Fort Worth Steakhouse Pioneer Opens a New Chophouse, Expanding His Meat Empire to Keller

Keller’s standout steakhouse Texas Bleu is gone for good, but in its place you’ll now find Keller Chophouse instead.

Texas Bleu opened at 124 S. Main Street in Keller, back in 2015, but shuttered for good on July 11. After a quick redesign of the space by Keller Chophouse owner Zack Moutaouakil, the new steakhouse debuted this month. Moutaouakil brings three decades of steakhouse experience and owns two successful sibling restaurants in the area.

Moutaouakil’s Mercury Chophouse is a longtime fixture in downtown Fort Worth. It resided on Main Street for 17 years (as one of the first fine dining steakhouses in downtown Fort Worth), and is now located at the base of The Tower, where it relocated in 2016. The following year Moutaouakil opened a second Mercury Chophouse in Arlington, taking over the restaurant space that was home to La Cacharel French Cuisine for many years.

The design of Fort Worth’s Mercury Chophouse works around The Tower’s base structures, wrapping the slant concrete columns in rich wood and utilizing them for intimate dividers between tables of two. The color scheme of that iteration is darker with wine red walls and grounding black chairs.

In Arlington, the feel is decidedly more romantic, a room with a view — retaining its tufted banquettes, with shimmery and modern prism chandeliers adding texture to the dining room.

While all of Moutaouakil’s steakhouses are white table cloth dining experiences, the interior of the new Keller Chophouse is a bit more modern, with black wooden shutters, exposed duct work and freshly painted, pale gray plastered walls.

“I liked the location and the space,” Zack Moutaouakil tells PaperCity Fort Worth. “But it didn’t have a good feeling. The walls were more of a yellowish tone and we removed the prominent stacked stone wall that closed off the space. In it’s place we added a framed LED light display that is like a 3-D artwork.”

Wine cages also have been removed and light reflecting mirrors have been added.

The menu at Keller Chophouse will not veer far from the tried and true menus of both Mercury Chophouse locations. It’s a New York style steakhouse at its heart, with all the decadent touches one would expect ― escargot swimming in garlic butter, lavish seafood towers and Maine lobster.

“It’s what our customers have come to expect,” Moutaouakil says.

Moutaouakil believes completely in his beef purveyor ― Allen Brothers of Chicago. He’s been a loyal customer for more than 25 years now, and he believes his diners can taste the difference.

“For instance, I’m a ribeye lover,” he says. “No one can compare to the consistency of an Allen Brothers ribeye.”

Moutaouakil became a Allen Brothers devotee years ago when he was doing R&D for Mercury Chophouse on a visit to Chicago. “All the most famous steakhouses in Chicago get their steaks from Allen Brothers. We did a taste test with our employees and it was simply superior meat,” he says.

Other menu favorites include the Zack Attack Salad, which is topped with jumbo lump crab meat, chilled shrimp, avocado, diced tomatoes and sliced egg, and tossed in a champagne and balsamic vinaigrette. And, don’t forget the Moroccan Cigars, which are the restaurateur’s wife’s recipe of spiced and molded ground beef tenderloin, for something unexpected.

So far the reception in Keller has been even better than Moutaouakil had expected. Dallas Cowboys great Troy Aikman even stopped by for the grand opening of Keller Chophouse.

“It’s a very supportive community in Keller. Opening here, at this time, was a calculated risk,” Moutaouakil says. “But we couldn’t ask for better. Our customers are cleaning their plates, even the parsley garnish seems to disappear.”

There’s a new steakhouse in town.