The Ghosts of Kitchens Past and Future

Halloween might be over, but Funkytowners can expect regular visits from ghosts. Ghost kitchens, that is.

Fort Worth’s North Side will soon be home to a kitchen serving up dinners with a familiar culinary pedigree, prepared and delivered different from anything we’re accustomed to. This kitchen, which most of its patrons will never see, much less set foot in, lies less than a mile away from its roots.

Joe T. Garcia’s indubitably is the most famous restaurant in Fort Worth. That fame is due in large part because of their strict adherence to tradition and steadfast commitment to bucking change. Surprisingly, the continuing popularity of Joe T’s culinary legacy is challenging and changing the landscape of our city’s restaurants.

Lanny Lancarte, Jr. (known to many as Little Lanny) is the scion of the Lancarte family who continue to run their iconic restaurant at Commerce St. and 23rd, where customers happily pass margarita pitchers while waiting in line to sit on what is possibly the most recognizable patio in Texas. The only son of the oldest of the Lancarte siblings, Lanny sees the restaurant as much as his childhood home as his family’s business.

“My great-grandmother and grandmother lived in the back there in the apartment [on the property], and with how much my parents worked, if we wanted to see them, that’s where we were. I slept at Joe T’s most nights.” Lancarte laughed when remembering his great-grandmother making enchilada gravy in the small apartment kitchen. Now living in the Overton Park area, Lancarte attended Arlington Heights High School before graduating from TCU, and his culinary personality is a hybrid of his childhood at Joe T’s and his education at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. 

Lancarte ventured out of the stone walls of his families’ establishment when he opened a stand-alone fine dining restaurant, Lanny’s Alta Cocina Mexicana, in 2005. The restaurant, located on West 7th in the Museum District, served high-end yet traditional Mexican cuisine combined with classical European preparations, a far cry from the fajitas and enchiladas of Tex-Mex. The dishes were inspired by years of Lancarte’s tasting pilgrimages in Mexico, as well as time spent externing in Chicago with Rick Bayless, the father of modern Mexican cuisine in America.

“That was before I knew anything about public relations or marketing, I was just doing what I liked to do and hoping somebody noticed,” Lancarte said. He took on fine dining because he loved traveling to learn about food, and he wanted to experiment with the foods of different regions in Mexico.

Lancarte remembers the late 1990s and early 2000s as a time when creativity was widely embraced. Food writers like Anthony Bourdain were educating the public as to what chefs really do to transport their customers to a different world through their inventive dishes. But the high didn’t last. “In 2009 or 2010, fine dining seems like it hit its zenith, and just died. It seemed like everything [after] that was being done was regurgitated and plagiarized.”  

photo credit: Jeremy Enlow

At the turn of the century, Lancarte said that Fort Worth was a city with a small-town feel. There were few independent restaurants in town. The restaurant “scene” was such that even chain openings seemed like a big deal. Lanny’s Alta Cocina Mexicana was an expression of its owner’s creativity, and it filled a void in Fort Worth. “Things changed as [Fort Worth] started to grow… it brought more diners to the table. We were still kind of a sleepy town when we opened. [Alta Cocina Mexicana was] was closed on Sundays and Mondays because there was absolutely no reason to be open. There were no diners out there. We could probably have been closed on Tuesday and Wednesday also.”  

Lancarte knows that Fort Worthians have always been interested in food but have traditionally patronized the same few restaurants that they have gone to since they were children. Compared to markets like Los Angeles or New York, Fort Worth’s restaurant industry is still in its infancy, but as new and more residents arrive, Lancarte expects to see more diversity and creativity in the food scene.

“When your audience is small, you can only have so much fun,” he said. “[In bigger cities] you can do something totally unique and funky, and you’d have an audience of people who’ll get it and be into it.” 

When Lancarte got married, he had to take a break from extended international tasting trips but staying closer to home rekindled his passion for outdoor sports. The avid snowboarder and cyclist also changed his restaurant. Righteous Foods emphasizes innovative healthy dishes which caters primarily to breakfast and lunch diners. Righteous Foods doesn’t require the late nights commonly associated with running a restaurant. “I didn’t want to work late every night, weekends, and holidays anymore.”  

Both Lanny’s Alta Cocina Mexicana and Righteous Foods were and are primarily focused on traditional sit-in dining, with catering and pickup as afterthoughts. As his family life evolved, the chef evolved as well, spending time training for endurance racing on his road bicycle and pouring himself into new dining possibilities. 

The idea for his first ghost kitchen grew out of another major life transition as the parent of two children. Lancarte and his wife Raven noticed that they were ordering food out more frequently. The father of two, who in his free time coaches his daughter’s soccer team, saw the need for something fans of good food can partner with their parenting lifestyles.  

Photo courtesy of Lanny Lancarte

The concept of a ghost kitchen is new to Fort Worth but has been around for several years. “They’ve been on the coasts… [they] started as a real estate play from tech investors who were buying… locations and carving them into small spaces for 20 or 30 microkitchens to operate,” Lanny explained. “They were leveraging the technology to exclusively deliver through third-party vendors like Door Dash, mostly in the fast-food genre.”  

The ghost concept is geared towards the busy weekday diner. After all, our busy lives tend to make it easier to go through a drive through even if we’re craving our favorite restaurant. “During the week most [traditional] restaurants are kind of slower, so during the weekdays [a ghost kitchen] provides an option for people who are leaving work for their kids’ practice or rehearsal that isn’t Chick-Fil-A or Whataburger.” The food is also intended to be more approachable, to be enjoyed on the go, and to feed a group watching a football game or a hungry soccer team. 

Lancarte was intrigued by the idea of a ghost kitchen and decided it was just what Fort Worth needed. “I began working on Eat Fajitas back in 2017,” when Raven was expecting their second child. The chef knew a kitchen offering high quality food for delivery was something other parents would want in their lives. The problem was finding a space from which to launch Eat Fajitas permanently.

COVID-19 sped up the plans for Eat Fajitas. Like many restauranteurs, Lancarte wanted to keep as many of his employees working as possible through the shutdown. Every staff member became a potential delivery driver for either Eat Fajitas or Righteous Foods. “It’s different having a friendly, trained, and uniformed employee of the restaurant you’re ordering from to deliver your food… it makes for a better experience.”  

While the original ghost kitchens were born to partner with third-party delivery services, Lancarte sought a different, and according to him, better design. Everything from his kitchens is delivered by the kitchens’ employees, with all accoutrements branded for a consistent experience. “We saw a lot of questionable things with pick-up services. One driver picked up an order from Righteous and took it into the bathroom with her… when she came out, we had to stop her and remake the entire order,” Lancarte recounted in horror. He wouldn’t specify which service the driver worked for, but he said they tried to train ones that regularly picked up to preserve the best possible customer experience.  

photo credit: Jeremy Enlow

Eat Fajitas might seem like a natural progression for someone from the Joe T’s family, but additional ghost concepts are coming, and they’re coming quickly. Lancarte has secured a location near his family’s restaurant on the North Side and is preparing to deliver chicken and pizza as well. The facility, located in a former Methodist church built in the 1930s, received its final inspections the day before we spoke, and he’s preparing to migrate the fajita concept from Righteous Foods to join his other micro kitchens. El Pollo Tocayo will feature smoked or fried chicken with sides cooked with a Mexican flair, while Pizza Zapasta will offer pizza on house-made thick or thin crusts garnished with plays on classical Mexican ingredients. These three concepts (for now) make up Lancarte’s Fantasma Kitchens.

Lancarte, despite his hectic lifestyle of parenting, partnering, and running his expanding restaurant empire, is still a big sports fan. While the TCU alum doesn’t consider himself a Frog Football fanatic because he doesn’t have season tickets, he admits that’s only because he used to spend so much time working weekends that he didn’t have the opportunity to attend many games. Now he and Raven, who is a Texas Wesleyan alumna, try to take their kids to as many football games as possible. The family also frequents TCU basketball games, for which they do have season tickets.

While he obviously enjoys football and basketball, Lancarte’s eyes lit up when our conversation turned to hockey. He energetically described trying to rig a television to watch the Dallas Stars’ Stanley Cup games on the Joe T’s patio, and he reminisced about the restaurant’s recreational hockey team. “In the late 90s, we had a hockey team for three seasons. One of the Fort Worth Fire [a semi-pro team which played from 1992-1997] coaches was friends with a guy who worked there.” When his life slows down, if it ever does, he’s hoping to pick up permanent seats for the Stars’ games in the American Airlines Center. 

Gameday eating, even from an award-winning chef, is typically unremarkable. Lancarte said if his family is at home watching a game alone, they’ll probably order food to avoid cleaning the kitchen. If they’re entertaining, the menu is largely dependent on their guests’ tastes. “We make wings and traditional things but might make little tweaks like cooking it over a live fire, or lamb ribs instead of pork ribs.” Lancarte admitted that he’s gotten carried away with some high-end modifications to traditional spreads when they hosted Super Bowl parties in the balmy pre-pandemic days. He is, after all, a chef, and chefs tend to go a little crazy when they’re cooking for friends.

Ever the entrepreneur, Lancarte has his eyes on promoting his new concepts through TCU athletes. Now that the NCAA’s Name, Image, and Likeness rules have changed, he’s planning on opening his doors to Horned Frogs to sample his dishes and possibly develop a promotional relationship.

Lanny Lancarte grew up in the Fort Worth restaurant world, but he feels he’s just getting started in the ghost kitchen world. But he’s already planning on expanding his ghostly dynasty and hopes to carry as many as five concepts out of his repurposed church on the North Side. There is even the possibility for an event space or even a small dine-in patio. “To me, [the North Side] is home – it’s cool, it’s funky, and it’s been largely ignored.”  

photo credit: Jeremy Enlow

Fort Worth is an old city, and like many old cities, it has its fair share of ghosts. Now it seems that kitchen ghosts (or ghost kitchens) are carrying new life into an old neighborhood. 

Buck Elliott is a DFW native and graduate of TCU and UTA. He’s also an alumnus of Joe T. Garcias. During the day, he’s a full-time teacher and varsity tennis coach at Denton’s Billy Ryan High School. After hours, he’s usually at home spending quality time with his wife, Madeworthy’s own Jackie Elliott, or his three rambunctious children. Otherwise, he’s acquiring a new injury at a local CrossFit affiliate, or writing his sports column for The Fort Worth Weekly. His love for TCU and educational policies fuel his passion for writing about sports, social justice, and everything in between.