[April 06, 2009]

Unlikely restaurant plans watch party for Food Network appearance: A Watauga restaurant in an unlikely location will celebrate its debut tonight on the Food Network

WATAUGA, Apr 06, 2009 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Monday night is supposed to be one of the slowest of the week in the restaurant business.

But this is no ordinary Monday night, not at the little lobster bisque-serving gas station and convenience store in Watauga.

The Chef Point Cafe, hidden behind the gas pumps and beneath the Conoco sign, debuts tonight on the wildly popular Food Network program Guy's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

The title of the episode? Funky Joints.

To celebrate with their fiercely loyal customers, husband/wife owners Paula Merrell and Franson Nwaeze are hauling in a 72-inch television, throwing up a hasty satellite connection and somehow cramming 75 people into their convenience store to eat and watch the show, which couldn't have found a more improbably successful dive anywhere in the country.

Their location is bad for a restaurant. They don't serve alcohol. The chef is a Nigerian immigrant and former airline pilot. The ambiance is diner tables, neon beer signs and metal-barred windows. Yet the menu features capers, calamari, artichokes and asiago.

The television show, in its early-year venture into Tarrant County, also visited Fred's Texas Cafe off West Seventh Street, another spot with a legendary reputation that far exceeds its square footage. That show appears to be three episodes away, according to the Web site.

The watch-party idea came strictly from the Chef Point Cafe's customers.

"I love crowds," Nwaeze said. "We thought it would be fun to celebrate with our customers. Some of them I consider family." The response was more than they bargained for.

Merrell sent out the e-mail invite about 5 a.m. Tuesday. By breakfast, every seat was gone and a lengthy waiting list drawn up.

Bill Broadwell; his wife, Donna; and sister, Pat, who own the Alleia spa in north Fort Worth, all snagged reservations.

"We're not at the top of Paula's speed dial, but we're getting up there," Bill Broadwell said.

They've been coming to the cafe very nearly since it opened in 2003, lured by tales of the hamburgers.

"Since we started tasting the menu, we haven't had a hamburger since," he said.

Because so many people wanted to come, Merrell and Nwaeze decided to keep the television and show the program during lunches and dinners the rest of the week.

The Food Network crew came to the cafe Jan. 11 and proceeded to ask Nwaeze to cook almost every single entree, appetizer and dessert on his menu -- from the cheeseburgers and bisque to the blackened stuffed pork chop and sea scallops.

"There were a lot of takes," he said. "They took a lot of pictures." They spent a small fortune cooking all that food, although they said the crew managed to devour it all.

"They eat a lot," Merrell said.

But the food costs they absorbed were nothing, Merrell said, compared with the reach that the Food Network will give their cafe.

Already more than half the customers come from Dallas County, she said.

Business has continued to flourish at the cafe, even as it never did at their other restaurant on Rufe Snow Drive in North Richland Hills. They closed it down last summer after a year, learning in the process that people liked the gas station and its open kitchen and did not want to go to a regular restaurant.

"As bad as the economy is, we're having one of the best years we've ever had," Merrell said. "If the economy stinks, we don't know anything about it." The couple has recently bought 2 acres behind their Conoco, land they plan to expand onto as soon as they can.

"If the bankers will work with us," she said, a sly dig at the financing experts who scoffed at their original business plans.

Watch it The Food Network program Guy's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives airs at 9 and 9:30 tonight.

CHRIS VAUGHN, 817-390-7547 To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dfw.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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