"Chef Michael Arlt and owner Dustin Lee opened the Beast & Company in Fort Worth’s Near Southside District with a mission to create a menu of Southern dishes that showcase the roots of those meals. Blending cultures on a plate is no easy task, but Arlt’s easy curiosity and history of working in kitchens from Houston, Chicago, and Portland, Maine, to ones in North Carolina and Florida, prepared him to be up to the task. The dishes they’ve created pay homage to the African, Asian, and Latin American roots of things often thought of as staunchly Southern. Arlt carefully highlights ingredients that make classic meals not quite what is expected, utilizing local specialities and some unusual twists with the aim of normalizing once-familiar favorites such as rabbit and pate — both of which have fallen out of common use but were once staples of Southern fare." - Courtney E. Smith
