{"id":200450,"date":"2025-09-04T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200450\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T20:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:34:10","slug":"award-winning-fort-worth-team-to-open-new-italian-restaurant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200450\/","title":{"rendered":"Award-winning Fort Worth team to open new Italian restaurant"},"content":{"rendered":"

An award-winning Italian restaurant in Fort Worth has spawned a new sibling: Called Felina<\/strong>, it’s from the owners of Bocca Osteria Romana, and it will open in the old Funky Town Picnic space at 401 Bryan Ave., #117, where it will serve authentic Italian fare with Latin and Mediterranean influences.<\/p>\n

Bocca Osteria Romana is the popular restaurant that opened a year ago in the South Main area of Fort Worth, from brothers Alessandro and Alfonso Salvatore, who also own two restaurants in Puerto Rico: the original location of Bocca Osteria Romana and an upscale taqueria called Acapulco Taqueria Mexicana.<\/p>\n

Felina will be an entirely new concept based on their love of food and travel. The two were born in McAllen, Texas and have lived in Mexico, Italy, and Puerto Rico. <\/p>\n

The restaurant will open in the fall, and the menu is still being finalized. But Alessandro says it\u2019ll include pizza, pasta, sandwiches, salads and soups, with an emphasis on seasonal, local ingredients.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don\u2019t want to slap a label on it,\u201d he says. \u201cI like to think of it as our story and our story is all over the place. It\u2019s just going to be a fun, laid back place. I\u2019ll be cooking some of my favorite dishes – and some of them are Italian and some are not. It\u2019s going to feel good to step outside the boundaries of what we\u2019ve done in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Alessandro Alessandro Salvatore of Bocca Osteria Romana, Chef of the Year. Courtesy photo <\/p>\n

As with their other concepts, Alessandro will be the executive chef and Alfonso will handle operations. Alessandro was named<\/a> Fort Worth Chef of the Year<\/a> at the 2025 CultureMap Tastemaker awards.<\/p>\n

Neapolitan-style pizza, in both classic and chef-inspired varieties, will be a focal point, Alessandro says, and will be prepared in a wood-fired brick oven imported from Italy. Traditional pies will include the Pizza Rossa with confit tomato, oregano, garlic, and Cantabrian anchovy; and the Margherita, pairing San Marzano tomatoes with fior di latte, basil, and Pecorino DOP.<\/p>\n

Other pizzas will include the Amatriciana, topped with guanciale and Pecorino; the Mushroom, with five mushroom varieties and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche; and the Fiori di Zucca, featuring squash blossoms, zucchini, and burrata.<\/p>\n

A lemon-inspired pie, the Pizza Limone, adds smoked scamorza, lemon zest and juice, and pistachios. Rounding out the lineup is the Pizza Margarita, a cross-cultural twist with tomatillo salsa, queso Oaxaca, Fresno chili, and Pecorino.<\/p>\n

In addition to the pizza oven, Alessandro says he’ll also utilize a vertical spit rotisserie, sometimes referred to as a \u201ctrompo,\u201d that the brothers are having custom-made in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we won\u2019t use it just for al pastor, which is what most trompos are used for,\u201d he says. \u201cWe might do lamb. We might do a thinly-sliced ribeye. Something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vegetables will be heavily featured. Charred squash will come with pomegranate, hazelnut, and mint pesto, while a whole roasted eggplant will be dressed with red onion agrodolce, tahini, cherry tomatoes, and herbs.<\/p>\n

Salads will include a dandelion mix with gorgonzola and walnut, a Romana with Castelfranco radicchio and anchovy, a beet-based heirloom panzanella, and an albacore option with fris\u00e9e, endive, capers, and boiled egg.<\/p>\n

Housemade pastas will include ravioli with honey nut squash and chanterelles, chitarra spaghetti with butter and anchovy, and orecchiette with beef cheek rag\u00f9 and whipped ricotta.<\/p>\n

Lighter fare will include a panuozzo, an Italian street food-inspired sandwich, with lamb, yogurt, salsa macha, mint, and pickled onion; a farro soup with squash and oyster mushrooms; and mushroom toast made on sourdough.<\/p>\n

\"Felina\"\/ Felina Felina <\/p>\n

For drinks, Alessandro says the restaurant will make use of the keg system left behind by brewery\/restaurant Funky Town Picnic and will serve prosecco, local beer, wine, and cocktails on tap.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be switching the wines and cocktails seasonally,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we\u2019ll be showcasing really cool natural wines from Italy, France, Macedonia, Georgia and Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2,500-square-foot restaurant will seat about 125; it\u2019ll share wall space with a recently opened Japanese restaurant, Ichiro Izakaya, which occupies the same building.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince it was a brewery before, it has an industrial look but we\u2019re going to make it more warm,\u201d Alessandro says. \u201cIt\u2019ll be more soulful, not flashy. Hopefully it\u2019ll resonate with people in the neighborhood, like Bocca has.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alessandro says the restaurant\u2019s name pays tribute to Fort Worth.<\/p>\n

\u201cFelina means the same thing in Italian and Spanish – feline,\u201d Alessandro says. \u201cSo it\u2019s a nod to both our heritage and what a lot of people call Fort Worth, Panther City. It\u2019s a name that really captures our food and the spirit of Fort Worth.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An award-winning Italian restaurant in Fort Worth has spawned a new sibling: Called Felina, it’s from the owners…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":200451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,5800,27144,7371,7372,10084,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-200450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-awards","10":"tag-chefs","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-fortworth","13":"tag-openings","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115147942373983341","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}