]

Wow, this sounds really interesting. May have to plan a trek to Ft. Worth around it soon. Thanks again for the notice.

[Kevin72]

It appears there's been a menu and conceptual overhaul here. This is our first Ft. Worth jaunt in a while and this was the top of our list to go to for dinner. So, I'm looking at their menu (eatdrinkliveduce) and they're being dubbed a "Modern Steakhouse" with some sushi thrown in, but unfortunately none of the Big Food/Little Food items that joiei got to sample originally. Disappointing.

On a side note, why do websites for places have to have that annoying atmospheric music that cues up with no way to turn it off?

Edited February 23, 2007 by Kevin72 (log)

[slo_ted]

Planning a trip to Ft. Worth this month. Any current suggestions for restaurants in Cow Town. BBQ, Mexican, Tapas, casual dining or maybe something unusual? I mean to avoid the usual traps e.g. Joe T's. Thanks.