The most important challenge of reinventing an old restaurant, says Fort Worth chef and restaurateur Lou Lambert, is “embracing the heritage.”
They’ve done that at Paris Coffee Shop, the 95-year-old diner in Fort Worth that reopened on Thursday, May 19, 2022, after eight months of renovations.
“We’ve been listening to clients who have been here for generations, while also working to make it relevant to a new generation,” Lambert says.
Let’s look at the history: Paris Coffee Shop opened in 1926 and was started by a man named Vic Paris. He sold it quickly to Greek man named Grigonos Asikis (who changed the family’s last name to Smith), and the Smiths ran it for nearly 100 years. During that time, the restaurant was moved in the 1970s into its current location, on W. Magnolia Avenue, taking the place of a Safeway grocery store.
Lambert and his business partners Chris Reale and Mark Harris scooped up the aging diner in early 2021.
That same trio also bought and reinvented Roy Pope Grocery, Fort Worth’s seventh-oldest restaurant and market, dating back to 1943.
Paris Coffee Shop would have likely been torn down and become the site of an apartment complex if they didn’t buy it, Lambert hypothesizes. Today, Magnolia Avenue is a busy, sought-after street in Fort Worth.
The new Paris Coffee Shop was gutted and remodeled completely, with new walls, floors, kitchen, bathrooms and menus. It remains a casual restaurant with high ceilings and those classic swivel chairs at the bar.
So they could get the feel for how the restaurant operates, Reale worked the line at the restaurant for two months before it closed for renovations. They learned that it wasn’t a from-scratch kitchen anymore.
“Me and Lou, coming from a culinary background, we really wanted to go back to scratch cooking,” Reale says.
Lambert explains it this way: “We want to give simple food more respect.”
Paris Coffee Shop is known as a breakfast spot — a place that sells omelets, pancakes and the like. Still, the No. 1 sellers are pies. No. 2 is probably chicken and dumplings, the new owners say. Lambert is proud of the reinvented corned beef hash.
As they updated the menu, they added lattes and cortados, power grain bowls and granola parfaits. The blue plate specials stay down-home: fried chicken on Mondays; meatloaf on Tuesdays; pot roast on Wednesdays; chicken and dumplings on Thursdays and catfish on Fridays.
For now, the restaurant is open for breakfast and lunch. Lambert and Reale will add dinner soon — another change for this nearly century-old restaurant.
“For me, it’s always been that greasy spoon diner,” says Reale, who grew up in Fort Worth and remembers visiting Paris Coffee Shop as a kid. “You walk in and you feel at home. There’s the clinking of dishes, the conversations. The cool thing about Paris is, you’ll be sitting next to a landscaping crew and next to them will be the judge or a bunch of dudes in suits.”
“I love it, and I feel confident that we’re the right people to do the job,” he says.
Paris Coffee Shop is at 704 W Magnolia Ave., Fort Worth. It reopened May 19, 2022. Breakfast and lunch only, for now; dinner and brunch come later.
