"We're thrilled to be the first local restaurant to join Clearfork," Marcus Paslay said when he announced that Piattello Italian Kitchen would leave its longtime home at Waterside for a new address inside The Offices at Clearfork. Read that sentence twice. The Shops at Clearfork opened nine years ago, in 2017, and in all that time, through Neiman Marcus and Burberry and a rotating cast of chef-driven restaurants, not one of them has been owned and operated out of Fort Worth. Piattello will be the first.
If you live in Westover Hills, you already treat Clearfork as an extension of your own kitchen. It's the closest place to grab dinner, return a package, or walk the dog past a Saturday market. What you may not have clocked is that the restaurant row you've been eating your way through for nearly a decade has been almost entirely imported. That changes this November, and it's worth understanding what arrives with it.
Who's actually been at the table
Clearfork's dining lineup reads like a map of other cities. B&B Butchers & Restaurant, the steakhouse, started in Houston. Mesero came from Dallas. Fixe Southern House built its name in Austin before opening a Fort Worth outpost. City Works Eatery and Pour House runs locations from Chicago to Frisco's The Star. Every one of them is a good restaurant. None of them started here.
| Restaurant | Where it started |
|---|---|
| B&B Butchers & Restaurant | Houston |
| Mesero | Dallas |
| Fixe Southern House | Austin |
| City Works Eatery & Pour House | Multi-city concept, also at The Star in Frisco |
| Piattello Italian Kitchen (opening November 2026) | Fort Worth, the center's first locally owned restaurant |
That last row is the whole story. For nine years, Simon, the developer behind Clearfork, filled its restaurant space with proven regional and national names, a strategy that makes sense for a center built on Neiman Marcus, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton as anchors. It also meant that if you wanted a restaurant with actual Fort Worth roots, you had to leave the development to find one.
What's moving in, and what it changes
Piattello isn't a new concept looking for its first home. Chef Paslay opened it in 2017 at Waterside, built a following on handmade pastas and wood-fired pizzas, and won Restaurant of the Year at the 2018 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards in his first year. The restaurant is part of his From Scratch Hospitality group, which also runs Clay Pigeon Food & Drink, Provender Hall in the Stockyards, and Walloon's on the Near Southside.
The new space sits at 5137 Marathon Avenue, on the ground floor of The Offices at Clearfork, a three-story building that also houses a Wells Fargo office upstairs. It's a real upgrade in scale: 5,620 square feet, about 160 indoor seats, and a 40-seat patio, compared to the current Waterside footprint. The bigger change for anyone who eats there regularly is hours. Piattello has been a dinner-only operation, open 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. At Clearfork, it will add lunch service seven days a week for the first time in its history, a shift Paslay attributes directly to the center's daytime foot traffic.
"Piattello is a natural addition to the retail, restaurant and mixed-use environment at The Shops at Clearfork, which continues to set the standard as Fort Worth's premier walkable destination," said Patrick Peterman, Simon's senior vice president of mixed-use, in the announcement.
The move is roughly a mile from Piattello's current spot, according to the restaurant's own release, so this isn't a leap across town. It's a short relocation that happens to land inside the development every Westover Hills resident already treats as their front yard. The menu itself won't change much. Paslay has said the housemade pastas, wood-fired pizzas, and sourdough starter are staying put, with a few new additions to be announced later in the year. The timing lines up with a milestone: Piattello turns 10 in January 2027, just a couple of months after the doors open at the new address.
What's already on your calendar
You don't have to wait until November for a reason to walk over. Two things are happening right now, this month, that are worth working into a Saturday.
- DFW Restaurant Week runs August 10 through September 7 at The Shops at Clearfork, with participating restaurants offering curated prix fixe menus. A portion of each meal supports the North Texas Food Bank and Lena Pope, so a date night or a lunch with neighbors does double duty.
- The Clearfork Farmers Market runs every Saturday, year-round, in Clearfork Plaza, with more than 25 local farmers, ranchers, and artisan vendors and Frost Bank as the presenting sponsor. It's close enough that the market's own guidance to visitors is to skip the car entirely and walk in from the Trinity Trails, which connect directly from the neighborhood.
Neither of these requires planning around a real estate calendar or a market report. They're just what's happening a few minutes from your driveway this month, and the market in particular is worth building a habit around if you haven't already. It's been running since 2016, long enough to have outlasted several of the restaurants that have come and gone around it.
The math behind an all-chain restaurant row, until now
It's not an accident that Clearfork skewed toward outside brands for nine years. A development anchored by Neiman Marcus and built around Burberry, Tiffany, Gucci, and Saint Laurent is, by design, a showcase for names that already carry national recognition. Chains and regional groups with track records in other cities are a lower-risk bet for a landlord filling premium retail space. Piattello's arrival isn't Clearfork abandoning that formula. It's the first time a homegrown concept with a decade of proof behind it made the case that it belonged in the same conversation as B&B Butchers and Mesero, and won.
For residents, the practical upside is straightforward. Lunch service didn't exist at this address before. A Fort Worth-owned patio didn't exist at this address before. And the restaurant arriving to fill both of those gaps isn't an unknown quantity. It's a decade-old neighborhood favorite that already knows how to run a dining room, just moving a mile closer to the people who have been driving to Waterside for it since 2017.
What to watch this fall
The exact opening date for Piattello at Clearfork hasn't been set publicly, though the restaurant has confirmed a November target. New menu items are expected to be announced later this summer, ahead of the opening. If you want a preview of what to expect walking distance from Westover Hills, DFW Restaurant Week through September 7 is a reasonable warm-up, and the Saturday farmers market remains the easiest standing appointment on the calendar, rain or shine, all the way through the year.
Clearfork has spent nine years building a reputation as the polished, imported version of Fort Worth retail and dining. This fall, for the first time, one of the tables belongs to the city it's actually built in.
For more on what makes Westover Hills one of Fort Worth's most distinctive addresses, visit our Westover Hills neighborhood guide.
If you're weighing a move in or around Westover Hills and want a team that knows this stretch of Fort Worth block by block, Duwe-Olsen Group welcomes the conversation. Request a private consultation with our Fort Worth luxury specialists whenever the timing is right for you.
