If you’ve lived in Tarrant County for any length of time, you likely remember when Tarrant County College’s Northeast Campus in Hurst seemed to be the edge of the Earth. My, how times have changed. Colleyville and nearby Grapevine are swollen with houses, shopping centers, traffic, and, of course, restaurants. It’s chain territory but with the occasional locally owned gem in the mix. The latest in that list is Tribeca Americana Bistro & Lounge in Colleyville.
The restaurant is located on the second floor of one of the faux-Italian buildings in the shopping center that houses city hall, off Main Street. Perhaps in a nod to its namesake New York neighborhood, the walls of the staircase leading up to the restaurant are covered in Vogue-quality black-and-white photos of celebrities (Grace Kelly, Jack Nicholson) and quasi-celebs (Twiggy, Jerry Hall).
The menu, however, hews more to the sun-drenched Tuscan look of the building. The offerings are heavily Mediterranean, with some American comfort food thrown in. The online photos (mainly of the lushly feminine décor) indicated this is a chick lunch place, and my gal-pal lunch date and I were indeed among the majority, gender-wise, in the dining room.
Our first course was the chef’s innovative take on Caprese salad. Traditional buffalo mozzarella rounds were layered with fried green tomatoes on a plate of sweet balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The tomatoes were served cold, which was odd if you were expecting them to be at least room temperature. However, the taste and texture of the dish –– tangy, crunchy-coated tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, and sweet balsamic –– were sublime.
We also tried the crab cubes. Heavy on the crab (mixed simply with diced red and green onion) and light on the breading (perfectly fried, non-greasy, crunchy panko breadcrumbs), the cakes were beautifully presented in a pool of delicious Turkish pepper-spiced Dijon cream sauce.
Our third appetizer, ordered on a whim, was the chicken “lollipops”: three fried drumettes, with the knobs of cartilage at the bottom removed, served with a red-hot aioli dipping sauce. The batter was pretty nondescript, but the sauce –– a mixture of spicy wing sauce and blue cheese bits –– didn’t need much help.
Lunch options include a grown-up gouda grilled cheese sandwich with tomato marmalade, a pork belly BLT, and fish and chips. We opted for the house-made gnocchi, which came out in the chef’s choice of a vodka cream sauce, replete with shavings of roasted garlic. The gnocchi were flawlessly cooked, and the sauce was simple and tasty. We added the day’s special salad: mixed greens, roasted pears, blue cheese, bacon, and a spicy jalapeño dressing. Every bite was just a little different depending on what combination of flavors was on the fork. The dressing was great –– not too spicy but definitely with a kick.
But the roasted chicken breast with porcini mushrooms in a cream sauce was, hands down, the winning entrée. Skin-on chicken in a rich cream sauce, with dainty porcini mushrooms and cubed squash –– simple, amazingly tasty, and flawlessly executed, it’s well worth a drive through Highway 26 rush-hour traffic.
Tribeca is a lovely, white-tablecloth-and-wine-glasses restaurant in a retail complex that looks a lot like Southlake’s matchy-matchy Town Square. The hostess invited us to come back on a weekend evening, when Tribeca features live music and a modified bar menu after 9 p.m. Though the plates were presented wonderfully, all were garnished with alfalfa sprouts for some inexplicable reason, and the servers seemed prone to address non-octogenarian women as “sweetie” –– a habit that, depending on the party, could lower a waitstaffer’s tip to the chilly regions. But as my friend and I were leaving, we noticed a man at the bar and his solo lunch: the Waygu burger with cheddar cheese and hearty steak fries, served on a sprout-free plank of wood and paired with a generous glass of cabernet. He frequents Tribeca, he said, because he just likes the food. Good enough reason for us, too, Jack.
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Tribeca Americana Bistro & Lounge
62 Main St, Ste 200, Colleyville.
817-788-3988. 11am-2pm & 5-10pm Mon-Sat, 10am-3pm & 5-9pm Sun.
Lounge open 9pm-12am Thu, 9pm-2am Fri-Sat. All major credit cards accepted.
Fried green tomatoes w/buffalo mozzarella
and balsamic olive oil ……………… $4.50
Crab cubes ……………………………….. $6.00
Wing lollipops w/sesame
red hot and blue aioli ……………….. $5.00
Gnocchi ………………………………….. $12.00
Chicken w/porcini mushrooms
in cream sauce …………………….. $11.00
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