Pat's Pick

by Patricia Sharpe

EDIBLE ART I had braced myself for crowds the Sunday I visited the new Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. But, no—I breezed through the galleries, only to come to an abrupt halt outside Café Modern, the museum's spacious, sunlight-filled restaurant. Joining the fast-moving queue, I soon found myself sitting at a gray-granite table in a well-designed—not to mention extraordinarily comfy—blue chair, looking out on the museum's vast reflecting pond as lazy clouds floated by practically beneath my feet. No mere filling station for weary art lovers, Café Modern actually has a chef—Mathew Freistadt—and a global, up-to-the-minute menu. My appetite and anticipation were rewarded with a pretty omelet filled with pork carnitas in a snappy cilantro salsa, sided by potato-and-caramelized-onion hash accented with rosemary. Dessert was a piece of chocolate-glazed pound cake with corners so precise they looked machine-milled. During the week, the lunch menu offers small entrées like fettuccine with wild mushrooms as well as more substantial ones like grilled salmon or steaks of American-raised Kobe beef. I think my art treks to Fort Worth could become a habit.