Reata to mark 20th anniversary with free champagne

In 1996, downtown Fort Worth was undergoing a bit of a boom. Bass Hall was under construction. The AMC Palace 9 opened, and a two-story Barnes & Noble came in not long after. Several restaurants came in; a couple are even still standing. Perhaps none is standing more against the odds than Reata.

The restaurant was a big deal, on the 35th floor of the Bank One tower, with a hot-shot young chef, Grady Spears, whose take on southwestern cuisine earned him national attention. Many name-brand DFW-connected chefs — Tim Love, Louis Lambert, Brian Olenjack and others — would pass through its kitchen before going on to open their own spots.

Juan Rodriguez, who came aboard in 2007, recently opened special-event company Magdalena’s Cocina Mexicana Local; Andrew Dilda, who was executive chef at Reata from March 2015 to March 2016, now runs Independent Bar and Kitchen in Dallas.

That’s quite a résumé for a restaurant that was ripped up by a tornado (as was much of the Bank One building) in March 2000. Reata’s staff earned praise for the way it helped customers to safety during the tornado. The restaurant fought a legal battle to stay in the building as it faced demolition, but ultimately had to leave its original space in February 2001.

Later that year, it announced plans to move into a space being vacated by the demise of another downtown landmark, Caravan of Dreams, finally reopening in May 2002. Reata is still alive in that Sundance Square space, where its rooftop bar is one of the coolest hangouts in downtown Fort Worth (just ask DFW-bred pop star Selena Gomez, who was spotted partying there in March 2016). Bernadette Peters and husband-and-wife actors Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross are among the other celebrities who’ve been seen there.

If you’d been through all that and were still around to tell about it, you’d celebrate, too. And Reata is planning to do just that this May 27-30, when it will offer a free glass of champagne to all dinner guests 21 and over.

The restaurant will also revive one of its most popular original menu items: The Texas T-Bone Stacked with Cocciota Cheese Enchilada. Popular, but pricey: It’s $49.95, but $5 of each sale of the entree will be donated to the Fort Worth Food + Wine Foundation, a scholarship organization co-founded by Mike Micallef, president of Reata Restaurants and son of Reata founder Al Micallef. The original Reata, opened in 1995 in Alpine, still thrives. But for the champagne, you’ll have to come to the Fort Worth location.

This report contains material from Star-Telegram archives.

This story was originally published May 20, 2016 at 11:16 AM with the headline "Reata to mark 20th anniversary with free champagne."