| by Jessy Diamba |Located on South Hulen St. and less than five minutes away from TCU, The Tavern offers fresh, contemporary American cuisine in a sophisticated and stylish atmosphere. The amount of care the restaurant's chefs put into each dish really speaks for itself: The Tavern is ranked sixth on Yelp.com in the category "Best Restaurants in Fort Worth." One of the most requested items on the menu is the Crab Cake Salad, and manager Jennifer Crossland discussed with us how the dish is prepared.
"Our crab cake salad is the most unique salad in town - in terms of crab salads - because everything is made from scratch: all the dressings, sauces, you name it, we make them every day by hand. The crabmeat we receive to make the actual crab cakes is lump crabmeat and has really good chunks to it," she says.
"We make our own fresh bread and then grind it to crumbs for the outside of the crab cake. We then pan sear it with butter, and we finish it in a salamander [broiler] to get the crab cake really crispy and hot. After that, we put it on a bed of Pommery mustard sauce, which - combined with cream - gives a really robust taste."
Crossland later goes into detail on the salad: "For the salad, we use six different types of lettuce: Arugula, Frisee, Radicchio, Lola Rosa, Romaine and green cabbage. We chop all our vegetables by hand." To that, the chefs add Reggiano cheese, bacon vinaigrette, avocado, cucumber, tomato, corn, croutons, and you've got yourself a masterpiece.
"Everything about our crab cake salad is so good, because it's all fresh. Our cooks know how to cook!" Crossland adds. "We have the crab cake salad, and then we take the same crab cakes and can put them in an entrée."
"There have been days when maybe the delivery didn't come in, or the crab just wasn't up to our standards, so we don't serve it, and people will leave. Some do come just for that."
The Tavern is located on 2755 South Hulen St. and is open 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Mondays-Fridays; 9 a.m.-10 p.m., Saturdays; and 9 a.m.-9 p.m., Sundays. The restaurant also serves brunch, Saturdays and Sundays, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. For more information, log on to thetavernftworth.com.
