A Fort Worth chef has resurrected a convenience-store dine-in restaurant in the Fairmount area where he’s specializing in one of the city’s favorite cuisines: burgers.

Ray’s Burgers, found inside the Corner Store at 1945 8th Ave., opened in early July and is serving old-fashioned hamburgers and cheeseburgers, made on an old-school flat top grill.

The restaurant is from J. Parker Howard, a Fort Worth-based chef who spent several years in the vegan restaurant industry, working at Spiral Diner and its sibling, Dreamboat Donuts & Scoops, both in the Near Southside area.

Ray's menu is comprised of hamburgers and cheeseburgers made with one-third-pound Angus chuck patties and topped with fresh onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and Best Maid pickles; for buns, he’s using Mrs. Baird’s.

“These are traditional, old-school burgers and cheeseburgers,” Howard says. “The types of burgers many of us grew up on. Nothing fancy. We’re not trying to reinvent the burger, we’re just trying to do it well.”

Prices are old-school, too: $6.99 for a single patty burger, $9.99 for a double. Add-on toppings include grilled onions, turkey bacon, and jalapenos. For sides, there are thick-cut steak fries and onion rings.

Other menu items include a Philly cheesesteak, a patty melt, crispy and grilled chicken sandwiches, and a chopped barbecue beef sandwich.

Adding to the retro vibe, food is served in red plastic baskets lined with red and white checkerboard paper.

The dining area is small and modest, with only three four-top tables. But there’s plenty of convenience store atmosphere, from people-watching to film-watching. A movie buff, Howard plays VHS films daily, showing them on a TV plastered with music stickers.

“It’s a small space so entertainment options are few,” says Howard, a native of Springfield, Ill. “But I do have a big collection of old VHS movies. Not that long ago, I did a marathon of the original Planet of the Apes movies. I did a Jackie Chan day. I’ve shown Time Bandits and the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense movie.”

Howard and Ray’s owner Rahmon “Ray” Shivji are longtime friends who met through Howard’s wife.

“My wife’s family has been in the Fairmount neighborhood for 80 years,” he says. “Ray has known my wife for 30 years, since she was a kid. They all go back years and years.”

Ray’s Burgers has been open off and on since Shivji purchased the convenience store in 1994. In 2021, Shivji leased the space to a Hawaiian restaurant, Aloha Chicken and Shrimp, but it only lasted a few months (a location in Richardson is still open).

Not long after Aloha closed, Shivji and Howard started discussing Howard taking over the restaurant.

“Ray’s getting older and he’s had some health issues and I think he’s just wanting to not manage that part of it anymore,” Howard says. “Before Aloha moved in, I was helping him out with the restaurant's social media, just doing posts here and there. But after Aloha closed, we got to talking about me taking over, and it all happened very quickly from there.”

Howard spent nearly 12 years at Spiral Diner, working his way up from dishwasher to executive chef. Two years ago, he opened Spiral’s nearby sibling restaurant, Dreamboat Donuts and Scoops, where he also served as executive chef. He left Dreamboat earlier this year, after his contract expired.

“The timing was perfect,” Howard says. “I was looking for something else. Ray was looking for someone to take over. It just made perfect sense.”

Howard plans to expand the menu over the next few weeks with some Pakistani-inspired dishes.

“Ray is Pakistani and I think he’s always wanted to have some Pakistani-inspired dishes on the menu,” Howard says. “We’re still working on some ideas, but there will be a chicken dish for sure and most likely a fish dish as well.”

Howard says that while he’s now working with meat, he’s not completely abandoning the vegan lifestyle.

“I’ve been vegan for 15 years,” he says. “I’m not turning my back on it. I do have to taste-test the food, though. I guess you could say I’m sort of in between the two worlds now. I still eat a lot of vegetables. But I do have a lot of friends who are now saying, `Hey man, you need to come over this weekend so we can grill out.’”

When a customer recently came in asking for a vegan burger, Howard was able to accommodate her. He’s now working on a permanent vegan burger option.

“I don’t want to do an Impossible patty, I want to come up with my own recipe,” he says. “The one I made for this customer had beans and oats and some other ingredients in it. I thought it came out really well. If there’s one thing I learned at Spiral Diner, it was how to make a good vegan burger.”