What’s up with the Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival? You pick: brunch or barbecue

Fort Worth chefs’ annual charity festival starts March 30, and the $649 weekend tickets are sold out.

But the Fort Worth Food + Wine Festival still offers a couple of chances to hobnob with top local chefs and eat and drink to your content.

Tickets remain for an $85 brunch Saturday morning and an $85 barbecue cookout Sunday afternoon, both outdoors at Heart of the Ranch at Clearfork, 5000 Clearfork Main St.

The Saturday “Rise + Dine” brunch is consistently one of the most underrated events of the festival.

This is the ninth event but the 11th year, with two festivals lost to the pandemic.

It’s a promotion for Fort Worth tourism. But it’s also a scholarship benefit for culinary students.

The RIse + DIne brunch is notable for the lineup of 20 chefs and restaurants serving brunch dishes along with unlimited drinks for three hours at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 1.

Leadng the list: Paris 7th, the upscale French restaurant that usually opens for brunch only on holidays.

Chef Mark Hitri plans to serve steak frites and eggs in tarragon aioli.

Paris 7th, 3324 W. Seventh St., hopes to add staff and brunch hours later this year, Hitri said.

Also on the brunch menu:

▪ Café Modern, the restaurant inside the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, will serve chef Jett Mora’s wagyu beef belly with a burnt-honey Thai-chili glaze, a soft-poached egg and Trinity basil peanut pesto over garlic rice.

▪ Waters Restaurant, chef Jon Bonnell’s fine-dining seafood house, will serve seared scallops.

▪ From Arlington, the Grounds & Gold coffee cafe is a past “fan favorite” winner.

This year, Grounds & Gold will serve avocado toast on house-baked French bread.

▪ The new 3rd Street Market coffee, wine and bread cafe in downtown Fort Worth will serve a soup.

Chef Dena Peterson Shaskan said she’s thinking it’ll be green chicken posole with husband Trent’s cheddar-serrano sourdough bread.

▪ Black Rooster Bakery in Ridglea tentatively plans to serve asparagus-prosciutto croissants.

▪ Other restaurants serving brunch items include the excellent Rise nº3 Souffle from nearby Clearfork, along with Bodega South Main, BREWED, Carpenter’s Cafe, Lettuce Cook, Mac’s on Main in Grapevine, Pearl Snap Kolaches and Stir Crazy Baked Goods.

‘Ring of Fire’ is a Sunday cookout

Tickets also remain for an $85 three-hour barbecue cookout at 2 p.m., Sunday afternoon, “Ring of Fire.”

An event page lists 24 of Texas’ most prominent barbecue chefs.

The lineup includes Cecilia Guerrero and Kimberly Ovalle representing Texas’ No. 1, Goldee’s Barbecue south of Kennedale.

Also from the state Top 10: Chris Magallanes and Ernest Morales of Panther City BBQ in Fort Worth.

More top pitmasters in attendance: Dayne Weaver of Dayne’s Craft Barbecue, Brandon Hurtado of Hurtado Barbecue (cooking with Levi Gardner of Taylor Sheridan’s Bosque Ranch), Derrick Walker of Smoke-A-Holics BBQ and Joe Zavala of Zavala’s Barbecue.

The event also includes Rodrigo Cardenas of Don Artemio Mexican Heritage, a semifinalist for a James Beard Award.

Those are only a few of the chefs for what is billed as a “next-level cookout.”

Barbecue festivals tend to get crowded, and the lines get long.

But Fort Worth knows barbecue. The chefs at this event are so good, even the less-busy booths will be serving first-rate barbecue and meats.

Tickets are available at fortworthfoodandwinefestival.com