Relocation News

Storied Fort Worth restaurant Reata is moving and seeks new location

They've been at this address for nearly 20 years.

Facebook/Reata

A venerable Fort Worth restaurant is leaving its longtime location and seeks help from the public in finding a new address.

Reata, which has been a downtown staple at 310 Houston St. since 2002, is facing the expiration of its lease in 2024, and wants to be prepared with new digs.

According to a release, the lease expires in June 2024, which gives the restaurant two years to find a new location, one they may have to build.

Reata has a storied history: It was founded by Al Micallef, owner of the CF Ranch, who opened the first Reata Restaurant in Alpine in 1995. Reata Fort Worth opened in 1996 atop the Bank One Tower, and famously survived a tornado in 2000 that wreaked havoc on the building. Reata left the tower in 2001 for its current location. From the release:

Never one to be stopped for long, Reata responded rapidly to customers’ requests by opening Reata on the Road catering and event production. Two years after the tornado, Reata Restaurant proudly opened its new doors over Memorial Day weekend in 2002, with its same award-winning Western cuisine but also with more room, more staff and more heritage under its belt. The four-story location in downtown Fort Worth rings in at nearly 20,000 square feet, including a rooftop bar, geodesic dome and patio dining.

Reata, which just earned a nomination in CultureMap's annual Tastemaker Awards for 2022 Restaurant of the Year, also operates three satellite locations during the annual Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo: Reata at the Rodeo, Reata at the Backstage, and La Espuela.

According to NBC 5, one of the big issues the restaurant has is with the price of valet parking.

Owner Mike Micallef told NBC 5 that valet parking was initially free to guests, with the restaurant paying the fees of $3, then $4 per car. "Now, the new management wanted to charge $7 every 30 minutes, $21 max, plus fees. And that's something that we as Reata could not support," he said.

A spokesman for Sundance Square said that restaurants have the option to pay for part (or all) of their customers' valet parking but that Reata does not participate in this program.

The restaurant is seeking a building with 12,000 to 20,000 square feet, with space for up to 200 parking spaces, or alternately, two acres of undeveloped land. Get looking, people!

downtown closings

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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