Zest 817 FIRST LOOK // Cool Cat

First Look

Cool Cat

Chef Jaime Fernandez’s soon-to-open pizzeria brings new flavors to a classic dish.

BY ANDREW MARTON

PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL WISE

When was the last time you enjoyed toasted fava beans tossed in the tickling heat of chile[chili] powder? And how about devouring those beans as a winning bar snack to accompany a swig of local craft beer?

Not recently? Thought so.

Ovens at Black Cat Pizza

PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL WISE

Well, consider those mildly fiery favas as merely the first salvo from the envelope-pushing kitchen of Black Cat Pizza, whose planned June opening will endow the burgeoning South Main Street quarter with one of its first full-service restaurants.

Jaime Fernandez, head chef and owner, decided the name of his first venture should riff off the city’s “Panther City” nickname.

Black Cat Pizza

PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL WISE

“Since ‘Panther City Pizza’ might be too much of a –– pardon the pun –– mouthful,” Fernandez said, “Black Cat Pizza was our fun name showing we weren’t taking ourselves too seriously but still showing our love for the city.”

The 31-year-old Fernandez was born in Tulancingo, Mexico, but came with his parents to the United States at the tender age of two, growing up in San Antonio.

In his teens, Fernandez worked stints at several restaurants before enrolling at Austin’s Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. With diploma in hand, he embarked on a culinary odyssey that included working at a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Pamplona, Spain.

Fernandez: “I want to bring a certain level of sophistication but still keep it fun and approachable.”

PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL WISE

Returning from Europe, Fernandez cultivated his restaurant roots from San Antonio to Austin before landing in Fort Worth, where he began experimenting with scratch-made pizza dough.

“The first couple of times, it was terrible tasting, like cardboard,” Fernandez recalled. “But I soon got better at it for sure.”

Where

401 Bryan Avenue, FW. 817-489-5150

During the summer of 2018, while Fernandez was a line cook at the popular Near Southside institution Ellerbe Fine Foods, he began staging pop-up pizza trials at nearby Stir Crazy Baked Goods.

Selling well at Fernandez’s initial pop-ups were his classic pies of cheese, pepperoni, and pepperoni and mushroom, along with specials featuring such inspired ingredients as Chinese roasted duck.

The Red Fang pizza is loaded with Spanish chorizo, heirloom tomatoes, red onions, a spicy tomato sauce, Thai chilis, and honey.

PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL WISE

Last fall, Fernandez couldn’t have been happier when he finally discovered the vacant building at 401 Bryan Ave. in the newly blossoming South Main District.

“What we like is that this part of town still has an industrial vibe to it –– not too developed,” he said.

Don’t Miss Dishes

Cheese, pepperoni, pepperoni-mushroom, Red Fang, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (T.M.N.T.) pizzas, Bocadillo sandwich, cacio e pepe pasta, Paleteria popsicles, flan

Black Cat’s interior creates its own industrial aura thanks to a polished concrete floor and a 20-foot-high drop ceiling from which loft-worthy lamps hang. Along with such novel touches as nailing old church pews together to form a wall-hugging banquette, Black Cat features a long bar as the primary spectating area for the open kitchen, itself boasting a $13,000 brick pizza oven burning cords of oak at a steady 650-degree temperature.

“I prefer hard woods like oak that burn hot and produce very good embers that last a long while,” Fernandez said.

More than just pies are on the menu at Black Cat Pizza.

PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL WISE

With Black Cat boldly sticking “pizza” in its name, the kitchen must deliver the doughfilled goods. What immediately pleases on the first bite is how its blistered crust is caught in that blissful limbo between Neapolitan pillowy and New York-matzo cracker crisp.

Vibe

Hip and casual, set to a vinyl album soundtrack playing world music from Cambodia to Ethiopia

And each pizza is a canvas for a bonanza of pepperoni coins or a garden’s worth of greenery (basil pesto, baby kale, arugula, dandelion greens, Brussels sprouts, and snow peas) for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or T.M.N.T., pizza. There are burnished chunks of Spanish chorizo, goat horn peppers (turbo-charged jalapeños), red onions, and Thai chile honey piled on the Red Fang pizza. And finally, a salsa verde underpins a layer of tiny chili-oil-fried Mexican-imported grasshoppers (packing an unexpected salt-vinegary kick) for the Chapulines pie.

If by some slim chance your appetite won’t be sated by the pizza choices, there is always the bocadillo sandwich, where chorizo and salchichon (a sassier version of Genoa salami), slathered with tomato spread, all live under the toasted shade of a demi-baguette.

Prices

Whole pizzas $15-$25, by the slice, $3.25-$5

And if your desires run toward one of the ultimate Italian comfort pasta dishes, there is Black Cat’s cacio e pepe or “cheese and pepper,” celebrating the triumphant trio of homemade pappardelle, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and a generous shower of black pepper.

When

11am-11pm Mon-Sat. Patio’s walk-up window offers a limited menu from 11pm-3am on Fri-Sat

Assessing the quality goals of Black Cat, Fernandez strives to keep expectations low and standards high.

“I want to bring a certain level of sophistication but still keep it fun and approachable,” he said. “We won’t take ourselves too seriously, but we won’t just be throwing things together. At the end of the day, it is just pizza, but we will try to bring a fine-dining approach to the pizza’s quality without being snobby about it.”

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