Former Salsa Fuego chef joins Fat Daddy’s parent company

A few weeks ago, we told you about Carlos and Christie Rodriguez, the former owners of acclaimed west Fort Worth Mexican restaurant Salsa Fuego, resurfacing with 5ive Spice Kitchen in Rendon.

The next day, the tiny 5ive Spice, in a Phillips 66 gas station, was slammed.

“I had 50 people the next day, standing room only, for lunch,” Rodriguez says, adding that he had to call in reinforcements because when he encountered the line, he was the only one there. “I just told everybody, ‘You’re getting burgers, and if you want a side, you’re getting fries. Other than that, it’ll take too long. I want to get you back to work on time.’ ”

Apparently we weren’t the only people who missed the Fuego Burger, a green-chile cheesburger that looks like it has its own gravity field, and Salsa Fuego’s authentic Mexican food, which had been MIA since the Rodriguezes closed Salsa Fuego in October.

They were pretty quiet about 5ive Spice, which opened in November — but then our Facebook friend, Kevin Short, stumbled across it, and we saw his post about it, and from that came the news about 5ive Spice, and many fans of Salsa Fuego, which Texas Monthly once named one of the five best Mexican restaurants in Texas, took note.

Among them were John Geyerman, vice president of operations for AngMar Companies, which owns several properties, including Mansfield’s Fat Daddy’s Sports and Spirits Cafe. And that has led to a new chapter for Carlos Rodriguez, who’s been involved in DFW restaurants since the ’90s.

Around the time the Texas Monthly article appeared in 2010, a friend of Geyerman’s was opening a Jersey Mike’s sub shop on Fort Worth’s Hulen Street. He told Geyerman about this great new Mexican restaurant off the Benbrook Traffic Circle in west Fort Worth.

“I lived in Mansfield, so it wasn’t super-convenient,” Geyerman says. “But we went over there and tried it out, had the Fuego Burger and got kinda hooked. It was amazing. We’d get over there any time we could. It broke our heart when it closed.”

About three weeks ago, Geyerman saw a Facebook post from one of his neighbors linking to the DFW.com/Star-Telegram story about the Rodriguezes and 5ive Spice Kitchen.

“I was like, ‘Holy cow, my office is three miles away from this place’,” Geyerman says. “So I walk in and sure enough, there they are. I went back and talked to my owner and told him the legend of Salsa Fuego and the Fuego Burger. He’s a person who recognizes passion. He got excited about me being excited. He said ‘Let’s go have lunch there,’ which isn’t like him, and went down and met Carlos.

“He said [to Carlos], ‘You know what — we could use someone like you.”

AngMar has plans to improve the menu at Fat Daddy’s and expand the restaurants in its portfolio, and the company’s principals invited Rodriguez to be a part of that expansion.

“John and AngMar brought me on as a food and beverage director and corporate chef,” Rodriguez says. “So I’ll be aiding in ideation and design and new menu concepts and ideas. I’ll be creating a lot of signature items that have a lot of ‘wow’ factor.”

Rodriguez says that his wife and his son will continue to run 5ive Spice Kitchen, but he’s focusing on the work with AngMar. He’ll be involved in the food and catering at Burleson’s Southern Oaks Golf Course, where AngMar just opened The Oaks, a 5,000-square-foot special-events venue.

“They’re giving me a lot of creative liberties,” Rodriguez says. “They’re looking to take the food and the service to the next level.”

Fat Daddy’s Mansfield is a large restaurant/entertainment venue — nearly 17,000 square feet and with a capacity of more than 900 customers — that offers live music on the weekends, ranging from “Red Dirt” artists such as Bart Crow to hard-rock act Puddle of Mudd.

“We do a lot of things right here,” Geyerman says of Fat Daddy’s. “But we’ve never been known as a food destination. [The owner] wants to make the food menu pop. It’s good, but he wants it to be exceptional. And he’s willing to invest in [Carlos’] talent.”

But there’s more to this than the Mansfield restaurant and the Burleson golf course.

AngMar’s plans include a new Fat Daddy’s off the I-35W access road north of Western Center Boulevard in far north Fort Worth — and area already booming with such places as Posados Cafe, Twin Peaks, Boomerjacks, Rudy’s barbecue, Flip’s Patio Grill and more. Groundbreaking on the new Fat Daddy’s could start as early as June, with the goal to be open in time for the 2017 Super Bowl.

Also planned are a barbecue restaurant, which will be near the Fat Daddy’s in Mansfield, and a Tex-Mex concept that sounds like it’s still in the gleam-in-the-eye stages. Rodriguez says that it’s possible that the Fuego Burger and some other popular Salsa Fuego dishes will show up on the AngMar restaurants’ menus, but he’s not limiting himself to that.

This is a change in fortunes for Rodriguez, whose Salsa Fuego was often in a race with its own success. It started fairly quietly in 2009, in an eight-seat spot off Alta Mere Boulevard, just north of the traffic circle. Then in late 2010, the Texas Monthly article came out, and suddenly, diners were flocking to the tiny restaurant.

The Rodriguezes had dreams of a big restaurant, including such attractions as salsa dancing, but they started small because they had a small budget. As the business and word of mouth grew, they still had the small budget and the small restaurant, with a small parking lot that was often full.

In 2015, they moved into a bigger space a short walk to the north, in a large former Chinese restaurant off Alta Mere Boulevard. But the move had its problems.

“We had our hearts set on opening a bigger space and growing our business,” Rodriguez says. “But we had a lot of challenges with permitting, construction problems, a lot of issues. It took about a year longer than we wanted. By the time we opened, we were out of funds and had overextended ourselves, buying new equipment and a new sign.”

They ran the bigger restaurant for six months, part of which occurred during DFW.com’s 2015 Battle of the Burgers — when the Fuego Burger and other items on Salsa Fuego’s burger menu led us, for the first time, to open the battle to non-burger joints, as long as they had at least a half-dozen burgers on their menu. Readers would report unexpected closings, but every time the judges visited for a new round, Salsa Fuego was open. It made it all the way to runner-up — and closed for good mere weeks later.

“We tried to make it work,” Rodriguez says. “It was killing us. I was there from 8 in the morning to 2 in the morning, trying to keep everything working.”

This story was originally published May 4, 2016 at 1:42 PM with the headline "Former Salsa Fuego chef joins Fat Daddy’s parent company."