What’s next in the Fort Worth Stockyards: Italian lunch, New York pizza and more steak

A steak showdown is coming to the Fort Worth Stockyards.

Chef Tim Love said it’s about time

With celebrity chef Graham Elliot opening a new prime steakhouse In Mule Alley and investors from “Yellowstone” buying 75-year-old Cattlemen’s, Love’s dream of 22 years is coming true.

As he prepares to open his new Caterina’s for lunch Friday — in time for Santa’s arrival and the Stockyards Christmas tree lighting — Love said, “I’ve been telling people for years to come to the Stockyards.”

In 2000, he founded Lonesome Dove Western Bistro when almost nobody thought the Stockyards was ready for a prime steakhouse.

Now, he owns seven Stockyards restaurants including Caterina’s, 128 E. Exchange Ave, an upscale Italian restaurant, and Tannahill’s Tavern, 122 E. Exchange Ave., a music hall with an updated bar menu and New York-style late-night pizza shop.

“Competition brings out great things in people,” Love said. “When you get people like Graham Elliot coming to Fort Worth, then others will move in.”

Elliot and restaurateur Felipe Armenta of The Tavern and Pacific Table plan a prime steakhouse near a Hyatt Place hotel.

Lonesome Dove, 2406 N. Main St., has dominated the Stockyards and Fort Worth on the strength of a garlic-stuffed tenderloin.

Plans for Cattlemen’s have not been announced by new liquor license registrant Dan Schryer, a stakeholder in “Yellowstone” via Calfornia-based 101 Studios Co,

“Yellowstone” and prequel “1883,” filmed in the Stockyards, continue to bring hundreds of visitors to see where the Dutton family’s saga began.

Lonesome Dove started seeing crowds grow as soon as new hotels opened. They include the Hotel Drover, renting this weekend for $854 per night, and a Springhill Suites. Owners of the Drover recently bought the Stockyards Hotel and its H3 Ranch steakhouse.

“All the growth out here has looked fantastic — Heritage did an amazing job,” Love said, referring to Stockyards Heritage Development, a partnership between local Mule Alley landowners and California property managers.

Caterina’s was needed for variety, he said.

The Italian restaurant will open for lunch on the fourth Friday of every month, starting this week, and drop its evening dress code.

Love’s newest arrival is the pizza shop in Tannahill’s, serving thin-crust pizza from a walk-up counter he described as a “hidden pizza shop.”

He’s been working on a New York-style pizza for a year to get a crisp crust with a “great crunch,” he said.

Mule Alley’s nighttime crowds have grown with new restaurant openings and the addition of Tannahill’s, one of the venues for the new Stockyards Music Festival.

“If you don’t like late-night pizza, you’re in the wrong business,” he said.

It’s Love’s newest pizza venture to balance with Gemelle, a thick-crust Detroit-style pizzeria and Italian restaurant at 4400 White Settlement Road.