Architecture in Fort Worth
It appears there is, at last, a resolution to The Original Mexican Eats Café at 4713 Camp Bowie Blvd.
She’s a goner.
That according to Bud Kennedy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The oldest eatery in Fort Worth will close the Camp Bowie location on Friday and consolidate with its second location, The Original del Norte, at 1400 N. Main Street, ending a lease dispute and leaving what had been home for 93 years.
It’s news that will undoubtedly leave West Siders, who had been going to the restaurant for decades, as glum as it did when an original close date had been announced in February. However, the landmark Tex-Mex location received a reprieve in March, a three-month extension through the end of June.
Officials remained tight-lipped about what, if anything, was at play.
The restaurant had been at the center of a lease dispute between Self and building owner Joe Frank Muzquiz, who inherited the property and a lease his late mother had agreed to with Self in 20 years ago.
Muzquiz said the 20-year-old lease was no longer financially viable, citing increased expenses in the form of taxes and building maintenance.
There’s little doubt The Original is the area’s oldest Mexican restaurant. But whether it’s the city’s oldest restaurant period — a popular claim, especially as it was nearing its end — remains unknown.
The sign out front says it opened in 1926.
But most likely it opened in 1930. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram first mentioned it in a 1931 article and said the restaurant had been open for a year. Echoing that fact, an advertisement placed by the restaurant itself in the Star-Telegram proclaimed, in 1930, that the cafe was “now open for business.”
The property, however, with its Spanish tile roof, was built in 1926, according to website Fort Worth Architecture.
What we do know is that Geronimo Pineda and his wife, Lola, opened the restaurant at 4317 Camp Bowie Blvd. A native of Barcelona, Spain, Pineda came to Fort Worth with nearly a decade’s worth of experience in running a similar Mexican restaurant in Waco called the Texas Café. In an interview with the Star-Telegram in 1931, he said he sold the Texas Café to partners and moved to Fort Worth to open the Original.
One notable regular in those early days of the 1930s was Elliott Roosevelt, whose father President Franklin Roosevelt would join him at times when in town. The Roosevelt Special combination dish is an homage to Elliott.
Pineda died at age 69 in 1941, and Lola and the couple’s daughter, Eva, ran it until 1965, when the two sold it to their accountant, Gordon Sheffield. Tom Holton, Sheffield’s stepson, acquired it in 1972. Various members of the Holton family ran it until 1999, when the restaurant was purchased by Self.
You can still get your Roosevelt Special. You’ll just have to drive, or send for a driver, to the North Side.